CRGR - Courses

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CRGR - Courses

The Centre fosters contacts with students at all levels at Royal Holloway and at postgraduate level with the University of London by developing courses and postgraduate seminars which engage with the ways that ancient Greek and Roman society and thought has shaped subsequent culture.

Postgraduate Seminar 2009-10

Wednesdays 1-2pm, RHUL, ABG024

Richard Alston & Edith Hall

Term 1: Critical Traditions and Theories

Introductions:

7th October: Marxism (EH)
14th October: Structuralism (EH)
21st October: Post-Colonialism (RA)
28th October: Psychoanalysis (RA)

Reviews:

11th November: Ste Croix, Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World
18th November: Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus
25th November: Vasunia, Hellenizing Egypt
2nd December: Foucault, History of Sexuality III

Term 2: Problems and Readings (Student led)

BA Courses

Classics & Class (CL 2446)

Ran 2008-9; will probably run 2010-11

This course asks which historical, mythical, and literary figures were the important players in ancient Greek and Roman discourse centred on social class (Term 1), and how they have continued to exert an influence on images of class stratification and conflict since the European Renaissance (Term 2). The aim is to provide an advanced course in translation available to students in all degree programmes, single and joint, taught within the department of Classics, which uses a thematic and diachronic approach to clearly specified subject-matter on the cusp between literature and history in order to develop skills in interdisciplinary comparison of sources and in the reception of classical antiquity.

The course will be taught by a team led by Edith Hall, with the assistance of the centre's doctoral students.

Taught MA Courses

Ancient Greek Theatre and Its Reception

Ran 2007-8, 2008-9, 2009-10 and will run 2010-11

This course, which is also taken by students taking the Greek Drama pathway in the taught MA in the Drama Department, analyses major texts of the ancient Greek theatre from a diachronic perspective. Beginning from the assumption that the surviving dramas were playscripts designed for performance, it aims to ask how a selection of eight of the fifty or so surviving ancient Greek dramas - tragedies, satyr plays and Old and New Comedies - have exerted their profound transhistorical influence, and why. The selected texts will vary from year to year according to what plays are being performed in the vicinity of London, since one of the aims is to provide an experience of ancient Greek drama in live performance. The performance history of each of the selected texts will be outlined in one lecture, followed the next week by a seminar in which the text will be subjected to a performance analysis informed by the historically documented experience of performance: the aim is to build an understanding of the cultural significance of the performance history of the earliest theatrical scripts.

The core material taught on the course will be eight ancient Greek plays, including Aeschylus' trilogy the Oresteia (which will be taught in four not six lectures) and at least one play by both Sophocles and Euripides and one comedy by Aristophanes and Menander. The choice of plays will be made each summer in good time to inform all interested students, and will depend on the anticipated availability of significant live performances. After two introductory lectures outlining the content of the surviving repertoire and the history of performances, the course will proceed on the basis of two lectures devoted to each play - (1) its performance history, and (2) what this can tell us about the nature of the text and its performance adaptations. The students will be required to attend at least one live performance (at their own expense) and view at least one film of an ancient drama in performance. The course will conclude with two lectures on the history of and problems involved in translating ancient drama for performance.

This course is taught jointly with University College, London and has benefitted from guest lectures by Dr Fiona Macintosh (University of Oxford).