Critical Ancient Greek (Online)

What can the study of ancient Greek teach us about canonical texts, from the Iliad to Heraclitus to Plato’s Republic, that have made the language a recurring touchstone for thinking about poetics, politics, philosophy, and psychology? In Critical Ancient Greek, students will undertake the formal acquisition of ancient Greek, while attending, throughout, to reception history, keywords, and approaches to reading and interpretation. We’ll begin with the alphabet and basic morphology, before proceeding to complex grammar and syntax, rhetoric, the history and theory of textual transmission and reception—and, by program’s end, the translation of canonical texts. As we go, BISR faculty in philosophy, literature, and psychoanalysis will lead seminar sessions exploring critically the contexts in which literary and philosophical Greek emerged and its utilization across discourses. Our aim is not only to learn a language, but also to learn how to read: How can we understand the linguistic strategies, keywords, and concepts that structure classical Greek, and that remain central to philosophical, political, and psychoanalytic thinking today?

Critical Ancient Greek is organized across three, 12-week trimesters: Winter (February 10th-April 28th), Summer (June 2nd-August 18th), and Fall (September 15th-December 1st). Students may enroll in the program in its entirety or on a trimester-by-trimester basis. In addition to weekly 2-hour class meetings, students may elect to attend an additional “homework hour,” a time set aside for further practice and horizontal learning. Our textbook will be C. A. E. Luschnig’s An Introduction to Ancient Greek, to be supplemented throughout by readings from Greek philosophical and tragic writers. The class size is capped at 12 students.