Courses by semester
Courses for
Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .
| Course ID | Title | Offered |
|---|---|---|
| CLASS1332 |
Elementary Sanskrit II
An introduction to the essentials of Sanskrit grammar. Designed to enable the student to read classical and epic Sanskrit as soon as possible.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS1451 |
Ancient Egyptian II: Introduction to Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs
A continuation of HIERO 1450. For over two thousand years, from the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2100 BCE) into the Roman era, Egyptian monuments were inscribed with hieroglyphs of the Middle Egyptian writing system. Students will continue to learn the complete Middle Egyptian verbal system and continue to enrich their Egyptian vocabulary. We will also continue translating complete literary and religious texts, including the fantastic tale of a sailor's maritime misadventures and divine encounters ("The Shipwrecked Sailor") and a hymn in honor of the sun god ("The Litany of Re").
Full details for CLASS 1451 - Ancient Egyptian II: Introduction to Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs |
Spring. |
| CLASS1531 |
FWS: Greek Myth
This course will focus on the stories about the gods and heroes of the Greeks as they appear in ancient literature and art. We will examine the relationship between myths and the cultural, religious, and political conditions of the society in which they took shape. Beginning with theories of myth and proceeding to the analysis of individual stories and cycles, the material will serve as a vehicle for improving your written communication skills. Assignments include preparatory writing and essays focusing on readings and discussions in class.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| CLASS1800 |
Classics in the 21st Century: A Guide
What is Classics? Why do we study the Greeks and Romans today? What relevance does classical antiquity have to a world beset by modern-day challenges, especially when veneration of the so-called "Classical Tradition" is associated with elitism, racism, and colonialism? This course is designed for Classics majors and minors to explore the history and contemporary politics of the discipline in a safe and mutually-respectful weekly discussion format. We will read recent discussions of these issues in both scholarly publications and the popular press, making connections with your other courses and seeking to understand them within their cultural and disciplinary context, whilst exploring the many ways in which contemporary classicists are questioning, expanding, and rethinking the scope of the field.
Full details for CLASS 1800 - Classics in the 21st Century: A Guide |
Spring. |
| CLASS2352 |
Intermediate Sanskrit II
Readings from Sanskrit dramas and literary commentary.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS2630 |
Drinking through the Ages: Intoxicating Beverages in Near Eastern and World History
This course examines the production and exchange of wine, beer, coffee and tea, and the social and ideological dynamics involved in their consumption. We start in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and end with tea and coffee in the Arab and Ottoman worlds. Archaeological and textual evidence will be used throughout to show the centrality of drinking in daily, ritual and political life.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS2689 |
Roman History
This course offers an introduction to the history of the Roman empire, from the prehistoric settlements on the site of Rome to the fall of the Western empire in the fifth century and its revival in the East with Byzantium. Lectures will provide a narrative and interpretations of major issues, including: empire building, cultural unity and diversity, religious transformations, changing relations between state and society. Discussion section will be the opportunity to engage with important texts, ancient and modern, about Rome.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS2729 |
Climate, Archaeology and History
An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.
Full details for CLASS 2729 - Climate, Archaeology and History |
Spring. |
| CLASS2743 |
Archaeology of Roman Private Life
What was it like to live in the Roman world? What did that world look, taste and smell like? How did Romans raise their families, entertain themselves, understand death, and interact with their government? What were Roman values and how did they differ from our own? This course takes as its subject the everyday lives of individuals and explores those lives using the combined tools of archaeology, architecture and art, as well as some primary source readings. In doing so, it seeks to integrate those monuments into a world of real people, and to use archaeology to narrate a story about ancient lives and life habits. Some of the topics explored will include the Roman house; the Roman family, children and slaves; bathing and hygiene; food; gardens, agriculture and animals.
Full details for CLASS 2743 - Archaeology of Roman Private Life |
Spring. |
| CLASS2806 |
Roman Law
This course presents a cultural and historical perspective on ideas of agency, responsibility, and punishment through foundational texts of western law. We will primarily focus on three main areas of law: (1) slavery and (2) family (both governed by the Roman law of persons), and (3) civil wrongs (the law of delict or culpable harm). Through an examination of the legal sources (in translation) and the study of the reasoning of the Roman jurists, this course will examine the evolution of jurisprudence: the development of the laws concerning power over slaves and women, and changes in the laws concerning penalties for crimes. No specific prior knowledge needed.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS2812 |
Hieroglyphs to HTML: History of Writing
An introduction to the history and theory of writing systems from cuneiform to the alphabet, historical and new writing media, and the complex relationship of writing technologies to human language and culture. Through hands-on activities and collaborative work, students will explore the shifting definitions of "writing" and the diverse ways in which cultures through time have developed and used writing systems. We will also investigate the traditional divisions of "oral" vs. "written" and consider how digital technologies have affected how we use and think about writing in encoding systems from Morse code to emoji.
Full details for CLASS 2812 - Hieroglyphs to HTML: History of Writing |
Spring. |
| CLASS3391 |
Independent Study in Sanskrit, Undergraduate Level
To be taken only in exceptional circumstances. Must be arranged by the student with his or her advisor and the faculty member who has agreed to direct the study. To be approved by the DUS.
Full details for CLASS 3391 - Independent Study in Sanskrit, Undergraduate Level |
Fall, Spring. |
| CLASS3396 |
Advanced Sanskrit II
Selected readings in Sanskrit literary and philosophical texts.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS3616 |
The Rise and Fall of Julius Caesar, and the Death of the Roman Republic
Julius Caesar is one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in world history. His ruinous overreach forever changed the course of Roman history, and his reform of the calendar is still with us. In this course, students will chart Caesar's rise, fall, and contemporary artistic and philosophical responses to it. Authors include Julius Caesar himself, Cicero, Plutarch, Sallust, Nepos, Lucan, and Shakespeare. All readings are in English.
|
Fall or Spring. |
| CLASS3642 |
Victorian Greeks and Romans
Greece and Rome, refracted in nineteenth-century writers, composers, and painters, including: Plautus, re-made by Oscar Wilde; Aristophanic Comedy, Bowdlerized by Bowdler, de-Bowdlerized by Gilbert, Irished by Sullivan, represented by D'Oyly Carte as a caricature of what it caricatured; scientific poetry, abandoned for prose: Lucretius to the Darwins; myth, gothicized by pre-Raphaelites, rivalled musically by Germans; Virgil's Aeneid, construed as justifying usurped monarchy that was masked as a restored republic, to parallel Britain's powerless monarchy masking imperial oligarchy; Byron's "real" Greece yielding to idealized Hellas as Greeks were taught that freedom required "Hellenic" not "Romaic" identity and a German king.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS3645 |
The Tragic Theatre
Tragedy and its audiences from ancient Greece to modern theater and film. Topics: origins of theatrical conventions; Shakespeare and Seneca; tragedy in modern theater and film. Works studied will include: Aeschylus' Agamemnon; Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes; Euripides' Alcestis, Helen, Iphigeneia in Aulis, Orestes; Seneca's Thyestes, Trojan Women; Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Othello; Strindberg's The Father; Durrenmatt's The Visit; Bergman's Seventh Seal; Cacoyannis' Iphigeneia.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS3669 |
Plato
We will study several of Plato's major dialogues, including the Apology, the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic. Topics include knowledge and reality, morality and happiness, and the nature of the soul.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS3686 |
Independent Study in Classical Civilization, Undergraduate Level
May be taken upon completion of one semester of work at the 3000-level. To be taken only in exceptional circumstances. Must be arranged by the student with his or her advisor and the faculty member who has agreed to direct the study. To be approved by the DUS.
Full details for CLASS 3686 - Independent Study in Classical Civilization, Undergraduate Level |
Fall, Spring. |
| CLASS4662 |
Topics in Ancient Philosophy
Advanced discussion of topics in ancient philosophy.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS4665 |
Augustine
Topics for this course vary.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS4677 |
Desert Monasticism
How and why do landscapes come to inspire the religious imagination? And why do religious practices, rituals, traditions, and beliefs take place in particular landscapes? This seminar treats these questions by focusing on the desert, both imagined and real, as it has shaped religious ascetic practice, especially the development of Christian monasticism in the Middle East. We will read widely from monastic literatures, mostly from late ancient Egypt, to explore both the historical development of monasticism in Christianity and examine why the monastic impulse seems so closely tied to the "desert." In addition to reading saints lives and the stories of hermits, we will read early monastic rules, the desert fathers, and we will draw from archaeological sources to examine the varieties of ascetic practices in the deserts of late ancient Egypt, Gaza, Sinai, Palestine, and Syria. Throughout the course we will explore ancient and modern ideas about "wilderness" and we will explore parallels between ancient Near Eastern literatures and their nineteenth- and twentieth-century parallels in the American frontier and environmental literatures.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS4702 |
Art, Nature, and Ecology in Classical Antiquity
This course is designed to accompany the Johnson Museum's exhibition, "Wonder and Wakefulness: the Nature of Pliny the Elder", which will take place in Spring 2023 in honor of Pliny's 2000th birthday. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between "ars" and "natura" in antiquity, focusing primarily on Roman visual and literary culture of the first centuries BCE/CE, whilst drawing upon recent work in the environmental humanities. Topics explored will include cultural constructions of the "natural"; empire and consumption; Roman villa culture and the environment; literary pastoral and the bucolic; sacro-idyllic and garden paintings; and theories of matter and materialism. The group will also take a trip to San Antonio, TX, to visit the exhibition "Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii."
Full details for CLASS 4702 - Art, Nature, and Ecology in Classical Antiquity |
Spring. |
| CLASS4721 |
Honors: Senior Essay I
See "Honors" under Classics front matter.
|
Multi-semester course: (Fall, Spring). |
| CLASS4722 |
Honors: Senior Essay II
See "Honors" under Classics front matter.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| CLASS4746 |
Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology
Topics Rotate. Spring 23 topic: Humans and Animals. As Greek and Roman societies relied fundamentally on hunting and agriculture, animals constituted a crucial point of reference in their conception of the world. Animals occupied different functions and roles for humans, such as foe or protector and companion, food and resource, sacrificial victim, subject and object of prodigies, but also status symbol, pet, object of entertainment, object of scientific study etc. We will look at how the different forms of interaction between humans and animals resulted from man's views of other species, but also how such interactions themselves helped shape these views. How did they eventually intersect with discourses on gender, age, class, and race? We will investigate written sources covering the whole range of literary genres; images; and archaeological material. Readings will also refer to the modern debate on the relationship between humans and animals.
Full details for CLASS 4746 - Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology |
Spring. |
| CLASS4752 |
Problems in Byzantine Art
Topic Spring 23: Portraiture.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS4803 |
What Is Classics? Towards a Critical Disciplinary History
Within the long roiling and much heralded 'crises of the humanities', Classics is experiencing a contemporary crisis of its own. These queries are not least shaped around the disciplines continuing cultural relevance and uneven enrollments, but also in its relationships with white supremacy—relationships of complicity as much as co-option. That Classics is in crisis, however, is not a new phenomenon. In this course, we trace queries and fractures of disciplinary method, scope, objects and epistemologies through the history of this thing we have come to know as "Classics".
Full details for CLASS 4803 - What Is Classics? Towards a Critical Disciplinary History |
Spring. |
| CLASS7173 |
Topics in Ancient Philosophy
Advanced discussion of topics in ancient philosophy.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS7345 |
Graduate TA Training
Pedagogical instruction and course coordination. Requirement for all graduate student teachers of LATIN 1201-LATIN 1202 and first-year writing seminars.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| CLASS7702 |
Art, Nature, and Ecology in Classical Antiquity
This course is designed to accompany the Johnson Museum's exhibition, "Wonder and Wakefulness: the Nature of Pliny the Elder", which will take place in Spring 2023 in honor of Pliny's 2000th birthday. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between "ars" and "natura" in antiquity, focusing primarily on Roman visual and literary culture of the first centuries BCE/CE, whilst drawing upon recent work in the environmental humanities. Topics explored will include cultural constructions of the "natural"; empire and consumption; Roman villa culture and the environment; literary pastoral and the bucolic; sacro-idyllic and garden paintings; and theories of matter and materialism. The group will also take a trip to San Antonio, TX, to visit the exhibition "Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii."
Full details for CLASS 7702 - Art, Nature, and Ecology in Classical Antiquity |
Spring. |
| CLASS7727 |
Climate, Archaeology and History
An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.
Full details for CLASS 7727 - Climate, Archaeology and History |
Spring. |
| CLASS7746 |
Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology
Topics Rotate. Spring 23 topic: Humans and Animals. As Greek and Roman societies relied fundamentally on hunting and agriculture, animals constituted a crucial point of reference in their conception of the world. Animals occupied different functions and roles for humans, such as foe or protector and companion, food and resource, sacrificial victim, subject and object of prodigies, but also status symbol, pet, object of entertainment, object of scientific study etc. We will look at how the different forms of interaction between humans and animals resulted from man's views of other species, but also how such interactions themselves helped shape these views. How did they eventually intersect with discourses on gender, age, class, and race? We will investigate written sources covering the whole range of literary genres; images; and archaeological material. Readings will also refer to the modern debate on the relationship between humans and animals.
Full details for CLASS 7746 - Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology |
Spring. |
| CLASS7752 |
Problems in Byzantine Art
Seminar topics rotate each semester. Topic for Spring 2023: Portraiture.
|
Spring. |
| CLASS7803 |
What Is Classics? Towards a Critical Disciplinary History
Within the long roiling and much heralded 'crises of the humanities', Classics is experiencing a contemporary crisis of its own. These queries are not least shaped around the disciplines continuing cultural relevance and uneven enrollments, but also in its relationships with white supremacy—relationships of complicity as much as co-option. That Classics is in crisis, however, is not a new phenomenon. In this course, we trace queries and fractures of disciplinary method, scope, objects and epistemologies through the history of this thing we have come to know as "Classics".
Full details for CLASS 7803 - What Is Classics? Towards a Critical Disciplinary History |
Spring. |
| GREEK1102 |
Elementary Ancient Greek II
Continuation of GREEK 1101, prepares students for GREEK 2101.
|
Spring. |
| GREEK1104 |
Beginning Homeric Greek
This course offers a ground up introduction to the vocabulary and grammar of Homeric Greek with the goal of reading Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as soon as possible. Once students learn the language of the Iliad and Odyssey, they can move on to other works written in roughly the same formulaic diction, ranging from Hesiod's Theogony to the early philosophical verses of Empedocles and Parmenides. Teaching Beginning Homeric Greek at Cornell, affectionately known as 'baby' Greek, harkens back almost 100 years to the influential and popular courses of Professor Harry Caplan. In fact, this course uses an updated version of the same textbook used in Caplan's beginning Greek courses.
|
Spring. |
| GREEK2103 |
Homer
The study of selections from the Iliad and/or Odyssey in Greek, with a focus on Homeric grammar, dialect, meter, poetics and composition.
|
Spring. |
| GREEK3120 |
Seminar in Greek
Undergraduate seminar in Greek. Topics: Fall 2022 - Antiphon, Euripides, and Plato's Protagoras; Spring 2023 - Longus, Daphnis and Chloe.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| GREEK3185 |
Independent Study in Greek, Undergraduate Level
May be taken upon completion of one semester of work at the 3000-level. To be taken only in exceptional circumstances. Must be arranged by the student with his or her advisor and the faculty member who has agreed to direct the study. To be approved by the DUS.
Full details for GREEK 3185 - Independent Study in Greek, Undergraduate Level |
Fall, Spring. |
| GREEK5112 |
Elementary Ancient Greek II
Continuation of GREEK 5111, prepares students for GREEK 5121.
|
Spring. |
| GREEK5114 |
Beginning Homeric Greek
This course offers a ground up introduction to the vocabulary and grammar of Homeric Greek with the goal of reading Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as soon as possible. Once students learn the language of the Iliad and Odyssey, they can move on to other works written in roughly the same formulaic diction, ranging from Hesiod's Theogony to the early philosophical verses of Empedocles and Parmenides. Teaching Beginning Homeric Greek at Cornell, affectionately known as 'baby' Greek, harkens back almost 100 years to the influential and popular courses of Professor Harry Caplan. In fact, this course uses an updated version of the same textbook used in Caplan's beginning Greek courses.
|
Spring. |
| GREEK5123 |
Homer
The study of selections from the Iliad and/or Odyssey in Greek, with a focus on Homeric grammar, dialect, meter, poetics and composition.
|
Spring. |
| GREEK5130 |
Seminar in Greek
Topic: Fall 2022 - Antiphon, Euripides, and Plato's Protagoras (dialectic contests from Euripides to Plato); Spring 2023 - Longus, Daphnis and Chloe.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| GREEK6112 |
Advanced Readings in Latin and Greek
The course will prepare students to read the texts that are on the Classics Reading List (https://classics.cornell.edu/phd#reading-lists).
Full details for GREEK 6112 - Advanced Readings in Latin and Greek |
Spring. |
| GREEK7161 |
Greek Philosophical Texts
Reading and translation of Greek Philosophical texts.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| GREEK7172 |
Graduate Seminar in Greek
Spring 2023 topic: Paideia, Power, and the Body. This seminar traces a central theme in postclassical Greek literature across a range of authors and genres, including Plutarch, Lucian, the ancient novel, and physiognomist writings. Often translated as "education" or "culture," paideia describes a kind of embodied performance, typically registered through display of masculine ideals and knowledge of classical Greek language and literature, that generated cultural currency and social cohesion for a privileged group (pepaideumenoi). Students will examine how postclassical Greek literature negotiates and plays with the tensions and paradoxes of paideia; engage theoretical approaches to analyze the relationship between paideia and constructions of gender, race, and the body; and trace how certain threads within this ancient discourse (e.g., reading like the pepaideumenos) might relate to modern scholarly practices.
|
Spring. |
| GREEK7910 | Independent Study in Greek | |
| LATIN1202 |
Elementary Latin II
This course is a continuation of LATIN 1201, using readings from various authors and prepares students for LATIN 1205.
|
Spring. |
| LATIN2201 |
Latin Prose
Fall 2022: Pliny's Letters.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| LATIN2203 |
Catullus
The hundred or so carmina we have of Catullus (c. 87 – c. 57 BC) continue to influence poets and critics today. Their timelessness makes us forget that they were composed in time, a greater understanding of which helps us to understand what makes them timeless. By engaging Catullus' poems actively in the original Latin, we will appreciate their historical, cultural, and poetical context and the impact it has had on their enduring appeal.
|
Spring. |
| LATIN3220 |
Rapid Reading in Latin
Topic: Augustine, Confessions.
|
Spring. |
| LATIN3286 |
Independent Study in Latin, Undergraduate Level
May be taken upon completion of one semester of work at the 3000-level. To be taken only in exceptional circumstances. Must be arranged by the student with his or her advisor and the faculty member who has agreed to direct the study. To be approved by the DUS.
Full details for LATIN 3286 - Independent Study in Latin, Undergraduate Level |
Fall, Spring. |
| LATIN4213 |
Survey of Medieval Latin Literature
The Survey is designed to introduce participants to characteristic genres and discourses of Medieval Latin. The traditional focus is prose style and its implications for audience and genre from classical rhetoric to the humanist revival of a 'classical' style. A basic foundation in Latin morphology, syntax, and vocabulary is assumed. Intermediate and advanced topics in post-Classical idioms and syntax will be treated as they arise, with the goal of improving the facility with which students approach, read, and, especially, understand Latin writings from the Middle Ages. In addition to studying the practice(s) of style and Latin prose composition, modern approaches to stylistic analysis, and the intersections of style and identity, participants will gain a working knowledge of medieval theories of prose style as articulated in treatises on the genera dicendi, ars dictaminis, and ars praedicandi, as well as medieval (and modern) discussions of cursus and clausulae.
Full details for LATIN 4213 - Survey of Medieval Latin Literature |
Spring. |
| LATIN5212 |
Elementary Latin II
Continuation of LATIN 5211, using readings from various authors; prepares students for LATIN 5215.
|
Spring. |
| LATIN5221 |
Latin Prose
Fall 2022: Pliny's Letters.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| LATIN5223 |
Catullus
The hundred or so carmina we have of Catullus (c. 87 – c. 57 BC) continue to influence poets and critics today. Their timelessness makes us forget that they were composed in time, a greater understanding of which helps us to understand what makes them timeless. By engaging Catullus' poems actively in the original Latin, we will appreciate their historical, cultural, and poetical context and the impact it has had on their enduring appeal.
|
Spring. |
| LATIN5230 |
Rapid Reading in Latin
Topic: Augustine, Confessions.
|
Spring. |
| LATIN6212 |
Advanced Readings in Latin and Greek
The course will prepare students to read the texts that are on the Classics Reading List (https://classics.cornell.edu/phd#reading-lists).
Full details for LATIN 6212 - Advanced Readings in Latin and Greek |
Spring. |
| LATIN7213 |
Survey of Medieval Latin Literature
The Survey is designed to introduce participants to characteristic genres and discourses of Medieval Latin. The traditional focus is prose style and its implications for audience and genre from classical rhetoric to the humanist revival of a 'classical' style. A basic foundation in Latin morphology, syntax, and vocabulary is assumed. Intermediate and advanced topics in post-Classical idioms and syntax will be treated as they arise, with the goal of improving the facility with which students approach, read, and, especially, understand Latin writings from the Middle Ages. In addition to studying the practice(s) of style and Latin prose composition, modern approaches to stylistic analysis, and the intersections of style and identity, participants will gain a working knowledge of medieval theories of prose style as articulated in treatises on the genera dicendi, ars dictaminis, and ars praedicandi, as well as medieval (and modern) discussions of cursus and clausulae.
Full details for LATIN 7213 - Survey of Medieval Latin Literature |
Spring. |
| LATIN7262 |
Latin Philosophical Texts
Reading and translation of Latin philosophical texts.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| LATIN7920 | Independent Study in Latin |