CLST 273 / WSGS 297 - Classical Tragedy with a focus on Women's Studies and Gender Fall Semester 2012

Our work will pursue four main aims (plus the fifth, of having fun with all of them):

• To study a selection of extant Classical Athenian tragedies, powerful literary works, as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process. These plays were applauded in their own day. They have become cornerstones of Western theatrical tradition in Europe and beyond. And they can still blow your mind.
• To acquire critical and technical vocabulary relating to literary productions and crucial ideas of feminist inquiry; and to apply these concepts and this terminology to describing, analyzing, and formulating arguments about our plays as cultural artifacts. We will consider how the tensions between women's position in the mythology the plays depict, in ancient Athenian traditions of theatrical representation, and in real Athenian life compare with tensions in women's and men's lives, gender-ideologies, and artistic representations in Classical Athenian and other cultures, including our own.
• To assess how literary techniques and formal qualities of literary productions shape our plays, and thus also the ways the plays re-interpret traditional stories for new cultural moments. Dramatists still seek to solicit and challenge their audiences through literary means.
• Through discussion, writing, and performance, to explore plays' multiple interpretive possibilities. We will investigate texts' indications of how poets and their audiences lived in their world, what they understood and believed about it, and the values they thought important. Literature, legend, religion, history, and art operate all together, in Classical antiquity just as they do now. Classical Studies foster skills of multidimensional inquiry and integrative analysis; feminist criticism calls for application of such skills to relationships of power and identity, both women's and men's, that shape every aspect of our lives.

• Robert Fagles, tr., Aeschylus: Oresteia (Penguin Classics, 1966, 1967, 1975, 1977, 1984)
• David Franklin and John Harrison, ed. and tr., Sophocles: Antigone (Cambridge Translations from Greek Drama, 2003)
• Peter Burian, ed., The Complete Sophocles II: Electra and Other Plays (Oxford University Press 2009)
• James Morwood, tr., Euripides: Bacchae and Other Plays (Oxford University Press 1999, 2008)
• James Morwood, tr., Euripides: Medea and Other Plays (Oxford University Press 1997, 1998)
• James Morwood, tr., Euripides: The Trojan Women and Other Plays (Oxford University Press 2000, 2009)
• additional resources on-line and in the library

Basics of Academic Life: Studying and introductory Research and Writing

• SQ3R for Primary-Source Coursework: a method for effective studying
• Guide to Writing Academic Papers: a strategic checklist devised by your instructor (hint, hint)
• Guide to Beginning Research on Topics in Classical Studies: suggestions and resources
• Loyola Libraries' Subject Guide to Classical Studies, prepared by Classical Studies Bibliographer Jane Currie: a research guide to help identify and access core research resources relating to Classical Civilization, ancient Greek, or Latin.
• Oxford Bibliographies Online - Classics: annotated bibliographies compiled by leading scholars in the relevant fields, including a historical overview of our period (look under History, Roman: Late Antiquity), some of our major primary sources, and a couple of important cultural topics
• Loyola Writing Program's Statement of Grading Standards. It credits the Rhetoric Program of the University of Illinois at Urbana; other universities also observe similar criteria (e.g., this outline from Harvard University's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning): these expectations are held widely.
• 1st edn. (1918) of William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style: print editions have been updated and it's well worth getting a copy if you don't own one already, but in whatever edition you use it, Strunk and White is the classic guide to desirable American prose style
• How to use apostrophes, or else.
• The the impotence of proofreading by Taylor Mali.

• Diotima: a clearing-house of resources on the Internet for the study of women and gender in the ancient world, including much specifically relevant to Classical Athenian tragedy.
• Didaskalia: The Journal for Ancient Performance: dedicated to the study of all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman performance (drama, dance, and music). Advisory and Editorial Boards of scholars in Classics and Theater. Published by Randolph College.
• Dates of extant Classical Athenian tragedies.
• Dr. J's Illustrated Greek Theater: images and explanation of the parts of a Greek theater, by Dr. Janice Siegel of Illinois State University.
• Page concerned (despite the title that appears at the top of it) with Roman Theatres: Roman theaters and discussions are relevant to us because the Romans appropriated Greek culture for their own. The photographs presently included in the page are of Italian and African loacations, but many Greek theaters too continued to be used and were rebuilt during the Roman period. Part of Lacus Curtius, a treasurehouse of on-line resources for Roman archaeology, compiled by Bill Thayer.
• Perseus Project: an evolving digital library for the study of the Greek and Roman worlds, especially texts, language, and visual representations.

Revised 13 August 2012 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/