Are We Not Men? Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity

HUMN 224-01 Are We Not Men? Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Spring 2016

Wednesdays, 1-3.45, Chestnut 20B

Course Blog: http://arewenotmenrhetforreal.blogspot.com

Instructor: Dale Carrico, dcarrico@sfai.edu

Office Hours: Before and after class, and by appointment.

Course Description:

The societies of Greek, Roman, and Christian antiquity were conspicuously patriarchal. Homeric heroes made history and conquered death with great words and deeds in an aspirational fantasy of masculine agency. The Roman paterfamilias, perhaps patriarchy's most quintessential expression, centered around the authoritarian male head of the household who held an unquestionable power of life and death over his children, female relatives, and household slaves. But in philosophy and in poetry, in Greek tragedies and in Roman comedies, we find glimpses of a considerably richer and more complicated world of gendered relations, erotic imagination, and human possibility, we encounter profound anxieties, ambivalences, and resistances to patriarchal practices and prejudices. This course will examine these tensions. We will be reading from Sappho, Homer, Thucydides, Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Euripides, Cicero, Terence, Juvenal, Quintilian, Petronius as well as contemporary feminist and queer theorists and historians.

Course Requirements:  Reading Notebook, Five Weekly Questions/Comments, Short Reading (2-3pp.), Workshop Worksheet, Midterm Paper (4-5pp.), Course Narrative (2pp.), Final Paper (6-7pp.)

Attendance Policy:  Attendance and punctuality are expected. Necessary absences should be discussed in advance whenever possible.

Provisional Schedule of Meetings

January

Week One | 20 Introductions

Week Two | 27 Poems of Sappho (Post Close Reading before class)

February

Week Three | 3 Homer -- First and Last Chapters of the Iliad

Week Four | 10 Gorgias -- Encomium of Helen

Week Five | 17 Euripides -- Hecuba; Melian Dialogue

Week Six | 24 Workshop

March

Week Seven | 2 Plato -- Symposium (Hand in first paper)

Week Eight | 9 Plato -- Republic; Aristotle on Women

Week Nine | Spring Break

Week Ten | 23 Aristophanes -- Wasps

Week Eleven |30 Thucydides -- Pericles Funeral Oration and other excerpts from the Peloponnesian War

April

Week Twelve | 6 Cicero -- Philippics; Quintilian -- from Institutio Oratio; and Hortensia -- in the Forum

Week Thirteen | 13 Terence -- Eunuchus

Week Fourteen | 20 Suetonius -- Caligula; and Juvenal -- Satires

Week Fifteen | 27 Petronius -- Trimalchio's Feast from Satyricon

May

Week Sixteen | 4 Concluding Remarks Final Papers Due