Greek, Latin & Ancient Mediterranean Studies

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Greek, Latin & Ancient Mediterranean Studies

253.879.3166

Chair

Brett Rogers

253-879-3770

bmrogers@pugetsound.edu

Administrative Support

Charlotte Nabors

253.879.2664

cnabors@pugetsound.edu

Program Description

What makes us human? Should the needs of the many take priority over the needs of the few or the one? What place should immigrants have in our society? What does the divine want from us, and should this be a concern of the state? Courses in Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies allow students to explore how the ancient Greeks and Romans wrestled with such questions, and point us to age-old answers and unimagined possibilities.

Studying the languages, literature, myth, history, and art of the ancient Mediterranean world helps students explore what is distinctive about that world and what links it to our modern one. Courses in a diverse range of subjects encourage students to confront their own values and to better understand the cultural assumptions of our present world. Course topics include Greek and Latin literature (in the original languages and translation), ancient religions including early Judaism and Christianity, and gender and sexuality.

Who You Could Be

Author
Teacher
Librarian
Photographer
Assistant attorney general
Risk management specialist

What You'll Learn

Historical perspectives on the challenges of living in a multiethnic world
Impact of the ancient world on the modern
Values of ancient Mediterranean civilizations
Ancient Greek or Latin and their impact on English
How to synthesize different types of evidence, including text and image

ALUMNI

Christine Mellick-Miller ’13

"The rule-based reasoning, memorization, and all the pages I wrote—both for the classics department and the other humanities departments—have been absolutely invaluable during my three years of law school."

SAMPLE COURSES

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GLAM 120 Greek and Latin Roots in English

This course provides a solid grounding in Greek and Latin roots and other word components used in English with the aim of facilitating comprehension of both technical and non-technical vocabulary, including the specialized vocabulary of particular technical and professional fields such as the biological sciences, medicine, and law. Students will learn the principles at play in word formation and develop the ability to quickly recognize and analyze vocabulary derived from ancient Greek and Latin. In the process, we will learn about the historical, cultural, and linguistic underpinnings of the etymological influence ancient Greek and Latin have exerted on the English language. No previous knowledge of Latin or ancient Greek is required.

Code

Artistic and Humanistic PerspectivesLanguage

GLAM 180 Greek Odyssey: Study in Greece

This course centers on an intensive three-week academic tour of Greece where students use the sites, landscape, and, museums of Greece as the classroom from which they can make a holistic study of the Greece they had only previous experienced through texts. In other words, this course places ancient Greece and its texts in their real, physical context. In Greece, students spend about 10-12 hours each day on sites, in museums, and in active discussions, including a one-hour seminar discussion at the end of each day. During these three weeks, students engage with Greece ancient and modern as much as possible. During the spring semester, prior to the trip to Greece, students will meet one hour per week to start preparing for the trip. Such preparations will include sessions dedicated to learning fundamental information for the study of pre-historic, archaic, classical, and post-classical Greece, as well as necessary technical terminology and research tools for encountering sites and giving site reports. This course is open to all students, with preference given to students in Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies courses.

Prerequisites

Permission of the instructor.

GLAM 230 Ancient Epic

This course introduces the epic genre in Greece and Rome. The course concentrates on a selection of ancient epic poems including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil's Aeneid. Students consider each epic as an individual cultural and artistic product, but also how later epics draw upon and respond to earlier ones. The gradually more complex understanding of the epic genre built into the class allows students to investigate how the Greek and Roman epics combine cosmology and human narratives in order to explore the place of human beings in the universe; the relationship between gods and mortals; and the connection between moral, social, or historical order and cosmological order.

Code

Artistic and Humanistic Perspectives

GLAM 280 Introduction to Mediterranean Archaeology

This course offers an introduction to the field of archaeology, providing an overview of its goals, theory, methods, and ethics. Students discuss specific archaeological sites from the ancient Mediterranean in their historical, social, anthropological, economic, religious, and architectural contexts. Attention is given to issues relevant to Mediterranean archaeology today, including the looting of ancient sites, issues of cultural property, and ethics in archaeology. Students have the opportunity to learn and practice basic archaeological techniques, as well as to reflect on the significance of these techniques for understanding other peoples. Students thus gain an appreciation of the complexities of present-day archaeological research and both the benefits and limitations of the role of archaeology in creating our images of the past.

Code

Artistic and Humanistic Perspectives

Prerequisites

Students who have received credit for SOAN 280 may not receive credit for this course.

GLAM 323 Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece and Rome

This course examines sex, gender, and sexualities in ancient Greece and Rome. Building upon foundational readings in feminist and queer theory, this course examines critically both historical evidence for and representations of love, gender, sex, and sexuality in a wide range of ancient literary texts, as well as epigraphic, art historical, and archaeological sources. Through this combination of using both Greek and Roman primary sources and modern gender theory, this course aims to make sense of such topics as women's lives, marriage, prostitution, sexual violence, medicine, pederasty, sex manuals, and non-normative or "Other"-bodied (e.g. trans*) individuals.

Code

Artistic and Humanistic PerspectivesKnowledge, Identity, and Power

Prerequisites

One 200-level course in Ancient Mediterranean Studies or a course in gender theory strongly recommended.

Greece Summer 2018 — As part of the GLAM 180: Greek Odyssey course, students spend several weeks exploring Greece with their professor.

Annie Lamar '19 and her Summer 2017 research project — Annie Lamar ’19 presents her summer 2017 research grant project combining classics and computer science. Many students apply for one of approximately 80 annual summer research grant awards to conduct paid research over the summer.

Screen cap from a digital humanities timeline summer research project by Emory Bentley Brigden '20 — Emory Bentley Brigden ’20 completed a digital historical timeline for his summer research project, "The History of Eunuchs in the Roman/Byzantine/Padishah Empire."

Experiential Learning

Ways our students have gained experience:

Castor Kent ’20, archaeological dig of a Roman villa in Dacia (modern Romania)
Three-week study abroad experience in Greece through GLAM 180: Greek Odyssey
Senior theses, such as Marcelle Rutherfurd ’19, "The Uses of Military Intelligence in the Persian Wars"
Emmett Howard '25, summer research grant, "Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Rome, Empire, and Science Fiction"
Annie Lamar ’19, summer research grant, "Becoming Augustine: A Network Graph of Texts from Plato to Augustine"

STORIES

Reacting to the Past

According to the scripts in their hands, they were oligarchs, generals, landowners, citizens, women, and slaves, all locked within the besieged walls of Athens. There was little food left, and the Athenians faced a choice:…

Campus

Faculty

Students

Making It in the Makerspace

Yup. No fear is exactly what a student needs to turn some wild idea they dreamed up over coffee into a real “thing”—a thing you can touch, see, and use. Welcome to the Makerspace: a place, Cambridge Dictionary tells us, …

Where Graduates Work

Where our graduates work:

ESCP Europe (European business school)
United States Bankruptcy Court (law clerk)
Honolulu Museum of Art
Pokemon Go
University Presbyterian Church

Where Graduates Continue Studying

Where our students continue their studies:

Pantheon-Sorbonne (archaeology)
UCLA
Harvard Divinity School (M.T.S., theological studies)
Johns Hopkins University
University of Washington (M.A.I.S., comparative religion)
Stanford University

MEET THE FACULTY

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Anna Soifer

Redford Post-Doctoral Fellow, Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

asoifer@pugetsound.edu

As an archaeologist, Prof. Soifer helps students explore daily life in the ancient past through material culture. Her own research focuses on craft production in pre-Roman and Roman Italy.

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Aislinn Melchior

Professor, Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

amelchior@pugetsound.edu

Prof. Melchior's research explores violence and its effects and justifications, both ancient and modern. She teaches Ancient Greek and Latin, classical materials in translation, and also teaches in the Honors Program.

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Brett Rogers

Professor and Chair, Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

bmrogers@pugetsound.edu

Prof. Rogers teaches courses on ancient Greek and Latin, myth and myth theory, sex and gender in Greco-Roman antiquity, and the reception of classical literature in science fiction and fantasy.

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FACILITIES

ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

The Archives and Special Collections section of Collins Memorial Library houses a number of rare books, including a copy of Plutarch's Lives printed in 1538.

MAKERSPACE

Classics and ancient Mediterranean studies students have used the Makerspace in the library to recreate Roman and Greek objects.

KITTREDGE GALLERY

Students double majoring in classics and ancient Mediterranean studies, and art and art history have created ancient-themed art for gallery display.