Classics: Myths & Legends of Trojan War

Homeric epics, Virgil's Aeneid, selections from tragedy dealing with the Trojan War and Greco-Roman cultural identity. Examples from art and archaeology supplement the literary theme. Cross-listed with: WLIT 024.

Open to Degree and CDE students; Cross listed with WLIT 024; Total combined enrollment = 80

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, several Greek tragedies, and other works about the "Trojan War." Lively provocative reading, rife with history, art, literature, philosophy, anthropology, geography, etc. associated with it. Overall, a great introduction to Greece and Rome via "the Classics," works that are not only old and venerable, and so interesting and strange, but also surprisingly relevant and interesting to today. Students already familiar with Greece and Rome should find this a great opportunity to read these works anew all together: they reward repeated readings.

Read the readings, attend class, think hard about it all, create ways to present your thought, and participate.

Students write some traditional short assignments, do presentations on relevant readings of their choosing, create and present skits, create and present posters: each students must do roughly 4 out of 5 of these (i.e students need not do every assignment, but they must do a certain minimum). There is a mostly factual midterm and final and quizzes on the readings. Students with particular interests, from the visual arts to archaeology to history to language, are encouraged to propose their own assignments and present to the class.