Fall 2025 Course Offerings

The course introduces the rich tradition of Greek and Roman mythology in literature and art from antiquity to the present day. Students will acquire a basic understanding of the development of key mythological narratives and images in their original context; explore their relationship to political and social developments in the ancient world; and become familiar with a select works in the long tradition of reuse and adaptation of mythology since antiquity. Students will be asked to consider the link between mythology and human creativity and to reflect on possible reasons for the continuing adaptability of classical mythological themes. The course fulfills the requirements for GE-A (Arts) and GE-H (Traditions and Historical Foundations).

This course exams how the legal system worked in the highly litigious culture of democratic Athens. The readings include philosophical texts and ancient law cases. Students will be reconstructing and performing 4 trials in the second half of the class.

CLAS 324/AHIS 324 – Prof. Ann Marie Yasin
T/Th 9:30-10:50am, DMC 154

Between the fourth and eighth centuries CE—the period we now call “late antiquity”— all around the Mediterranean, communities grappled with new economic and political pressures, embraced new religions, and transformed traditional cultural practices. This course examines how art and architecture shaped worldviews and responded to pressing concerns during this time of profound change across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. We will examine late antique images, artefacts, and sites in light of key topics, including monuments and memory; gender and identity; spaces and public life; media and knowledge production; and religious diversity among pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. While attending to objects’ historical and archaeological contexts, we will also reflect on their roles across time as we examine issues of display, preservation, and the uses (and abuses!) of past monuments and images today.

In this course, we will explore ancient Greek theater, one of Greece’s fundamental cultural products that had a compelling psychological impact on its audience. Over the past few decades, an overwhelming number of studies has drawn attention to the crucial role of emotions and affective states in moral judgment and reasoning. With this in mind, we will evaluate the emotional and persuasive power of tragic and comic narratives, which dramatize the tensions between the various psychological mechanisms that largely reflect the world’s moral matrices: abstract notions of justice and rights, concerns related to the suffering of others, obligations of group membership, hierarchical relationships, as well as concerns about physical and spiritual contagion. Some of the questions we will consider in this class concern the nature of the emotional response to the suffering Other, particularly one’s enemy, the relation between storytelling and feelings of sympathy, and whether the Greeks did actually have the relatively modern concept of ‘empathy.’ We will be discussing a number of tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, as well as comedies by Aristophanes (all in translation), with an eye to both past and present contemporary issues and concerns. At the same time, we will look at the particular social, political and cultural institutions that conditioned both individual and collective feelings, which these plays ultimately sought to arouse.

Fifth century Athens is the world’s oldest democracy. Its birth and expansion are accompanied by the introduction of new forms of literature, including tragedy and comedy. Fifth century Athens is also home to the development and diffusion of scientific thought and the birthplace of philosophy. In this course, we will reflect on the cultural history and the cultural legacy of Athens through its artistic, scientific, and literary output. We will examine Athens’ momentous fight against Persia and the impact of the Persian wars on coeval literature, art, and politics. We will survey the institutional arrangements of the Athenian democracy, its successes and failures, as viewed from the perspective of Thucydides, a witness to Athens’ long and disastrous conflict with Sparta. We will read important works of literature, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Aristophanes’ Clouds, against the background of the development of critical thinking embodied by the works of the Sophists, Hippocrates, and by the figure of Socrates.

Introduction to Byzantine Studies

This seminar introduction to the modern scholarly discipline of Byzantine Studies. Byzantine Studies is a field covering over one thousand years of late antique and medieval Graeco-Roman history, literature, and thought (324-1453), with vast potential for groundbreaking research. The seminar is meant as a starting point for your own future research and exploration.

In this course we will be focusing on Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, two of the most influential cultural products of Ancient Greece. We will have the opportunity to discuss a number of important topics reflected in Homeric epic, which pertain to the cultural, social, and political context of the Greek society of the Archaic, and to some extent of the Classical period, such as (but not limited to): the sociocultural function of the art of poetry and story-telling, the Homeric conception of heroism, the role of women in epic, the central institutions of hospitality and guest-friendship, as well as the imaginative ways in which the Greeks conceived of their gods and the nature of the relationship between the human and the divine.

For questions contact Dr. Afroditi Angelopoulou (manthati@usc.edu)

This course will introduce you to the essentials of Latin grammar and vocabulary, with the ultimate goal of providing you with the ability to read, write, and translate Latin texts.  Over the course of the semester, we will explore Latin vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and pronunciation.  In addition, this course will include discussions of various aspects of Roman history and culture (such as literature, visual art, and religion). 

This course, building upon LAT 120, will continue your introduction to the essentials of Latin grammar and vocabulary, with the ultimate goal of providing you with the ability to read, write, and translate Latin texts  Over the course of the semester, we will explore Latin vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and pronunciation, with the aim of reading and translating original Latin texts in the final few weeks of the semester.  In addition, this course will include discussions of various aspects of Roman history and culture (such as literature, visual art, and religion).

Latin 222 is the third and final component of the introductory Latin sequence. Over the course of a semester, students will review grammar and strengthen skills fundamental to translating Latin. Additionally, students will swiftly advance beyond the “synthetic Latin” of the grammar-book and gain their first experiences with “Latin in the wild”. To achieve this end, we will read short pieces and excerpts from the unedited prose and poetry of various authors writing Latin during Rome’s Republican and early imperial period.