Course Details

This course will evaluate the ways in which ancient events, individuals, art, and literature have been recycled, manipulated, and (mis)understood by modern societies, particularly in political contexts. We will tackle an entire range of the (mis)uses of ancient history, including its recontextualization in the service of pseudoscience; generational racism; historical revisionism; partisan politics; and sensationalized fiction. However, the course material is not only concerned with a presentist approach; we will develop these issues within an historical continuum, examining also the ways in which censorship, revisionism, and (mis)appropriation was incorporated into ancient narratives about their own distant pasts. The nature of the course framework is such that the students will receive a wide-angled survey of the ancient world, moving through periods associated with Ancient Near Eastern empires, all the way to imperial Rome. The class will be lecture and discussion-based.

Outcomes: Understand how history was imagined and contrived in the ancient world; Interpret in historical, political, and social contexts the ways in which both ancient and modern civilizations have (mis)appropriated ancient history and myth in multiple media; Identify the rationale for the adoption of ancient cultural history in the modern era; Discover and present additional examples of references to ancient history in modern media; Understand the concepts of historical revisionism and censorship, and be able to apply these approaches to modern contexts; Enhance their research and writing skills through several in-class and written exercises by learning to write in an argumentative style using primary sources from the ancient world, secondary sources written about ancient culture, and in-class discussions.