Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

(previous semesters)

Elementary Modern Greek
HLS 102/MOG 102

A continuation of HLS 101, aiming to develop skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing modern Greek in a cultural context. Classroom activities include videos, comprehension and grammar exercises, and discussions.
Zoe Passati-Bouloutas  Classes: 11:00 -11:50 am MTWTh

 Intermediate Modern Greek
HLS 107/MOG 107

Advanced composition and oral practice aimed at developing idiomatic written and spoken style. Discussions entirely in Greek. Introduces students to contemporary Greek culture and literature through the study of works by Cavafy, Sikelianos, Seferis, Elytis, Ritsos, and Anagnostakis, among others. Readings from articles on current Greek topics.
Zoe Passati-Bouloutas Classes: 12:30 -1:20 pm MTWTh

Balkan and East European Oral Traditions
COM 236/SLA 236/HLS 236

This course explores oral traditions and oral literary genres (in English translations) of the Balkan and East European world, both past and present.  Topics include traditional rituals (life-cycle and seasonal) and the music and song associated with them, contemporary forms of traditional and popular culture, and oral traditional narrative: prose (folktale and legend) and poetry (epic and ballad).  Discussion and analysis will focus on the role and meaning of Balkan and East European oral traditions as forms of expressive culture.
Margaret Beissinger  Lecture: 1:30 2:20 pm  MWF

Topics in the Hellenic Tradition:
Classical Antiquity and Modern Greek Poetry
CLA 335/HLS 335/COM 392

In this course we will ask about the challenges a poet faces in dealing with a classical tradition.  How does an understanding of modernity integrate a classical past and what are the particular ways in which poetry addresses that question?  The question extends beyond Greece, but Greece is a particularly good example of seeing an ancient world and its history and themes collide and converse with a distinctly modern real and literary landscape.  The examples chosen for close reading come mainly from the writing of the Greek-Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), and Nobel winning modernist poet-diplomat George Seferis (1900-1971), but also include the poetry of Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990), Jenny Mastoraki (1949- ), and Katerina Angelaki-Rooke (1939- ).
Constanze Güthenke  Seminar: 3:00-4:20 pm MW

The Making of the Ottoman Balkans, 1353-1500:
Conquest, Settlement & Infrastructural Development
NES 342/HLS 342

The Ottoman Empire is traditionally viewed through a paradigm which stresses its Islamic character.  In keeping with this assessment its advances into southeastern Europe from the mid-fourteenth century onward are usually portrayed as stemming from a desire to expand the frontiers of the Islamic East at the expense of the Christian West.  This course will present an alternative explanation one focusing on the extent to which the early Ottomans absorbed the peoples, practices and nobilities of the pre-existing Christian peoples of the Balkans.  It will contrast the state and its institutional development in the overwhelmingly Christian milieu of the Balkans between 1353 and 1500, with what it became following the conquest and absorption of the older Islamic States of the Middle East (Syria, Palestine and Egypt) at the beginning of the sixteenth century.  It will examine the architectural remains dating to the first century of Ottoman rule in southeastern Europe and weigh their silent testimony against the Ottoman chronicle tradition, most of which was written in the 16th century and after, in an attempt to reconstruct the first one hundred fifty years of Ottoman rule in the Balkans.  To facilitate an understanding of the Ottoman Balkans as a whole it will present a series of case studies drawn from Albania in the west to the regions of Macedonia and Thrace in Greece. These in turn will be weighed against developments in Bulgaria and Serbia.
Heath Lowry Lecture: 1:30-2:50 pm TTh

GRADUATE COURSES

Topics in Hellenic Tradition:
The Case of Homeric Scholarship
CLA 529/HLS 529

The course seeks to use Homeric scholarship as a paradigm of the Hellenic tradition and the interlacing of classical scholarship with other discourses. Topics will include the issue of continuity and comparison, the recurring topic of translation and translatability, Homeric archaeology and anthropology, the new Troy debate, etc. A chance to read some of the staples of Homeric scholarship with a view to their situatedness within the changing logic and language of the discipline. Since the evaluation of Greece as a normative culture of antiquity is at issue in much Homeric scholarship, Latinists are particularly encouraged to participate.
Constanze Güthenke  Seminar: 9:00-11:50 am T

The Origins of the Middle Ages
HIS 543/HLS543

Reading and research on the transition of ancient into medieval society, religion, and culture are the focus of this course.
Peter Brown  Seminar:  9:00-11:50 am T

Problems in Ancient History:
Ancient and Medieval Numismatics
CLA 548/HLS 548

This seminar covers the basic methodology of numismatics, including die, hoard and archaeological analysis. The Western coinage tradition will be covered, from its origins in the Greco-Persian world through classical and Hellenistic Greek coinage, Roman imperial and provincial issues, the coinages of Byzantium, the Islamic world and medieval and renaissance Europe. Students will research and report on problems involving coinages related to their own areas of specialization. Open to undergraduates by permission of the instructor.
Alan Stahl   Seminar: 1:30-4:20 pm Th

Courses of Interest

Fall 2008 course offerings
Spring 2008 course offerings
Fall 2007 course offerings
Spring 2007 course offerings
Fall 2006 course offerings
Spring 2006 course offerings
Fall 2005 course offerings
Spring 2005 course offerings
Fall 2004 course offerings
Spring 2004 course offerings
Fall 2003 course offerings
Spring 2003 course offerings
Fall 2002 course offerings
Spring 2002 course offerings
Fall 2001 course offerings
Spring 2001 course offerings
Fall 2000 course offerings
Spring 2000 course offerings
Fall 1999 course offerings