Ancient Studies Major

As an ancient studies major, you will study the histories, societies, literatures, and material cultures of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. With little or no work in ancient languages, you can study a broad range of topics while emphasizing areas of special interest to you. Ancient Studies majors explore big questions about power, gender, art, religion, education, cultural change, and more, and develop valuable critical and writing skills. This major is housed in the Department of Classics.

sample courses:

Survey of Latin Literature: The Empire

Readings in the verse and prose literature of the Roman Empire, coordinated with grammar review. Readings will be chosen from Vergil, Livy, Suetonius, and other appropriate authors in a combination of verse and prose.

Sex and Gender in Greco-Roman Antiquity

Ideas about sex and gender have not remained stable over time. The ancient Greeks and Romans had their own ideas - ideas that strike us today as both deeply alien and strikingly familiar. This course will consider questions such as: what constituted "normal" sex for the Greeks and for the Romans? What sex acts did they consider to be problematic or illicit, and why? What traits did the Greeks and Romans associate with masculinity? With femininity? How did society treat those who did not quite fit into those categories? How did peoples of the ancient world respond to same-sex and other-sex relationships, and was there an ancient concept of "sexuality"? How did issues of class, ethnicity, and age interact with and shape these concepts? How does an understanding of these issues change the way we think about sex and gender today? We will read an array of ancient texts in translation, consider various theoretical viewpoints, and move toward an understanding of what sex and gender meant in the ancient world.

our students have gone on to become:

Archaeologists

Architects

Authors/Editors

Diplomats

Lawyers

Literary Agents

Museum Curators

Teachers