Golden Age of Athens

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Athens in the fifth and early fourth centuries BCE was the locus of some of the most vibrant and important cultural production in human history. This class will study that production—literary texts, philosophy architecture, art—in its cultural, ideological and historical context. The organization of the class is synoptic rather than historical, though will and end by considering the defining military events that marked Athenian ascendancy and defeat, and that, broadly speaking, define the Classical period in Athens. Students who complete the class will understand the culture of this period through a variety of lenses—ideological, historical, literary-historical—and will be able to think responsibly rather than anachronistically about the aftermath of the fifth century, including the fourth-century philosophical texts (Plato, Aristotle) that dominate so much of subsequent Western thought.