Classics (CLAS)

In this course, we will critically examine various fields of study of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East and engage in collaborative research projects that open up new questions and ideas about future work in these fields. As we explore using different methods of investigating the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, we will consider the history of the fields that focus on a geographical area that extends from Iran to Spain and from Egypt to Britain. Through thinking more about the current and future states of fields such as Classics and Near Eastern Studies, we will analyze what areas of study these fields have included and what they have not, what work the names of these fields are doing in making claims about the ancient world, and how these different fields have been shaped and used in particular times and places. After learning about how we know what we think we know about the ancient Mediterranean and Near East and how we learn more about these areas, students will have the means and opportunity to formulate and pursue research topics of their own.

Prerequisite: Enrollment is limited to Classics majors and 1st and 2nd year students only.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

A selection of ancient Greek literature read in translation, from Homeric epic to classical history and drama, with a focus on the relation between literature and social conditions.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

A selection of ancient Roman literature read in translation, including authors such as Vergil, Tacitus, Cicero, and Plautus, with a focus on the relationship between literature and social conditions.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

A study of classical epic, with special emphasis on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil's Aeneid, but including also other examples of the genre, such as Lucan or Statius. Topics to be considered include oral and literary epic, their social and political contexts, and the influence of classical epic on later literature.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

Study in depth of a selection of ancient Greek and/or Roman tragedies and comedies, with an emphasis on performance practices and contexts.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Every Third Year

An exploration of the significance of myths, their meanings and functions in the cultures of Greece and Rome. Special attention is given to more recent developments in the study of myths and their relation to rituals and folk tales. Babylonian, Egyptian, Hindu and American Indian mythology may be used for comparative purposes.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

This course will focus on a variety of ancient Greek heroes: Herakles, Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, MeleagerJason, Aeneas, Thesus, Perseus and more. We will read great epics such as Homer's Iliad & Odyssey, the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, Virgil's Aeneid; we will also read about these heroes in Greek tragedies, lyric poetry of Pindar and Bacchyides and the Metamorphoses of Ovid. In addition to literary sources, we will be looking at artistic representations of these heroes on Greek vases and sarcophagi, and in later art up to and including modern art.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

This course explores the civilization, art, archaeology, history and literature of ancient Egypt  from the formation of the first Egyptian state in the 4th millennium BCE to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. Throughout this course, we will examine archaeological and textual sources in combination in order to study the way in which the pharaonic state emerged and developed over time. Our focus is not only on reconstructing historical events (narrative history), but also on understanding how complex societies come about and how they function. In addition to the basic historical outline, we will discuss the development of agriculture, the emergence of writing, formation of the Egyptian state and identity, Egyptian kingship, construction and development of the pyramids, ancient bureaucracy and social structure, Egyptian funerary practices, and the effects of climate on societies. Ancient Egypt was one of the first complex civilizations to arise, and its study can help us to understand why humans form complex societies, how they sustain one through both tradition and ingenuity, and how they react when the system collapses.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

A study of Greek history from its beginnings to the death of Socrates. Emphasis is placed on a close analysis of the primary sources.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Fall

An analysis of the institutions, literature, and political thought inspired by the democracy of fifth- and fourth-century Athens.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature, Social Science

Typically Offered: Every Third Year

This course will look at uses of ancient Greece and Rome in American civic life and culture, with a focus on the reception of Classical ideas and models during periods of conflict in the US. This will include American engagement with the Classics in the revolutionary and constitutional periods, in the abolitionist movements of the nineteenth century and the civil rights era of the twentieth century, and in discussions about race, gender, and class identity in the twenty-first century.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies, Literature

A survey of Roman civilization from the Regal period to the late Republic, with a special focus on the political and social forces that led to the establishment of the Principate. Concentrates on the primary sources for this period, including the historians, inscriptions, and monuments.

Students who have taken HIST 110 - Rome: Republic Empire may not enroll in this course.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Spring

A survey of Roman imperial civilization from the first to the sixth century. Concentrates on the primary sources for this period, including the historians, inscriptions, monuments, and coins.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Fall

An introduction to the methodologies employed by archaeologists. Most examples will be drawn from the artifacts, sites and monuments of the ancient Mediterranean world.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

An exploration of myths about migration and refugees in ancient drama and epic, considered alongside contemporary narratives of global migration. Special attention will be given to the 2015 migration crisis in Greece. This class will include a community-based learning component.

Prerequisite: Students who have taken MONT 199G-F02 and MONT 199G-S02 may not enroll in this course.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Annually

GPA units: 0

Introduces students to the art of mural (wall) painting in the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age through Late Antiquity, and to the art of mosaic from its origins in Classical Greece through Late Antiquity. Topics addressed are the techniques of fresco and mosaic; the relationship of mural painting to lost panel paintings by famous artists; the social meaning of wall and floor decoration in the ancient world; the roles of artist and patron; the Roman response to Greek painting and mosaic; and the Christian response to pagan painting and mosaic.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts

Typically Offered: Every Third Year

This course provides an introduction to the practices of cultural heritage photography and interrogates the ways in which photography renders small-scale antiquities in particular. How have the fields of archaeology, art history, and philology sought to document ancient objects from the Middle East? What do these practices of photography tell us about our own values and interests? Through a combination of critical analysis and creative practice we will explore the extent to which seemingly neutral photography is, in fact, a form of interpretation. Students will learn how to read photographs as expressions of meaning and explore the relationship between form and content. While we will analyze a range of photographs, our practice will focus in particular on the documentation of small finds. Students will learn the basics of macro photography, from initial capture through final editing using software such as Adobe Photoshop. Materials documented in the course could include: replicas of ancient Middle Eastern antiquities; objects in the collection of the College of the Holy Cross or other nearby museums/institutions; and even small personal items. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to photograph the world around them, thinking about the choices that lay behind the production of an image. A project at the end of the semester will allow students to create their own curated display of object photographs.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts, Cross-Cultural Studies

The city of Jerusalem has been a focal point within religious and secular imaginations for millennia. Beginning with the biblical Israelite kingdoms and continuing up to the present day, we will explore the tangible and intangible ways in which people across cultures have configured (and reconfigured) Jerusalem as a sacred space. We will draw on archaeology, art, literature, music, architecture, and historically situated personal accounts to understand the deep emotional attachments that have been layered into the very foundations of the city.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Studies in Religion

Typically Offered: Annually

Considers the political, religious, and cultural encounters between the ancient Greek world and Asia generated by the expedition of Alexander the Great and the interpretations of the story of Alexander found in different cultural traditions from antiquity to the present day, from religious texts to heavy metal music.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies, Literature

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

From the 18th through the 20th centuries, ancient Greek and Roman art were widely celebrated for the supposed minimalist aesthetics of white marble and black-figure pottery. But the arts of these cultures were actually quite colorful. In this course, we will examine diverse mediaincluding wall paintings, sculpture, gemstones and textilesto understand how color was deployed to communicate status, identity, and emotion. Topics we will investigate include the the cultural associations of specific colors, the reconstruction of lost colors on Greek and Roman statuary, and the ways in which ancient texts can (and cannot) help us to make sense of the ancient experience of color.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts

Ancient Italy was populated by many groups, the most well-known among them the Romans. But concurrent with the early 1st millennium BCE development of Roman culture in ancient Latium (modern Lazio), a people known to us today as the Etruscans was emerging in ancient Etruria (modern Tuscany). Many technologies and cultural traits of the Etruscans would later be appropriated by the Romans, somewhat obscuring them to a casual observer. The Etruscans, reaching beyond their homeland of Etruria, fostered connections not just with the Romans to their immediate south, but also with the wider Mediterranean world. Moreover, largely on the basis of their pre-Indo-European language, in the popular imagination the Etruscans are often characterized as mysterious. To that end, this course seeks: to explore the Etruscan culture based on its own archaeological remains, to understand Etruscan agency in interactions with other contemporary peoples, to analyze ancient external perspectives on the Etruscans, and to investigate how modern viewers have treated the enigmatic Etruscans alongside what is in fact concretely known about them.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Violence dominates the mythological landscape of Greek culture. The family provides intricate contexts for these intense examples of violence. These acts of destruction range from castration in the creation of the gods, to the rage of Achilles, which leads to the death of Patrokos. his closest friend, to the dysfunctional families of Greek tragedy. You will find no nexus of romantic love, but you will read about complex tales and together we will talk about the roles of men and women in the household.We will begin with Hesiod's Theogony, and move on to the Iliad and Odyssey. Some examples of lyric poetry (short musical poems in which myth plays a central role) may be part of our repertoire. Reading and perhaps performing selections from well-known tragedies about the families of Oedipus, Agamemnon, Dionysus, Meleager, and Jason and Medea, to name a few. We will also look at some artistic representations of these myths and think about the subject of violence from a visual perspective.Student feedback in the form of short essays, group presentations, directed discussions in class, and possibly some quizzes will be the foundation of your evaluation in this course. You will learn to speak and write more eloquently, which will contribute to your future success and intellectual development.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

This course is centered around a community-based learning (CBL) collaboration with local English learners in Worcester. Holy Cross students will collaborate with community English learners at the Worcester Public Library to build an acting company and perform an abridged version of a well-known drama. As English learners develop their confidence and fluency in English expression, Holy Cross students will develop skills in close reading, public speaking, analytical writing, communication, and reflection. HC students will also study the plays literary features and later adaptations. To enroll in this course, students must commit to a weekly required CBL component at the Worcester Public Library on Wednesday evenings.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

From the built landscape of the Acropolis to the imagined sacred landscape of Abydos, ancient populations lived, died, and operated within a myriad of significant and insignificant landscapes, all of which played their own roles as agents in society and culture. This course aims to examine these landscapes through an interdisciplinary lens, considering the ways in which these spaces affected, and were affected by, the associated human communities and their material and immaterial networks. This course will begin with a historiographic overview of key aspects of Landscape Theory and the Archaeology of Landscape, during which time we will discuss the foundations of the theoretical field and its applications. We will then apply these ideas and methodologies to case studies pulled from the landscapes of ancient Egypt and Nubia, the ancient Mediterranean, and the Levant, considering the role of the natural, built, and imagined spaces throughout the country. In addition to the archaeology and anthropology of landscape, we will also consider questions of space, memory, and the ways in which landscapes can be understood as tools of political, religious, or social power.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

The relationship between archaeology and the biblical text is complex. Beginning with the traditional field of Biblical Archaeology, where excavation was done with a Bible in one hand and a spade in the other, to the more nuanced modern state of the field, this class will explore how archaeology has shed light on the biblical world. While the primary focus will be on what archaeology doesor often does nottell us about the biblical text, we will also explore this theme through the complex geopolitical history of the Holy Land. As we will see, it is impossible to fully disentangle histories of the region, religious thought, and archaeological practice from the ways in which archaeology has been used to understand the biblical world.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

In this course, students explore an expansive theme related to the ancient Mediterranean and Near East and, in a lab associated with the course, analyze that theme through engagement with primary material, interdisciplinary frameworks, or another instructor-created framework. Students who enroll in CLAS 201 are required to sign up for one of the course's four lab sections.

GPA units: 1.5

Examines the representations of mortal and immortal women in a variety of mythological narratives and in art. Consideration is given to the relationships between these representations and contemporary ideas about and images of women. Students should read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in translation before enrolling in this class.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

Examines the ancient city of Pompeii, with particular emphasis on the houses in which families lived. Domestic spaces both reflected and reinforced certain family structures, and so the houses of Pompeii provide us with information about subjects as varied as the power of the father, ancient slavery, the experience of childhood, the role of women, and ancient notions of public and private space, all of which topics will be addressed in this course through an examination of material culture. For purposes of comparison, the course will also briefly investigate the domestic spaces of the nearby site of Herculaneum, as well as other Italian sites like Cosa and Ostia.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Every Third Year

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts

Typically Offered: Every Third Year

Study of the power of words to create and to resolve conflict in Ancient Greek and Roman democracy. Close examination of ancient literary and historical sources in translation with comparison to modern parallels. Public speaking exercise on the model of the rhetoric of Georgias.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

In this course, we will explore how the ancient Greeks and Romans engaged with the natural world surrounding them. Our course will consider several themes, including the relationship between city and country; philosophical treatments of the natural world; the role of the environment in literature; and the conceptualization of the universe and its origins. We will base our discussion of these themes on our analysis of evidence from antiquity, which will span both material remains like Greek temples and Roman villas as well as literary and philosophical works central to western civilization. Looking back at ancient philosophy, pastoral poems, and early epics, we will read selections from authors such as the pre-Socratic philosophers, Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, and Seneca. Alongside our study of the ancient world, we will glance ahead to consider the reception of the Greeks and Romans' treatment of nature, with our contemporary readings including selections from Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si'.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature, Philosophical Studies

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

This course introduces in depth the Homeric ILIAD and ideas and methods connected with reception studies. We read the ILIAD in its entirety and consider both its ancient context and 20th and 21st century reception in poetry, novels, essays, and film.

Prerequisite: Enrollment is limited to 2nd,3rd,4th Year Students.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Typically Offered: Every Third Year

This course will consider how the relationship between race and antiquity. We will begin this course by thinking critically about what we mean when we talk about race, exploring a number of ways in which the concept has theorized and understood. We will then move on to consider the role played by antiquity (broadly Greco-Roman, but also Carthaginian, Egyptian, and West Asian) in the development of various forms of racial thinking from 16th to 20th centuries as well as how different racialized groups used antiquity to respond to this process. We will end the course by considering the ways in which race and racialized ways of thinking has shaped and continues to shape the way that antiquity has been studied in the field of classics.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

Typically Offered: Alternate Years, Fall

A detailed study of the archaeological remains from ancient sanctuaries. The buildings and monuments are studied in connection with other evidence for religious behavior in the different ancient cultures. Emphasis is on the cults and shrines of Ancient Greece and Rome but in different years, the ancient Near East and Egypt also are considered. Counts toward fulfillment of the Visual Arts major.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts

Typically Offered: Fall

This course examines gender ideologies, systems of social power, and the ways in which women were either systematically excluded from or worked their way into positions of power in the ancient Mediterranean. Discussions of gender theory and the origins of the gender binary within early states will foreground regional case studies focusing on gender roles and womens rights in Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, the Levant and Mesopotamia. The course then explores themes such as the interplay between Orientalism and the ancient and modern receptions of specific women of power, like Cleopatra and Semiramus, how the introduction of monotheistic religions altered these gendered systems, and how women resisted or assisted in the construction of empires. We will analyze primary source texts written both by and about women, as well as artifacts and art historical sources to compare how certain power systems, institutions, and historical circumstances facilitated womens rise to power over others, and what effects these systems are still having today.

Prerequisite: Enrollment is limited to 2nd,3rd,4th Year Students.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

In todays world, ritualssuch as a wedding or a funeral, an annual religious holiday, or weekly worship servicesgive rhythm and meaning to the passing of time. The same was true in the ancient world, and though the direct experience of ancient rituals is lost to us, we know about ritual activities through surviving pieces of evidence and textual records in particular. In ancient Mesopotamia, rituals were often written down on clay tablets in cuneiform writing. Translations of these ritual texts provide us glimpses of cultures that are two, three, or even four thousand years old. This class explores select ritual texts from ancient Mesopotamia, using multiple methodological lenses (e.g., ritual studies, performance studies, and textual studies). Our study will provide an introduction to the concept of ritual, Mesopotamian history, and cuneiform writing. Students in the class will become familiar with select cultures of ancient Mesopotamia. We will learn about temples, shrines, and cities; gods, goddesses, and divine things; and people, rulers, and religious specialists. We will focus on a selection of ritual texts (often a single text), thinking about how the act of writing is related to the performance of ritual and how ritual performance and ritual writing can be linked to specific historical contexts. We might explore, for example, the creation of a musical instrument for temple worship across different periods of history, the seasonal celebration of the New Years Ritual at the end of cuneiform culture, or so-called substitution rituals that were used to ensure an individuals well-being. Following an introduction to the texts being studied, students will: (1) explore the goals of ritual studies and how such perspectives can help us understand the ancient texts, (2) engage with modern ritual celebrations in order to think more critically about ritual as performance, and (3) undertake close analysis of the primary historical evidence through the lens of textual studies. These three modes of analysis will be used to help students think about the historical function of the texts and their rituals. A semester-long newsletter project invites students to read, summarize, and analyze secondary scholarship for nonspecialist audiences.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies, Studies in Religion

Typically Offered: Annually

Nothing unites archaeology in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa like the sheer volume of pottery recovered by archaeologists. When we think of ancient ceramics, we tend to think in terms of beautiful vessels on display in museums around the world. Behind this lies the true reality, which are the veritable tons of pottery fragments excavated by archaeologists around the region. In fact, these fragments are among the most indestructibleand therefore most commonfinds of any archaeological site in the region. So, what do archaeologists do with all this material, and how do they use it to derive meaningful interpretations about past societies? This class will focus on exactly that question, teaching students the techniques that archaeologists use to document and analyze ancient pottery, including field techniques like technical drawing and microscopic photography, among others. Importantly, this course will be hands-on, with students working with genuine ancient ceramics as part of a research project that is aimed at documenting the ancient pottery held in the collections of a local Massachusetts school. Students will learn the requisite skills in a seminar setting, after which the semester will culminate in a final project wherein students write an entry that will eventually be published in an online catalog.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts

GPA units: 0

Designed for selected students with approval of a professor and the Department Chair. This work may be done for one or two semesters.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Annually

Designed for selected students with approval of a professor and the Department Chair. This work may be done for one or two semesters.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring