Syllabus for This Spring's Undergraduate Patriarchy in Antiquity Course at SFAI

HUMN-220E-01 (3534) Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Spring 2020, San Francisco Art Institute

Thursdays, 4.15-7pm, Chestnut Room 18

Course Blog: https://patriarchyingreekandromanantiquity.blogspot.com

Instructor: Dale Carrico, dcarrico@sfai.edu

Office Hours: Before 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, Gorgias, Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides, Cicero, Terence, Juvenal, Petronius, and many others.

Course Requirements:  Attendance/Participation (15%), Reading Notebook (15%), Midterm Paper, 2-3pp. (15%), Presentation 2pp. (15%), Final Paper 5-6pp. (40%)

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

Provisional Schedule of Meetings

Week One | January 23 | Introductions

Week Two | January 30 | Poems of Sappho
Presentation: Portrait of a Girl {"Sappho"}; Portrait of Terentius Neo (two works)

Week Three | February 6 | Homer First and Last Chapters of the Iliad and an excerpt from Chapter IX posted on the blog.

Presentation: Apollo Belvedere

Week Four | February 13 | Gorgias -- Encomium of Helen; Thucydides -- Melian Dialogue and Pericles' Funeral Oration
Presentation: From the House of Jason ("House of Fatal Love"), three works: Medea; Phaedra; Paris and Helen

Week Five | February 20 | Euripides -- Hecuba

Presentation: Athena Parthenos (Tennessee Reconstruction)

Week Six | February 27 | Plato -- Symposium

Presentation: The Old Drunkard {or Drunken Old Woman}

Week Seven | March 5 | Plato -- Apology and "Allegory of the Cave" from the Republic; Aristotle on Women

Presentation: Venus de Milo; Venus de' Medici (two works)

Week Eight | March 12 | Aristophanes -- Wasps

Presentation: Venus Kallipygos; Michelangelo Pistoletto: Golden Venus of Rags (1967-71) (two works)

Week Nine | Spring Break

Week Ten | March 23 | Terence -- Eunuchus

Presentation: From the House of the Vettii: Priapus

Week Eleven | Cicero, Against Cataline, Philippics (Against Antony), Suetonius -- Caligula

Presentation: Trajan's Column

Week Twelve | 6 Hortensia in the Forum (posted to the blog), Marcus Cicero -- Commentariolum Petitionis

Presentation:  Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros (one work)

Week Thirteen | 13 Juvenal -- Satires I, II, and III

Presentation: Sleeping Hermaphroditus [sic]

Week Fourteen | 20  Petronius -- Trimalchio's Feast from Satyricon (The link takes you to Chapter Six -- keep reading through Chapter Ten.)

Presentation: The "Dionysiac Frieze" from the Villa of the Mysteries

Week Fifteen | 27 Workshop for the Final Paper

Week Sixteen | 4 Concluding Remarks, Augustine from City of God | Final Papers Due