Classical Mythology - Rome Focus
Prerequisites: UCLR 100, UCLR 100C, UCLR 100E, UCLR 100M, or equivalent; please check requirements for declared majors/minors for exceptions.
This course focuses on Greek and (especially) Roman literature involving myth and how ancient and modern peoples use traditional narratives, characters, images and conceptions to explore, explain, and experiment with ideas about themselves and their surroundings in their historical, social, cultural and intellectual contexts.
Students should be able to demonstrate knowledge of the fundamental myths of the ancient Greek and Roman world, their language and possible meanings, and how myth reflected important collective and individual concerns, values, beliefs, and practices then, even as modern myth does now.
Outcomes: Students will gain factual knowledge of the essential characters and basic narratives of the most important myths of ancient Greece and Rome; Students will gain a broader understanding and appreciation of intellectual and cultural activity through Classical myth as simultaneously fixed and mutable narrative, one which depends on unchanging elements as it is refracted through different genres, authors, and time periods; Students will gain basic knowledge of modern myth theory as well as awareness of both its broad categorization and the difficulty of a universal definition of myth; Students will be able to analyze and evaluate critically particular versions of myths in their cultural and historical context as well as in reference to other versions of the same stories from different contexts; Students will be able to interpret myths using modern myth theories and to recognize the use of myth as consciousness-raising in religious contexts; Students will learn to apply course material to improve thinking by contextualizing their own moral sensibilities and aesthetic preferences by comparing the archetypes of ancient myths with modern archetypes.
This course focuses on Greek and (especially) Roman literature involving myth and how ancient and modern peoples use traditional narratives, characters, images and conceptions to explore, explain, and experiment with ideas about themselves and their surroundings in their historical, social, cultural and intellectual contexts.
Students should be able to demonstrate knowledge of the fundamental myths of the ancient Greek and Roman world, their language and possible meanings, and how myth reflected important collective and individual concerns, values, beliefs, and practices then, even as modern myth does now.
Outcomes: Students will gain factual knowledge of the essential characters and basic narratives of the most important myths of ancient Greece and Rome; Students will gain a broader understanding and appreciation of intellectual and cultural activity through Classical myth as simultaneously fixed and mutable narrative, one which depends on unchanging elements as it is refracted through different genres, authors, and time periods; Students will gain basic knowledge of modern myth theory as well as awareness of both its broad categorization and the difficulty of a universal definition of myth; Students will be able to analyze and evaluate critically particular versions of myths in their cultural and historical context as well as in reference to other versions of the same stories from different contexts; Students will be able to interpret myths using modern myth theories and to recognize the use of myth as consciousness-raising in religious contexts; Students will learn to apply course material to improve thinking by contextualizing their own moral sensibilities and aesthetic preferences by comparing the archetypes of ancient myths with modern archetypes.