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 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 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 reflects these characteristics. They are founded upon intensive study of ancient Greek and Latin language and literature,but also requires rigorous work in such fields as ancient history, art, archaeology, and philosophy, while allowing considerable flexibility to accommodate individual interests. These programs aims 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 course explores the origins and rise of Greek civilization 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.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
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. Credit is given only upon completion of a year's work. Cannot be taken Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
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. Credit is given only upon completion of a year’s work. Course may not be taken Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.105
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. Credit is given only upon completion of a year’s work. Course may not be taken Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
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. Credit is given only upon completion of a year's work. Course may not be taken Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.107
This seminar is meant as an introduction to the study of ancient emotions, with a particular emphasis on how the ancient Greeks conceptualized, portrayed and lived their emotions through linguistic, literary and artistic expression. After an analysis of how the ancient Greek emotional experience differs from our own, we shall focus on the phenomenon of emotion as deeply rooted in the physical body, and in light of this we will contemplate (and question) its universality. You will also learn how to research and write a paper. Texts will be read in translation. No knowledge of ancient Greek required.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
The course will introduce students to major aspects of the ancient Greek civilization, with special emphasis placed upon culture, society, archaeology, literature, and philosophy.
Area: Humanities
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).
Area: Humanities
What is the role of fiction and play in expressing identity in a society? Play in the Greek world was synonymous with the values of ‘high’ intellectual pursuits, namely, paideia, the Greek word for education and culture. Works defined by playfulness make up an artistic epoch of Greek literature written under the Roman Empire commonly known as the ‘Second Sophistic.’ This course introduces students to this world and its cultural artifacts. It introduces students to specific categories of fiction as a way into understanding identity. The class examines a series of fictional genres and styles: Latin picaresque, Greek ideal erotic fiction, epistolary fiction, travelogues, and the autobiography. The purpose of the class is to be able to understand these works as cultural artifacts whose form and content express discourses about identity - of ethnicity and the 'home,' gender and sexuality, colonialism and class - while appreciating the rebellious fun of these works. All sources are provided in English and no experience or background in Classics is required to participate in the course. Dean's Prize Teaching Fellowship Course.
Area: Humanities
Emphasis on ancient Greek ritual and mythology; on ancient music, religion, and society; and on cultural institutions such as symposia (drinking parties) and festivals.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
In this course we will explore evidence and interpretations of gender and sexuality in the region of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean during the third and second millennia BCE. Material investigated will include the “snake goddess” figures from Minoan Crete, anthropomorphic figurines from the Cyclades and Cyprus, wall paintings, etc. In each case we will consider the history of interpretation as well as investigate the objects’ archaeological and sociocultural contexts. Discussion topics will include representational ambiguity, the specific materialities of objects, and their possible roles in activities construing gender. The course will incorporate material from the JHU Archaeological Museum.
Area: Humanities
Stories entertain us, but we also tell them to make a point. This course will explore the ways that stories were used to make points by Greek and Latin authors from Homer to Petrarch, while also looking at, and comparing them to, the techniques of argument contemporaneous thinkers were developing. This is a course about narrative and rhetoric but also about how and in what way stories matter.
Area: Humanities
We will examine visual expressions of propaganda in the city of Rome, considering how emperors used public art to promote their political agendas and their ideological vision of power."
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
Reading ability in classical Greek is developed through a study of various authors.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.105 AND AS.040.106 or equivalent
Area: Humanities
Reading ability in classical Greek is developed through a study of various authors.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.205
Area: Humanities
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
Area: Humanities
Reading ability in Latin is developed through the study of various authors, primarily Cicero (fall) and Vergil (spring).
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.207
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Surviving imagery suggests that persons in Minoan and Mycenaean societies engaged in various celebratory performances, including processions, feasts, and ecstatic dance. This course explores archaeological evidence of such celebrations, focusing on sociocultural roles, bodily experience, and interpretive challenges.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
Beginning with close study of the poem itself, this course will examine the unequaled influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses on subsequent literature and art, including theater and film.
Area: Humanities
This freshman seminar will explore concepts of magic and miracles and their different forms from ancient Greece and Rome and early Christianity through the Middle Ages up to the Renaissance. Dean's Prize Teaching Fellowship Course.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
This seminar is meant as an introduction to the study of ancient emotions, with a particular emphasis on how the Greeks of the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods conceptualized, portrayed and lived their emotions through linguistic, literary and artistic expression. After an analysis of how the ancient Greek terminology for the emotions differs from our own, we shall focus on the phenomenon of emotion as deeply rooted in the physical body, and in light of this we will contemplate (and question) its universality. Texts will be read in translation. No knowledge of ancient Greek required.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Students will acquire more in-depth knowledge of Ancient Greek literature by reading and discussing its most important and famous texts, from the Iliad and the Odyssey to tragedy to philosophy. Knowledge of Greek is not required.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.111 OR AS.040.121
Area: Humanities
In this course we will follow the fortunes of the ancient Greek and Roman novels.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.103 OR AS.040.104 OR AS.040.111 OR AS.040.112 OR AS.040.121 OR AS.040.133 OR AS.040.245
Area: Humanities
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
Area: Humanities
Reading of prose or verse authors, depending on the needs of students. Co-listed with AS.040.702.
Prerequisite(s): AS.040.205 AND AS.040.206 or equivalent
Area: Humanities
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
Area: Humanities
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
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..
Area: Humanities
This course explores the visual and material worlds of ancient Cyprus from the earliest human evidence through the Iron Age. Course topics will include the island's unique position between the Aegean and Near East and how this has impacted both Cyprus' ancient past and the way in which it has been conceived in the modern world. Class involves regular analysis of artifacts based in the Archaeological Museum.
Area: Humanities
We will examine visual expressions of propaganda in the city of Rome, considering how emperors used public art to promote their political agendas and their ideological vision of power.Dean's Teaching Fellowship course
Area: Humanities
This course explores the role of fiction in the presentation of personal identity among the intellectual elite of the Roman Empire. Intellectuals in the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’ told stories which are ridiculous, bizarre, and clearly fictional. Some pretend to have visited utopias in the wilderness, of having seen scientific and medical marvels, and of communing with other dead intellectuals. This class focuses on stories of the unbelievable, paradoxical, and fake but which are written as first hand accounts by real historical intellectuals of the Roman Empire. The class will be broken down into providing background as to what a Greek intellectual or ‘sophist’ was exactly, what demands were placed on intellectuals to make up stories, such as in the performance of declamation, and how even from the early days of Greek history the boundaries between truth and fiction were at issue. After providing context to characters and settings of the Roman Empire’s intellectual culture, we examine the voices of people, including physicians like Galen, who used the fictional motifs of utopias, adventures, romance, ghosts stories among others to construct their identities. These fictional elements often were the means by which issues of ethnicity, power, gender, and tradition were hashed out. All sources are provided in English and no experience or background in Classics is required to participate in the course.
Area: Humanities
This course explores the visual and material worlds of ancient Cyprus from the earliest human evidence through the Iron Age. Class involves regular analysis of artifacts based in the Archaeological Museum.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
This seminar explores the form and function of tragedy in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds by investigating the dramatic texts themselves, ancient and modern discussions about tragedy, and archaeological remains. As a Junior-Senior Seminar, this course includes instruction in core research methods within Classics and culminates in an individualized research project.Classics majors only
Area: Humanities
We shall focus on one Greek epic, The Odyssey, and one Latin novel, Apuleius' Golden Ass: what do Odysseus and a donkey have in common? Do they experience similar adventures? How does magic play into the two stories? We shall read both texts in their entirety, including passages in the original languages, and unearth the connections between these two masterpieces of ancient literature.
Area: Humanities
We shall read an extensive selection of major texts of Greek literature from Homer to the classical period.
Area: Humanities
We shall read, in the original Greek, major authors of Greek Literature from the Hellenistic period to the Imperial period.
Area: Humanities
This course gives participants a unique opportunity to engage directly in empirical research and its interpretation and dissemination. Topics vary. This semester’s offering is organized around a project to reconstruct digitally the library of the nineteenth-century writer John Addington Symonds, author of one of the first studies of ancient sexuality. No prerequisites, but potential students should contact instructor for permission to enroll.
Area: Humanities
The Peabody Cast Collection (PCC) Classics Research Lab project will revolve around a remarkable collection of plaster casts of classical Greek and Roman sculptures, created ca. 1879 for the Peabody Institute (now part of JHU). Such cast collections were a highly valued cultural resource in Europe and North America during the later 17th to early 20th centuries, produced for major museums, academic institutions and wealthy individuals. Because of the technical process of the cast formation, which is based directly upon the ancient sculptural surface, these collections brought contact with the actual classical artifacts into temporally and spatially distant contexts—including the burgeoning urban center of 19th century Baltimore. The PCC Lab’s initial objective is archival and field research of the cast collection—its content, formation, access and usage by the people of Baltimore and its eventual disbanding and distribution. From this, we will aim to virtually reassemble its member objects, charting their biographies and, when extant, their current locations. This in part will be accomplished digitally, in a virtual reconstruction of the original display contexts of the casts within the Peabody Institute based on early hand-written ledgers, logs, and photographs. With this we will contribute a new open-access chapter to the collection’s biography.
Area: Humanities
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.
This course explores the visual and material worlds of ancient Cyprus from the earliest human evidence through the Iron Age. Class involves regular analysis of artifacts based in the Archaeological Museum.
This course will reflect on certain key moments in the development of Latinate and Italian Renaissance humanism and will also include reading and discussion of certain recent landmark contributions to the history of the modern humanities.
We shall read and discuss the writing of Heliodorus in the original Greek.
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 the entire 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.
We will read the second half of Heliodorus' Aethiopica in the original Greek and integrate the reading with secondary literature.
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.
An exploration of recurring themes and recent trends in the reception of classical antiquity.
This course investigates the use of literary citation in ancient scholarly works, including issues of source and accuracy, as well as notions of literary authority (with focus on the use of digital tools for analysis).
This seminar will introduce participants to the reading, editing, translation, and interpretation of humanist Latin, with training in the ancillary skills of paleography, codicology, and textual criticism.
This seminar explores the topic of Petronius as a historical character in ancient Rome.
This graduate seminar will involve a close reading and study Plutarch’s Life of Romulus, particularly in relation to the paired Life of Theseus. We will examine Plutarch’s frameworks and principles for “life writing” in general, as well as his understanding and application of the traditional concepts of the Greek “hero” and Roman exemplum, to shed light on his poetics in this mythistorical “biography.”
We shall look at several allegorical readings offered in antiquity to interpret myths and literary works, especially, but not only, the epics of Homer.
In this seminar, we will study Ovid's Metamorphoses, paying special attention to the text's generic playfulness and the author's poetics of illusion. We will also survey recent critical trends in Ovidian studies.
This seminar explores and appraises the recent revolution in our understanding of the culture, politics, and economics of the late Roman Republic, with a thematic focus on how we now understand the Gracchi as historical actors and as cultural phenomena.
This seminar will examine wall painting of the Aegean from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. Topics will include crafting, spatial and experiential dynamics, materiality, narrative, iconography and the relationship of the images to their worlds.
The Peabody Cast Collection (PCC) Classics Research Lab project will revolve around a remarkable collection of plaster casts of classical Greek and Roman sculptures, created ca. 1879 for the Peabody Institute (now part of JHU). Such cast collections were a highly valued cultural resource in Europe and North America during the later 17th to early 20th centuries, produced for major museums, academic institutions and wealthy individuals. Because of the technical process of the cast formation, which is based directly upon the ancient sculptural surface, these collections brought contact with the actual classical artifacts into temporally and spatially distant contexts—including the burgeoning urban center of 19th century Baltimore. The PCC Lab’s initial objective is archival and field research of the cast collection—its content, formation, access and usage by the people of Baltimore and its eventual disbanding and distribution. From this, we will aim to virtually reassemble its member objects, charting their biographies and, when extant, their current locations. This in part will be accomplished digitally, in a virtual reconstruction of the original display contexts of the casts within the Peabody Institute based on early hand-written ledgers, logs, and photographs. With this we will contribute a new open-access chapter to the collection’s biography.
A well-documented feature of the middle to late Roman republic is the ferocious competitiveness of the aristocracy, and the governing class in particular. These people competed for prestige and glory on the battlefield, for offices and honors in government and administration, for visibility in public building, in forensic oratory in the courts, in deliberative oratory in various assemblies, and sometimes in literary production. Less well-understood is how the competitiveness of this group manifested itself in the early imperial age, as the emergence of the emperor shut down competition in some of these arenas and fundamentally changed the character of the competition in others. This seminar considers how some old arenas changed under the Imperial regime, and examines new forms that aristocratic competition assumed to make up for the arenas that had altogether disappeared.
In this course, we will follow the fortunes of the Greek novels from the Byzantine period onward, focusing especially on Heliodorus' _Aethiopica_. Knowledge of Greek is highly desirable but not required.
An intensive survey of Greek poetic and prose texts, which emphasizes reading for comprehension and speed. Texts range from Homer to Lucian.
Area: Humanities
This reading seminar is intended to train graduate students in direct and critical work on primary sources. Co-listed with AS.040.306.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
English
An examination of the many ways (both as old and then 'New', but also as the subject of a key 'return') that 'philology' has been claimed as the master category of literary study. The nuts and bolts of older philological procedures as well as the broadest theoretical claims for the term will be attended to.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
The course will account for the major transformations in the media used for writing from the scroll to the web as well as the rich account of this history and its theorizations.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
German Romance Languages Literatures
The course will explore the notion of ‘voice’ in order to show how poetry, literature, philosophy, and music have been dealing with it throughout the ages. In particular, by focusing on classical figures such as the Sirens, Circe and Echo, as well as by considering the seminal discussions of the 'voice' in Plato and Aristotle, the course will address the gendered nature of the voice as a tool to seduce and manipulate the human mind. More specifically, the course will discuss the ways in which male, female, queer, gendered and un-gendered voices embody different functions. Course materials include classical, medieval and early modern sources as well as later rewritings of myths concerned with the voice by authors such as Jules Verne, Karen Blixen, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and Italo Calvino. A selection of theoretical works (e.g. Cavarero, Silverman, Dollar, Butler) will also be discussed. The course is taught in English and all materials will be available in English translation; Italian majors and minors should enroll in section 2.
Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Writing Intensive
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 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.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Forgery is an eternal problem. It is a literary tradition in its own right, with connections to politics, Classics, religion, philosophy, and literary theory. Spurious writings impinge on social and political realities to a degree rarely confronted by criticism. This course offers a reading of the sort traditionally reserved for canonical works of poetry and prose fiction, spotlighting forgery’s imaginative vitality and its sinister impact on scholarship. Students will study manuscripts and incunabula drawn from JHU’s Bibliotheca Fictiva, the world’s premier collection of literary forgeries.
Prerequisite(s): Students cannot have taken AS.214.606.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Abandoned by Theseus, Ariadne lamenting on the shore of Naxos embodies one of the most powerful tropes in literature and the arts. The fate of the heroine who helped Theseus out of the labyrinth became herself a thread (indeed, an inexhaustible series of threads) running across the ages and populating the imagination of poets, painters, composers. After exploring in detail the classical sources that canonized Ariadne’s myth (Catullus, Carmina, 64; Ovid, Heroides, 10) as well as references to the myth found in other classical authors (Homer, Hesiod, Pausanias, Plutarch, Propertius), we will turn to the reception of Ariadne in literature and music (Ariosto, Rinuccini-Monteverdi, Haydn, Nietzsche, Strauss-Von Hofmannsthal). The analysis of the various case studies will focus on the rhetorical and poetical devices used by poets and composers to reenact the vocal features of Ariadne’s lament.
Area: Humanities
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Italian and French humanists transformed the medieval adventure stories of Charlemagne’s and Arthur’s knights. The course concentrates on Luigi Pulci’s earthy, bourgeois Morgante, Teofilo Folengo’s Macaronic (Latin/Italian dialect) Baldus, and Rabelais’s encyclopedic Gargantua and Pantagruel, combining close analysis of their linguistic and narrative fabric with examples of their influence on later comic narrative masterpieces.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Magic, Monstrosity, and Marvels or Wonders call into question what we see and experience: what is reality, what is illusion; what’s natural and what’s supernatural? What’s human and what’s more, or less, than human? During the Renaissance, ideas about the nature of reality were bound up with questions and issues very different from those of our time. With the exact sciences still being invented, the nature of the world was much less hard and fast for Renaissance people than it is for the modern educated person. The literary masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance provide vivid illustrations of the early modern sense of wonder. Foremost among these are the theatrical comedies which Italian authors revived in imitation of the ancients, and the romances, especially Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532) and Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581). These and other works influenced ideas about magical and marvelous phenomena across Europe for centuries to come. Works will be read and discussed in English. Italian majors and graduate students (who should enroll in section 2) will attend a weekly supplemental discussion in Italian and compose their written work in Italian.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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.
Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Writing Intensive
We will use the meanings and methodologies of “materiality” to examine the medieval world, by analyzing objects, texts, networks, patterns of circulation and appropriation, aesthetics and enshrinement, production and knowledge communities.
Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
History of Art
Rome created one of the world’s most powerful empires that dominated the Mediterranean from the 3rd century BCE into the 4th century CE. As Rome expanded its borders, its cities saw a proliferation of sculptural monuments that produced a visual political rhetoric and expressed imperial ideologies. This class examines the close relationship between Roman sculpture and politics from the Republic through the Severan principate. Through close visual analysis of the ancient materials and critical readings of scholarship, this course will examine the role of sculpture in the formation, reproduction, and attenuation of imperial rule.
Area: Humanities
This 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.
Area: Humanities
The chronologically structured seminar discusses the conception and reception of holy images in the Middle Ages from Late Antiquity until the beginning of the Renaissance. We will investigate their creation during the rise of Christianity and their affinities with Graeco-Roman portraits and cult images. Another focus is dedicated to the theological and political context of icons during the waves of early medieval iconoclasm, in particular in Byzantium. We will address icons made in the Holy Land during the crusades, which are often characterized by merging Frankish and Byzantine styles and motifs with Islamic art. We will discuss the emergence of new icons in Italy, and their pan-European distribution after 1100. Here we will focus on the influence of the papal court and the economic impact of icons in the later Middle Ages in the Italian commune.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
What makes a space sacred? How is it different from other spaces? This seminar explores the various means - visual, artifactual, architectural, and performative - of creating sacred space in the ancient and medieval worlds of the Near East and Mediterranean. Possible cases for study include early Sumerian temples, state-sponsored Assyrian temples, votive deposits, Greek sanctuaries, sanctuaries and landscape, early medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cult buildings, cave sanctuaries, pilgrim sites, icons and sacred space.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Antioch Recovery Project investigates mosaics from the ancient city of Antioch (modern Antakya, Turkey, near the border with Syria) now in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Excavated by an international team of archaeologists in the 1930s, hundreds of ancient mosaics from the cosmopolitan city were subsequently dispersed to museums across the globe, with twenty-four mosaics entering the collection of the BMA. Phase I will focus on the digital documentation and analysis of the mosaic of Narcissus as a prototype for ongoing research bringing together the fragments of ancient Antioch for contemporary beholders. The Greek myth of Narcissus tells the story of a beautiful Theban hunter doomed to love his own reflection and is the origin of the modern psychiatric term “narcissism”. Researching the mythology, materials, conservation history, archival material, historiography, and contemporary reception of the Narcissus mosaic and myth offers extensive opportunities to collaborate with scholars across a range of disciplines at JHU, in the Baltimore museum community, and beyond. Investigators will move between the Baltimore Museum of Art, the CRL processing lab in Gilman Hall, and Special Collections. The course will involve some travel to visit other mosaics from Antioch now in collections at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C., and the Princeton Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey.
Area: Humanities
The discipline of art history has passed through a number of major methodological and theoretical shifts since its inception (and in particular, over the last thirty years). Foundational disciplinary methods derive principally from the arts of Classical Greece, the Renaissance and contemporary periods. As the discipline embraces an enlarged field of inquiry, particularly drawing upon developments in anthropology, material culture studies, feminism, queer theory, and political theory, additional avenues for understanding the arts of the ancient world are emerging. The seminar focuses on how art historical method and theory – both foundational and emergent – might be profitably applied to the subfields of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean (understood in the broadest sense).
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
The arts of the Near East, Aegean and Egypt are typically taught separately from one another. However, the Mediterranean Sea has always served as a connector, and the diverse cultures of these areas were in close contact with one another for much of their histories. During the Bronze Age (3000 to 1200 BCE), these interactions were particularly dynamic, resulting in a diversity of arts including wall frescoes, precious jewelry, and elaborate furnishings and weaponry. This course examines the arts of the interactions among Near Easterners, Greeks, Egyptians and others. It focuses special attention on the role of artistic products in intercultural relations, including trade, diplomacy, war and imperialism.Students are not expected to have extensive knowledge of all the areas, although some experience in at least one of them will be helpful. The course will interweave establishing a knowledge base necessary to tackle this topic with broader conceptual concerns and interdisciplinary approaches (art historical, archaeological, anthropological, and historical).There will be a final paper.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
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).
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
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.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
A study of major selected texts of Aristotle.
Area: Humanities
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.
Area: Humanities
Writing Intensive
Program in Museums and Society
We examine the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum collection to learn the materials and techniques utilized in the ancient world to produce objects in ceramics, stone, metal, glass, faience, bone and ivory.
Area: Humanities
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
Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences