Department website: http://classics.jhu.edu
Classics has long been at the heart of humanistic studies at Johns Hopkins University: the very first person appointed to the faculty of the newly founded University in 1876 was Basil L. Gildersleeve, a professor of Greek. The university adopted the most effective model of scholarship at the time-the German seminar, which combined teaching with research as the basis for training students at Johns Hopkins. This revolutionary structure was central to the new model of the "research university" that Johns Hopkins University pioneered.
Today, the Department of Classics at Johns Hopkins University seeks to maintain and enhance this tradition of leadership and innovation. Members of the current faculty are highly interdisciplinary. We combine philological historical, iconographical, and comparative methods in our investigations of the cultures, broadly conceived, of ancient Greece and Rome, with additional expertise in Reception Studies (aka "The Classical Tradition") and in the post-classical use of Greek and Latin.
The undergraduate and graduate programs reflect these characteristics. They are founded upon intensive study of ancient Greek and Latin language and literature, but also require rigorous work in such fields as ancient history, art, archaeology, and philosophy, while allowing considerable flexibility to accommodate individual interests. These programs aim to produce broad, versatile scholars who have a holistic view of ancient cultures and of the evidence by which those cultures are comprehended.
The Classics department enjoys close ties with several local and regional institutions whose missions include the study of the ancient world, including the Walters Art Museum, with its world-class collection of antiquities and manuscripts; the Baltimore Museum of Art, with its Roman mosaics; and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. Internationally, it is a member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, the American Academy in Rome, and the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome.
The department's main scholarly resource is the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, which has broad and deep holdings in the various fields of classical antiquity. The department also has access to a significant collection of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities, housed in the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, located alongside its own quarters in Gilman Hall.
Undergraduate Programs
The department offers undergraduate courses in Greek and Latin languages and literature, ancient history, classical art and archaeology, Greek and Roman civilizations, history of sexuality and gender, ancient philosophy, mythology, and classical reception. These courses are open to all students in the university, regardless of their academic year or major field of interest.
For current course information and registration go to https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/
Courses
This introductory course examines the history, society, and culture of the Roman state in the Imperial age (ca. 31 BCE-ca. 500 CE), during which it underwent a traumatic transition from an oligarchic to a monarchic form of government, attained its greatest territorial expanse, produced its most famous art, architecture, and literature, experienced vast cultural and religious changes, and finally was transformed into an entirely different ("late antique") form of society. All readings in English.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
This introductory level course examines the history, society, and culture of the Roman state in the Republican period (509-31 BCE), during which it expanded from a small city-state to a Mediterranean empire. We also consider the Republic's importance for American revolutionaries in the 18th century. All readings in English.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
This course provides a comprehensive, intensive introduction to the study of ancient Greek. During the first semester, the focus will be on morphology and vocabulary. Cannot be taken Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Course provides comprehensive, intensive introduction to the study of ancient Greek. The first semester’s focus is morphology and vocabulary; the second semester’s emphasis is syntax and reading. Course may not be taken Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.105
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course provides a comprehensive, intensive introduction to the study of Latin for new students, as well as a systematic review for those students with a background in Latin. Emphasis during the first semester will be on morphology and vocabulary. Course may not be taken Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Course provides comprehensive, intensive introduction to the study of Latin for new students as well as systematic review for students with background in Latin. The first semester's emphasis is on morphology and vocabulary; the second semester's focus is on syntax and reading. Course may not be taken Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.107
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
The course will introduce students to major aspects of the ancient Greek civilization, with special emphasis placed upon culture, society, archaeology, literature, and philosophy.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
This course focuses on major and often intricate myths and mythical patterns of thought as they are reflected in compelling ancient visual and textual narratives. Being one of the greatest treasure troves of the ancient world, these myths will further be considered in light of their rich reception in the medieval and modern world (including their reception in the modern fields of anthropology and philosophy).
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Emphasis on ancient Greek ritual, music, religion, and society; and on cultural institutions such as symposia (drinking parties) and festivals.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course aims to provide an in-depth exploration of Homer’s Odyssey (in translation). We will study the poem’s roots in a tradition of ancient oral poetry, gain a fuller understanding of how it was interpreted within different historical contexts, and examine the poem’s fascination with topics such as gender, class, tales of exploration and colonization, truth and lies and identity.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
This seminar investigates the Eastern Mediterranean as a space of intense cultural interaction in the Late Bronze Age, exploring how people, ideas, and things not only came into contact but deeply influenced one another through maritime trade, art, politics, etc. In addition to class discussion, we will work hands-on with artifacts from the JHU Archaeological Museum, focusing on material from Cyprus.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course investigates the Greek and Latin roots of modern medical terminology, with additional focus on the history of ancient medicine and its role in the development of that terminology.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Reading ability in classical Greek is developed through a study of various authors.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.105 AND AS.040.106 or equivalent
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Reading ability in classical Greek is developed through a study of various authors.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.205
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Although emphasis is still placed on development of rapid comprehension, readings and discussions introduce student to study of Latin literature, principally through texts of various authors.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.107 AND AS.040.108 or equivalent
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Reading ability in Latin is developed through the study of various authors, primarily Cicero (fall) and Vergil (spring).
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.207
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course explores the creation and role of early Aegean wall painting. Found primarily in palaces, villas and ritual spaces, these paintings interacted with architecture to create micro-worlds for social activities taking place in their midst. Their subjects range—from mythological to documentary, from ornamental to instructive. They depict dance and battle, fantastical beasts and daily life. We examine their complex relationship to lived reality as well as the activities that surrounded them, from their crafting, to performance of rituals, to their role in “international” relations.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course takes us on an exploratory journey through the ancient astronomical imaginary. We will focus on ancient Greek and Roman ideas about the structure of the cosmos, the substance and nature of the stars, the Earth’s place and role in the universe, ancient attempts to map the stars, and ancient beliefs about the significance of cosmic phenomena for events in the human world. The course will culminate in the extraordinary ancient tradition of lunar fictions, which are our earliest imaginative accounts of life on other worlds. Come join us for a voyage to the stars!
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
This course explores the origins and lives of societies in the Aegean world from the Early Bronze Age to the Persian Wars (ca. 3100-480 B.C.), focusing on major archaeological sites, sanctuaries, material culture, and artistic production.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
The course focuses on the ways in which art, different forms of performance and soundscape, and politics (including gender politics) interacted in ancient Greek societies.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
Islands present highly distinctive contexts for social life. We examine three island worlds of the third and second millennia BCE through their archaeological remains, each with its particularities. These are places where water had a unique and powerful meaning, where boat travel was part of daily life, where palaces flourished and where contact with other societies implied voyages of great distance across the sea. Class combines close study of material culture and consideration of island-specific interpretive paradigms; students work with artifacts in the JHU Archaeological Museum.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course aims to increase proficiency and improve comprehension of the ancient Greek language. Intensive reading of ancient Greek texts, with attention to grammar, idiom, translation, etc. Reading of prose or verse authors, depending on the needs of students. Specific offerings vary. Co-listed with AS.040.705.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.205 AND AS.040.206 or equivalent
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course aims to increase proficiency and improve comprehension of the ancient Greek language. Intensive reading of ancient Greek texts, with attention to grammar, idiom, translation, etc. Reading of prose or verse authors, depending on the needs of students. Specific offerings vary. Co-listed with AS.040.702.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.205 AND AS.040.206 or equivalent
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course aims to increase proficiency and improve comprehension of the Latin language. Intensive reading of Latin texts, with attention to grammar, idiom, translation, etc. Specific offerings vary. Co-listed with AS.040.707.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.207 AND AS.040.208 or equivalent
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
The aim of this course is to increase proficiency and improve comprehension of the Latin language. Intensive reading of Latin texts, with close attention to matters of grammar, idiom, and translation. Co-listed with AS.040.710.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.207 AND AS.040.208 or equivalent
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
What does it mean to translate? Is a translation merely a transposition of a text or speech from one language to another, or does it entail more? Can the act of translating happen between different genres? What does critical reading entail? In this class we will use the well-known myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to answer these and other questions by analyzing different versions of the myth that span across time, space, language, genre, and media. We will not just learn about translation broadly defined, but also about the metaphor of translation as a transition or a crossing between (or a-cross) multiple entities. Much like Orpheus, we will embark upon a journey of discovery full of forks and twists in the road, only to discover that what Orpheus was searching for might not be as far removed from contemporary questions of identity, self, and our place in the world.
This course opens up the world of science in the ancient Greek and Roman world. Areas of focus include: cosmology and Earth science, technologies of time, ancient biology, medicine and genetics, and ancient medicine. Through study of visual and material artefacts as well as Greek and Latin texts in translation, we will come to a clearer understanding of how knowledge was shared in the ancient Mediterranean, the the Greeks and Romans' indebtedness to the cultures of the ancient Near East, as well as their importance in shaping cultures of knowledge and traditions of scientific thought.
Distribution Area: Humanities
Through texts, art, and archaeological remains, this course examines the various worlds of Homer--those recalled in the Iliad and Odyssey, those within which the epics were composed, and those born of the poet's unique creative work. Class will make museum visits. Ancient texts read in translation..
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Through detailed analysis of source materials, we will explore the ancient Greek and Romans’ answers to questions such as: how the cosmos and our home-world, Earth, were structured; how weather works; how climate affects human health; what causes awesome natural phenomena such as comets, earthquakes and volcanoes; what climate prevailed on the Moon; life in the ocean; ancient palaeontology; how the movements of the stars were thought to influence events here on Earth.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
This intensive Latin survey is designed for very advanced undergraduate students--normally those who have completed two semesters of Advanced Latin (AS.040.307/308)--and PhD students preparing for their Latin translation exam. In this course, the first half of a year-long sequence, we will read substantial texts of major Republican and some Augustan authors. The weekly pace is designed to inculcate greater speed and accuracy in Latin reading, and provide significant coverage of various kinds of texts.Recommended background: AS.040.307-308 or equivalent
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.307 AND AS.040.308 or permission of instructor.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This intensive Latin survey is designed for very advanced undergraduate students (normally those who have completed the regular undergraduate sequence through the advanced level) and PhD students preparing for their Latin translation exam. In this course, the second half of a year-long sequence, we will read substantial texts of major Imperial authors, as well as a selection of works from Late Antiquity and the Post-Classical period. The weekly pace is designed to inculcate greater speed and accuracy in Latin reading and to provide significant coverages of various kinds of texts. Prior completion of AS.040.407 preferred but not required.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.307 AND AS.040.308 or equivalent.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
In this seminar, students will sail through the world of science fiction, from the fantastic voyages recorded by ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, to classic nineteenth-century sci-fi novels by authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, and Jules Verne. As we will learn, sci-fi stories (both ancient and modern) have been pulled in two directions: forward, in the direction of innovative scientific exploration; and backward, toward a dim pre-history of monsters and magic. Along the way, sci-fi writers have wrestled with age-old social issues such as morality and mortality; gender and sexuality; and social constructions of the Other through categories like race. Ultimately, students in this seminar will learn how to peer back into the distant past and (re)examine how we approach the icy edges of our own world.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This intensive Ancient Greek survey is designed for very advanced undergraduate students--normally those who have completed two semesters of Advanced Greek (AS.040.305/306)--and PhD students preparing for their Ancient Greek translation exam. In this course, the first half of a year-long sequence, we will read substantial texts of major Archaic and Classical authors. The weekly pace is designed to inculcate greater speed and accuracy in Greek reading, and provide significant coverage of various kinds of texts. Recommended background: AS.040.305-306 or equivalentPrerequisite(s): AS.040.305 AND AS.040.306 or permission of instructor.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This intensive Ancient Greek survey is designed for very advanced undergraduate students (normally those who have completed the regular undergraduate sequence through the advanced level) and PhD students preparing for their Ancient Greek translation exam. In this course, the second half of a year-long sequence, we will read substantial texts of major Hellenistic and Imperial authors, as well as a selection of works from Late Antiquity. The weekly pace is designed to inculcate greater speed and accuracy in Greek reading and to provide significant coverages of various kinds of texts. Prior completion of AS.040.417 preferred but not required.Prerequisite(s): AS.040.305 AND AS.040.306 or equivalent.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.305 AND AS.040.306
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course enables students to join an ongoing project of real, collaborative research in humanities, under the auspices of the Classics Research Lab (CRL). Launched in January 2019, JASP investigates the life and work of the Victorian scholar and writer John Addington Symonds (1840–93). Symonds, trained at Oxford in Classics, was the author of one of the first major studies in English of Ancient Greek Sexuality, “A Problem in Greek Ethics,” printed in just ten copies, one of which is held by Johns Hopkins. He also introduced the word “homosexual,” first coined in German, into English print, and his influence on the emerging struggle for LGBTQ+ rights was immense. A major task of JASP has been the reconstruction of the contents of his personal library, in part on the basis of rare archival materials and the recently published full text of his secret autobiography. More information is available at symondsproject.org. In Fall 2024 JASP will partly turn its attention to Symonds’s life and network in Venice, Italy, which he frequently visited and about which he wrote several important works. Under the supervision of the Principal Investigator, Prof. Shane Butler (Classics), participants will learn advanced research methods, generate new knowledge, and disseminate their results. No prerequisites or prior training in Classics or the humanities required, but students should be ready to work both independently and collaboratively.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
This course is designed for students enrolled in an internship program with a faculty member.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Projects and Methods (FA6)
This seminar proposes an in-depth exploration of Homer’s Odyssey. One of the monumental epics of ancient Greek and a foundational text of world-literature, the Odyssey examines, through one man’s quest to make his way home, profound questions concerning the nature of identity, the meaning of suffering, the importance of sharing stories, and the strange allure of poetry itself. We will study Books 1-12 of the poem in the original Greek in order to gain advanced understanding of its language and style. Emphasis will also be placed on the study of commentaries and scholarship in order to enhance our understanding of the poem’s themes, the transmission of the text, and the historical, literary and social contexts in which-and in response to which-it grew.
This graduate seminar focuses on the oral practices that constitute “literary culture” in Rome in the first and second centuries CE: declamation, recitation, disputation emerging from reading, and the relationship of these practices to both literary “publication” and to arenas of traditional oratory such as the courts and the Senate. Weekly assignments will include substantial readings in Latin.
This graduate seminar examines work and labor in Latin literature, beginning with a close reading of Vergil's Georgics in Latin. We will pay particular attention to the female, enslaved, and non-human labor that elite male authors silence or sublimate, as well as the interpretive and methodological challenges that arise. Students will co-design the reading list; lead discussions around texts, topics and theories relevant to their research; and workshop one abstract, one grant proposal, and one conference paper each. Reading ability in Latin is required.
This seminar explores intersections between science and wonder in ancient Greek and Roman literature.
With a focus on material culture from the ancient Mediterranean, this seminar explores the diversity of ways in which objects may be understood to have lives or to be active elements of humans' lived experience. The seminar meets in the Archaeological Museum, where we can pair direct examination of objects with an exploration of multiple theoretical approaches and interests, such as object biography and agency, affordance theory, object-oriented ontologies, material animacies, embodiment, ecological and enactive perception, and the ongoing post-depositional existences of archaeological material. Students will eventually select an object as the focus of an individual research project.
A study of the Roman poet Ovid’s timeless tale of change, explored in relationship to the philosophical Daoism of Zhuangzi and to recent critical and philosophical concepts such as becoming, transformation, autopoeisis.
This course will survey works in Latin and the vernacular by the fifteenth-century Florentine humanist Angelo Poliziano, with particular attention to his correspondence, and with recourse to a variety of theoretical approaches, from classical reception theory to queer theory. Good reading ability in classical Latin is required; the same in Italian is ideal but not required.
This graduate seminar will explore Plato’s contributions to the “old quarrel” between poetry and philosophy, encompassing such topics as the relationship between poetic inspiration and human reason, the role of literature in pedagogy, and the metaphysical implications of poetic fiction. We will focus on several Greek texts from the Platonic corpus related to these themes, as well as some later sources that engage with Platonic ideas.
This course provides you with the opportunity to explore, from literary, material, and anthropological perspectives, the reasons people went missing in the ancient world. We will investigate how individuals experienced their inability to contact relatives and friends while missing, and how, upon their return after years of absence, they were identified and recognized by those left behind. You will gain a sophisticated understanding of how the phenomenon of missing persons is connected to shifting socio-historical contexts and developments, including mobility, transportation technologies, and human identification technologies. Throughout the course, we will untangle related and overlapping categories such as missingness, absence, and lostness. Additionally, we will examine how the conditions of a missing person in ancient times differ from the modern concept of missingness, considering the extensive systems of record-keeping, surveillance, and more comprehensive communication technologies now available. While our exploration will span classical antiquity, our seminar will be anchored in Homer’s Odyssey—a poem that delves into the themes of travelers, the yearning for home, missingness, and recognition.
Distribution Area: Humanities
This course covers essential Greek and Latin texts (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Plutarch) and the commentary tradition (e.g. scholia to Homer and other important authors). Focus is on poetic texts, with some prose.
This seminar examines the entanglement of Roman-period literature with enslavement. It explores the involvement of enslaved workers (secretaries, performers, teachers et al.) in the production, reception, and circulation of Latin and Greek literary texts. It also asks how literary texts represent enslavement and how enslavement inflects Roman literature’s aesthetic and political projects. Participants will gain exposure to research methods in connected subfields (e.g. epigraphy, papyrology, book history) and will discuss recent interventions in archival theory. The seminar will also give special consideration to the relationship between enslavement and the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum’s collection of one hundred fifty Latin inscriptions from the Roman period.
This graduate seminar investigates a range of Roman cultural practices through the lens of "play" and "ludism." Beginning with some classic studies of play (Huizunga and others) we will look at a variety of Roman practices lexically designated as "play" (esp. schooling, gladiatorial contests, and sex) and consider such activities' relationship to a broader range of "acting as if" activities, such as religious ritual, drama, and "exercises" of various types.
This reading seminar is intended to train graduate students in direct and critical work on primary sources. Co-listed with AS.040.306.
Distribution Area: Humanities
This reading seminar is intended to train graduate students in direct and critical work on primary sources. Co-listed with AS.040.305. Recommended Course Background: AS.040.205-AS.040.206.
Distribution Area: Humanities
This reading seminar is intended to train graduate students in direct and critical work on primary sources. Co-listed with AS.040.307.
This reading seminar is intended to train graduate students in direct and critical work on primary sources. Co-listed with AS.040.308. Recommended Course Background: AS.040.207-AS.040.208.
Distribution Area: Humanities
Study in preparation for a comprehensive oral exam, required to become a PhD candidate, and consisting of three fields in classics and related areas.
Study in preparation for a comprehensive oral exam, required to become a PhD candidate, and consisting of three fields in classics and related areas
No Audits.
No Audits.
Summer independent research for doctoral students.
Cross Listed Courses
Archaeology
An introduction to archaeology and to archaeological method and theory, exploring how archaeologists excavate, analyze, and interpret ancient remains in order to reconstruct how ancient societies functioned. Specific examples from a variety of archaeological projects in different parts of the world will be used to illustrate techniques and principles discussed.
Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
English
Classicists, medievalists, and early modernists have always been interested in the history of the books (and the papyri and the rolls) in which the texts they study survive, and this course will survey these traditional modes of bibliography and their importance. We will also look at the social contexts of reading in all periods as a more theoretically sophisticated account of book history has urged us to do in recent decades. Particular attention will be given to modes of transmission of texts between written media, including the digital, but with an emphasis on the synchronic and diachronic importance of orality and aurality, dictation and transcription.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
First Year Seminars
This First-Year Seminar will focus on the figure of Socrates. Socrates wrote nothing, so we depend on others for our knowledge of him. We will examine the ways he is portrayed by several different authors, including Plato. We will also examine some other ideas around in his time - some of which were pretty radical - and consider how he may have reacted to them. Finally, we will examine his influence on later thought.
Distribution Area: Humanities
This First-Year Seminar focuses on the cultures of dining and drinking in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, with excursions into the foodways of other ancient societies abutting the Mediterranean basin. We will investigate the social practices and values that are associated with conviviality in these societies, and how such practices and values change over time. We will consider the kinds of communities that these practices construct, and how and to what extent different kinds of people are included, excluded, or placed in a social hierarchy by their participation in these practices. Special attention will be given to feasting as represented in the Homeric poems, especially the Odyssey; to the Archaic and Classical Greek symposion; and to the Roman convivium and other dining forms extending to late Antiquity. Fueling our investigation and underpinning our discussions will be a wide variety of ancient Greek and Roman texts (to be read in English translation); images and representations of ancient dining in diverse visual media, including Greek vase painting, Roman wall painting, and mosaics; and archaeological evidence for the spaces, settings, and implements of ancient dining and drinking. Throughout, we will engage with key scholarship on aspects of this topic. The seminar includes visits to the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, all of which house objects that illuminate our inquiry. It may also involve screenings of films or clips featuring modern imaginative reconstructions of ancient dining events.
Distribution Area: Humanities
We are living through a crisis in how we take in information. Bombarded by information of all sorts coming at us on phones, tablets, and computer screens, it can be difficult to make sense of it all and harder still to determine whether something is true or false, authentic or inauthentic. The scale and speed of the change in media that we are undergoing is unprecedented in human history. Nevertheless, people in the past have faced moments of crisis – moments when writing seemed unreliable, when the format of written information changed, and when new publication formats forced reevaluations of the nature of truth. This First-Year Seminar will take us from Greco-Roman antiquity to the modern age, with stops along the way in the European Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment. We will read selected texts that illuminate the place of writing, books, and the search for truth, think about the structure of libraries in the western Middle Ages and Renaissance, do extensive hands-on work with rare books, and visit other repositories of information, all toward the end of evaluating how the history of books and information can help us in our current quest to make sense of our world.
Distribution Area: Humanities
How did the Greeks, Romans, and other ancient Mediterranean peoples understand human difference and diversity? How did they form their senses of self in relation to others and articulate kinship and commonalities across ethnic lines? Did skin color, birthplace, language, and lineage matter in constructing social hierarchies? How did their concepts of class and citizenship, beauty and belonging, differ from ours? Did they have anything akin to modern constructions of race and racism, blackness and whiteness, the ‘west’ and the ‘rest’? If not, when and why were such ideas invented, and how was Greco-Roman culture conscripted in their support? Finally and crucially, what can we do to make “classics” today more equitable, inclusive, and accurate to the multicultural reality of the ancient Mediterranean? This First-Year Seminar examines these questions, and many more, through the literature, art, and history of ancient Greece and Rome, with forays into Egypt, Persia, Judea, and northern Europe. It will introduce you to the diversity of the ancient Mediterranean world, hone your ability to critically interpret and discuss art, literature, and scholarship, and explore how systems of categorizing human difference have historically served power. This course will give you a wider historical lens through which to understand race, racecraft, the “classics,” and “Western civilization,” revealing all to be dynamic and historically situated discourses that have been used to exert authority, to include or exclude, and to build communities. It will also build student community and comfort discussing sensitive subjects through a combination of field trips, guest lectures, movie nights, and communal meals.
Prerequisite(s): Students who have taken AS.040.212 are not eligible to take AS.001.179.
This First-Year Seminar will take us on an exploratory journey through the history of our Moon, both as a physical body in its own right and as a formative presence in the cultural imagination. As we examine theories about the Moon’s nature and role in the cosmos - from antiquity to our modern period, and from science to make-believe - we will delve deep into perplexing questions such as the relationship between scientific and imaginative thought, the role played by conspiracy-theory and hoax in our society, the origins of speculation about extraterrestrial life, and what it means to map and write the history of other worlds... This seminar will include sessions of practical observation of the Moon from the JHU Observatory.
Distribution Area: Humanities
History
Objects from the past offer a powerful window into a set of experiences not recorded in texts. We will follow objects and things as they appear in lists, letters, and descriptions, as they travel surprising routes, and bring to life the medieval world before 1400.
Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
History of Art
This thematic course will explore the art, architecture, material culture, and textual evidence from the ancient city of Athens, the many cultures and social positions that made up the ancient city, and the idea of the city as something far beyond its reality. We will take a number of field trips to museums in the area and some of your assignments will be based in local museums.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Democracy (FA4.1)
This research-driven course focuses on joining together and mapping the largest known corpus of mosaic fragments (1st-6th centuries CE) from the heterogenous ancient city of Antioch at the mouth of the Orontes river (modern Antakya, Turkey). These mosaic fragments have been dispersed to institutions and museums across the globe, and their reunifications tell a series of stories about ancient Mediterranean diversity, early 20th century archaeology, and contemporary collection histories. Building from work completed in Phase I (Spring 2020) and Phase II (Fall 2021) and in conversation with a global network of Antioch researchers, students in this course will continue to research and digitally reunite mosaic fragments, including those in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, delve deeper into the archival record associated with the early 20th century excavations, of which Baltimore was among the sponsors, and explore contemporary object biographies of the corpus, part of which remains in the region devastated by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in Spring 2023. Our research will center questions of craft, trade, materials and labor in ancient Antioch, modern archaeological practice, and contemporary museums. No prerequisites required and students from all majors welcome.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
In antiquity, Rome became the capital of an empire, its growing status reflected in its sophisticated urban planning, its architecture, and the arts. While an abundance of studies explores the revival of this glorious past in the Renaissance, this seminar discusses various ways of the reception of antiquity during the medieval period. We address the practice of using spolia in medieval architecture, the appropriation of ancient pagan buildings for the performance of Christian cult practices, the continuation of making (cult)images and their veneration, the meaning and specific visuality of Latin script (paleography and epigraphy) in later medieval art. We discuss the revival and systematic study of ancient knowledge (f. ex. medicine, astronomy, and the liberal arts), in complex allegorical murals. As we aim to reconstruct the art and architecture of medieval Rome, this course discusses ideas and concepts behind different forms of re-building and picturing the past, as they intersect with the self-referential character of a city that is obsessed with its own history.
Distribution Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Bodies—material, artistic, political, cartographic—and their breakdown, form the focus of this seminar. Situating this inquiry in the ancient Mediterranean, we will analyze the human body as an organizing term, giving rise to a robust set of practices and performances. We will consider the conception of atoms as bodies in motion, the role of direct democracy and assembly as they intersect with artistic practices of both figuration and other non-figural corpora, and the emerging body of medical knowledge that would eventually be gathered under the Hippocratic corpus. The Mediterranean sea itself as it connects with other bodies of water and forged connections between different land bodies will also be among the topics we explore. While organized around the ancient Mediterranean and its afterlives, students from all formations are very welcome.
Distribution Area: Humanities
This research-driven course focuses on joining together and mapping the largest known corpus of mosaic fragments (1st-6th centuries CE) from the heterogenous ancient city of Antioch at the mouth of the Orontes river (modern Antakya, Turkey). These mosaic fragments have been dispersed to institutions and museums across the globe, and their reunifications tell a series of stories about ancient Mediterranean diversity, early 20th century archaeology, and contemporary collection histories. Building from work completed in Phase I (Spring 2020) and Phase II (Fall 2021) and in conversation with a global network of Antioch researchers, students in this course will continue to research and digitally reunite mosaic fragments, including those in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, delve deeper into the archival record associated with the early 20th century excavations, of which Baltimore was among the sponsors, and explore contemporary object biographies of the corpus, part of which remains in the region devastated by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in Spring 2023. Our research will center questions of craft, trade, materials and labor in ancient Antioch, modern archaeological practice, and contemporary museums. No prerequisites required and students from all majors welcome.
Distribution Area: Humanities
This graduate seminar investigates the intersection of crafting and cultural interaction among the regions of the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean and Near East from 3000-500 BCE (Bronze and Iron Ages).
Interdepartmental
Students attend lectures by an interdepartmental group of Hopkins faculty and meet for discussion in smaller seminar groups; each of these seminars is led by one of the course faculty. In lectures, panels, multimedia presentations, and curatorial sessions among the University's rare book holdings, we will explore some of the greatest works of the literary and philosophical traditions in Europe and the Americas. Close reading and intensive writing instruction are hallmarks of this course; authors for Fall 2020 include Homer, Plato, Dante, John Donne, George Herbert, Christina Rosetti, Mary Shelley, Friederick Nietzsche, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Frederick Douglass.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
Medicine, Science and the Humanities
In this course, four essential aspects of the theme of death and dying will be examined: Death and Medicine; Emotional Responses to Death; Burying and Commemorating the Dead; and Conceptions of Death. Specific topics relating to each of these aspects that will be covered include illness and causes of death; prevention of death; suicide; death and grief; burial practices; mourning the dead; public commemoration of the dead; life after death; and death and rebirth. Students will explore these topics from a historical-anthropological perspective with Paul Delnero, a specialist in the history and culture of the ancient Near East (Near Eastern Studies); from a literary perspective, by reading and writing poetry relating to these subjects with the acclaimed poet James Arthur (Writing Seminars); and from a musical perspective, through direct encounters with the music and creative process of the award-winning composer, Michael Hersch (Peabody).
Distribution Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Modern Languages and Literatures
Who were the witches? Why were they persecuted for hundreds of years? Why were women identified as the witches par excellence? How many witches were put to death between 1400 and 1800? What traits did European witch-mythologies share with other societies? After the witch-hunts ended, how did “The Witch” go from being “monstrous” to being “admirable” and even “sexy”? Answers are found in history and anthropology, but also in medicine, theology, literature, folklore, music, and the visual arts, including cinema.
Prerequisite(s): Students who have already taken AS.214.171 cannot take AS.211.477.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
When the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in his famous "Somnium" (1608) creates a fictitious dream narrative in which the earth is observed from the moon, it becomes clear that the shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric worldview entails a radical change of perspective that can be achieved only by means of the imagination. What appears as a sunrise is in reality due to the earth's own movement. Where appearance and reality diverge, the new model requires a fictional account without which it remains incomprehensible. Orbiting around Kepler’s short tale, this seminar will focus on cosmic narratives and poetic explorations of outer space, from Lucian's True Stories and Icaromenippus (2nd century CE), one of the earliest literary treatments of a journey through space, Plutarch’s dialogue On the face of the Moon (late 1st century CE), to Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638) and Kant's »Of the Inhabitants of the Stars« (1755). What is the epistemic function of literary representations of the cosmos? Are space-travel narratives thought experiments? What role does fiction and the imagination play in the science of astronomy? By pursuing these and related questions, this course will question common assumptions about the relationship of science to fiction and the literary imagination while tracing key junctures in the history of astronomy.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
When the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in his famous "Somnium" (1608) creates a fictitious dream narrative in which the earth is observed from the moon, it becomes clear that the shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric worldview entails a radical change of perspective that can be achieved only by means of the imagination. What appears as a sunrise is in reality due to the earth's own movement. Where appearance and reality diverge, the new model requires a fictional account without which it remains incomprehensible. Orbiting around Kepler’s short tale, this seminar will focus on cosmic narratives and poetic explorations of outer space, from Lucian's True Stories and Icaromenippus (2nd century CE), one of the earliest literary treatments of a journey through space, Plutarch’s dialogue On the face of the Moon (late 1st century CE), to Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638) and Kant's »Of the Inhabitants of the Stars« (1755). What is the epistemic function of literary representations of the cosmos? Are space-travel narratives thought experiments? What role does fiction and the imagination play in the science of astronomy? By pursuing these and related questions, this course will question common assumptions about the relationship of science to fiction and the literary imagination while tracing key junctures in the history of astronomy.
Distribution Area: Humanities
Near Eastern Studies
How do art historians and archaeologists recover and study genders and sexualities of ancient people? This writing-intensive seminar looks at texts and objects from ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece through the lens of gender and sexuality studies. Beyond exploring concepts of gender in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, students will also consider how modern scholars have approached, recovered, and written about ancient gender identities. There are no prerequisites for this course.
Distribution Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
The ancient Egyptians played many games, as we do today. Board games, ball games, games of skill, etc., were not only part of daily life, but also had a role to play in religious practices and beliefs. Although the rules of the games are largely unknown to us, archaeological objects, funerary images, and texts help us to better understand their roles and meanings in ancient Egyptian culture. These various sources also show how games reflect some facets of the organization of the society, and reveal how the ancient Egyptians perceived some aspects of their world - social hierarchy, gender division, representation of death, relationship to chance/fate/divine will, etc. This course will present the evolution of games and play in Ancient Egypt from the 4th millennium B.C., with the first board game discovered in the tomb of a woman, through those deposited in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and up to the Roman period, with the games engraved on the ground by soldiers in the fortresses of the Eastern Desert. Particular attention will be paid to the travels of the games - Egyptian games played outside of Egypt and games of foreign origin played inside Egypt - because they allow for a better understanding of the intercultural connections that were established in between Egypt, Nubia, the Near East in general and the Mediterranean world. By replacing the games in their archaeological, historical and cultural contexts, the course is also intended as an original introduction to the civilization of ancient Egypt.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
The ancient Egyptians played many games, as we do today. Board games, ball games, games of skill, etc., were not only part of daily life, but also had a role to play in religious practices and beliefs. Although the rules of the games are largely unknown to us, archaeological objects, funerary images, and texts help us to better understand their roles and meanings in ancient Egyptian culture. These various sources also show how games reflect some facets of the organization of the society, and reveal how the ancient Egyptians perceived some aspects of their world - social hierarchy, gender division, representation of death, relationship to chance/fate/divine will, etc. This course will present the evolution of games and play in Ancient Egypt from the 4th millennium B.C., with the first board game discovered in the tomb of a woman, through those deposited in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and up to the Roman period, with the games engraved on the ground by soldiers in the fortresses of the Eastern Desert. Particular attention will be paid to the travels of the games - Egyptian games played outside of Egypt and games of foreign origin played inside Egypt - because they allow for a better understanding of the intercultural connections that were established in between Egypt, Nubia, the Near East in general and the Mediterranean world. By replacing the games in their archaeological, historical and cultural contexts, the course is also intended as an original introduction to the civilization of ancient Egypt.
Distribution Area: Humanities
Philosophy
A survey of the earlier phase of Greek philosophy. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle will be discussed, as well as two groups of thinkers who preceded them, usually known as the pre-Socratics and the Sophists.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
A study of pre-Socratic philosophers, especially those to whom Plato reacted; also an examination of major dialogues of Plato with emphasis upon his principal theses and characteristic methods. Cross-listed with Classics.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
A study of major selected texts of Aristotle.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
A study of later Greek philosophy, stretching roughly from the death of Aristotle to the Roman imperial period. Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics will be the main philosophical schools examined.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
This course revisits the idea of tragedy as represented in Ancient Greek thought for the purpose of approaching questions of flourishing and ethical living from a different angle.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
Program in Museums and Society
What role did the colorful surfaces of sculptures, vessels and textiles play in the ancient world? We examine historical texts and recent scholarly and scientific publications on the technologies and meanings of color in antiquity, and use imaging and analytical techniques to study polychromed objects from the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum
Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)