History 21.4:

Ancient Greece

Fall 2007 -- TF 10:50 AM-12:05 PM

Professor M. L. King:  king@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Description and goals

Schedule * Requirements * Bibliography * Contact me * MLKHome

Description –

Our civilization is as firmly rooted in Greek as in Judeo-Christian civilization, yet we sometimes overlook the enormous contributions of the former to our ways of thinking, social organization, and feeling.  This course will highlight the achievements of Greek civilization from the Bronze to the Hellenistic age, and explore their meaning for our own. Topics include the heroic ideal; the emerging sense of self; the origins of the city-state; the development of tyranny and democracy; the Persian and Peloponnesian wars; epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry; the pre-Socratics and the Sophists; philosophers and orators; the rise of Alexander; the Alexandrian conquest and Hellenistic civilization.

Goals -- students will be able to

• identify and discuss major issues in the history of ancient Greek civilization
• evaluate their importance and relate them to present-day patterns and events
• read and discuss primary texts documenting Greek experience and memory
• present orally the understanding of a text or contextual material
• consider the evidence of the visual arts in understanding a society in the past
• present evidence of their attentive reading and listening during the semester and in a final essay exam

Readings --  Online readings (in Blackboard) include selections from Homer, the lyric poets, the Presocratics, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle, as well as inscriptions, laws, and other documents

Grades are based on –