Oct 05, 2024
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2024-25
CARS 2100 - Classical Athens
This course focuses on the people of the Greek city of Athens during an extraordinarily creative period of history–the century and a half from 480 BC to 323 BC–when the Athenians undertook the world’s first democratic experiment. We examine textual sources (literature, philosophy, history, speeches and public documents) and archaeological sources (architecture, sculpture, painting) for the light which they shed on the ancient Athenians’ political, intellectual, and artistic problems, concerns, and achievements. The course also focuses on how the Athenians defined democracy, the rights and privileges of citizenship, the advantages and moral ambiguity of power, questions which face all thinking humans in a democracy.
Credit Hours: 3
OHIO BRICKS: Pillar: Humanities: Text and Contexts
General Education Code (students who entered prior to Fall 2021-22): 2HL
Repeat/Retake Information: May be retaken two times excluding withdrawals, but only last course taken counts.
Lecture/Lab Hours: 3.0 lecture
Grades: Eligible Grades: A-F,WP,WF,WN,FN,AU,I
Course Transferability: OTM course: TMAH Arts & Humanities
College Credit Plus: Level 1
Learning Outcomes:
- Students will be able to apply terminology and methods used in the discipline of Classics to analyze the art and literature of 5th century BCE Greek culture.
- Students will be able to analyze 5th century Greek drama, philosophical works and historical accounts and describe their humanistic themes in terms of cultural and historical contexts.
- Students will be able to describe in what circumstances Athenian tragedies and comedies were produced and performed and how they served to educate the Athenians about tensions in their society.
- Students will be able to state a position on an issue concerning 5th century Athens and argue that position effectively, both orally and in written arguments.
- Students will be able to use evidence from public monuments and their sculpture and literary sources in reaching conclusions about the nature of Athenian culture.
- Students will be able to interpret how the creative arts of ancient Athens contributed to the ways the people of Athens viewed their place in the world.
- Students will be able to distinguish similarities and differences between 5th century BCE Athenian and modern American democracy, and to explain how modern society was influenced by ancient Greece.
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