THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

Discussion Sections:

Sec 1, F 1-2:00,  206 Dwinelle
Sec 2, F 1-2:00 109 Wheeler
Sec 3, F 2-3:00 2221 Wheeler

Course is also listed as Classics 161. Comp Lit Students can take this course to satisfy either the Historical Period Requirement or the Classical Literature for the major (but not both).  If possible Comp Lit Students should  enroll in discussion section 1, F 1-2:00 in 206 Dwinelle, but if this is not possible enroll in any discussion section for the course.

This course will study sexuality and gender in two very different historical periods–ancient Greece and 19th-century Europe.  Sexuality will be defined as including sexual acts (e.g. sodomy, pederasty, masturbation); sexual identities (e.g. erastes and eromenos); and sexual systems (e.g. kinship structures, subcultures, political hierarchies).  Readings and lectures will focus on situating queer sexualities relative to dominant organizations of sex and gender.  Topics will include Greek democracy and male homosexuality; the biology of sexual difference; the politics of sodomy; “romantic” friendship between women and men; and the emergence of strictly defined homosexual and heterosexual identities.  We will read literary texts along with historical documents and secondary readings to constitute a comparative analysis of ancient Greece and 19th-century Europe.

Authors to be read include Hesiod, Sappho, Aeschylus, Plato, Wilde, Freud, and Foucault.

There will be two papers and a final exam.  There will also be required weekly reading questions that will count towards your final grade.