Course Offerings (CAS Bulletin)

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Elementary Modern Greek I, II
V56.0103,0104 Open to students with no previous training in Greek and to others by permission of the instructor. Elementary I offered in the fall; Elementary II offered in the spring. 4 points per term.
An introduction to modern Greek. Provides students with the fundamentals of grammar, syntax, oral expression, listening comprehension, reading, and composition. Students develop the skills and vocabulary necessary to read simple texts and hold basic conversations. Students are introduced to modern Greek culture, history, and society, since the ultimate goal of the course is to enrich our understanding of multiple, living Greek realities through the language. Teaching materials include current newspaper articles, graded literary passages, songs, and various linguistic games.

Intermediate Modern Greek I, II
V56.0105,0106 Prerequisite: V56.0104 for V56.0105, V56.0105 for V56.0106, or permission of the instructor. Intermediate I offered in the fall; Intermediate II offered in the spring. 4 points per term.
Designed for students already familiar with modern Greek. Students are expected to be acquainted with the most significant structures of grammar and syntax, and to have acquired the foundations for basic conversation in Greek. Introduces students to more complex linguistic and grammatical analysis, advanced composition, and graded reading. It also provides further practice in speaking and works to enrich the student's vocabulary. Readings and discussions of selected works of prose, poetry, and theatre serve as an introduction to aspects of modern Greek civilization and as an occasion for comprehensive discussions of contemporary Greek society.

Advanced Modern Greek I, II
V56.0107,0108 Prerequisite: V56.0106 or permission of the instructor. Advanced I offered in the fall; Advanced II offered in the spring. 4 points per term.
Focus is on advanced composition and oral practices, with the aim of refining an understanding and general facility with written and spoken Greek. Course work is designed to help students develop a comprehensive vocabulary, improve pronunciation, and increase their effectiveness, accuracy, and fluency in writing and speaking the language. Enhances and perfects reading, speaking, conversational, and writing skills through the close study of selected modern Greek literary texts, current newspaper articles and essays, films, advertisements, and comprehensive discussions of contemporary Greek society. Explores major facets and phenomena of Greek culture: current social and political issues, events, and controversies in Greece; Greece's position "in the margins of Europe" and at the crossroads of East and West; gender politics; the educational system; the political landscape; discourses on the question of Greek identity; and topics in popular culture. Through individual projects, oral reports, class presentation, and written assignments, students are expected to pursue an in-depth "reading" of present-day Greece.

Memory, History, and Language in Modern Greek Poetry
V56.0120 Offered in the fall. 4 points.
A survey of 20th-century Greek poetry in a historical and cultural context. Among the poets studied are C. P. Cavafy; the Nobel laureates George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis; the Lenin Prize-winner Yannis Ritsos; the surrealists Andreas Embiricos and Nikos Engonopoulos; the postwar generation of poets, including Miltos Sahtouris, Takis Sinopoulos, and Manolis Anagnostakis; and women poets, including Matsi Hatzila-zarou and Kiki Dimoula. Note: All texts are available in both Greek and English; critical texts in English only. Class discussion is conducted in English. No background specific to Greece is required.

Seminar on Modern Greek Culture
V56.0130 Identical to V27.0130. Offered every year. 4 points.

Topics: Modern Greek Culture and Literature
V56.0140 Offered every year. 4 points.

Narrative, History, and Fiction in the Modern Greek Novel
V56.0190 Identical to V29.0190. Offered in the spring. 4 points.
A survey of the modern Greek novel, and to a lesser extent the short story, structured around narrative technique and the claim to fact(s) and/or fiction(s) in Greece's turbulent modern history. Read-ings include some of the masterpieces from this tradition, as well as the work of some promising contemporary writers. Selections also suggest some recurrent perspectives on questions of language, gender, and nation in Greece. Comparative reference is made to other Balkan, Mediterranean, European, and world literatures. Note: All texts are available in both Greek and English; critical texts in English only. Class discussion is conducted in English. No background specific to Greece is required.

The 20th-Century Balkans and Balkanization Through Literature and Film
V56.0193 Identical to V29.0193. Offered every other year. 4 points.
A selective study of the representation of the 20th-century Balkans through some of the most celebrated literary works and films of the region. Considers the presentation of, and contestation over, a shared historical past through common and divergent motifs, myths, and narrative devices. Also examines the region's political and aesthetic relation to the West in this century.

Ritsos and the Tragic Vision
V56.0229 Offered every other year. 4 points.
How is it that the dead speak? In what way can the past be said to survive in the present--tragically? These are the questions around which Yannis Ritsos's The Fourth Dimension is organized. Composed of a series of dramatic monologues that move between the past and the present, the dead and the living, Ritsos's poem demands that we think about the relations between memory, history, and language. This course traces Ritsos's poetic strategies by reading and reconstructing the classical intertexts that inform The Fourth Dimension. In each instance, it seeks to analyze the reasons behind his appropriations, distortions, revisions, and translations of these classical texts.

Greek Diaspora: Odyssean Metaphors from Homer to Angelopoulos
V56.0333 Identical to V29.0333. Offered every other year. 4 points.
Greek stories and myths of dispersal, settlement, and return have provided Western culture with some of its foundational fictions. This course examines how some of these structuring metaphors and foundational narratives--notions of home and exile--have informed the Greeks' own stories in a variety of geographical and historical contexts and times: (1) in the historical diaspora communities of Greeks: in Renaissance Venice; in certain European urban centers prior to nation-building in the 18th-century Enlightenment; in Alexandria and Smyrna (now Izmir) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Cyprus; and (2) among the Greeks of the United States.

From Classicism to Afrocentrism: Greece in the West, 1453 to Present
V56.0444 Identical to V29.0444. Offered every other year. 4 points.
An introductory, selective survey and critical interpretation of Western conceptions of the idea of Greece, the Hellenic, and the Greeks in a variety of contexts: classical humanism, classical philology, philhellenism, exoticism, orientalism, hellenophobia, hellenism as paganism, aesthetics, homosexuality, Romantic nationalism, racism, the Hellenic and the Hebraic, political correctness and political chauvinism, and Afrocentrism. Readings from a range of European literary, critical, and theoretical texts, as well as modern Greek appropriations of, and resistances to, such projections.

Greek Thinkers
V56.0700 Identical to V27.0700. 4 points.
See course description under Classics (27).

HISTORY

See course descriptions under History (57).

Byzantine Civilization
V56.0112 Identical to V57.0112, V65.0112. 4 points.

Modern Greek History
V56.0159 Identical to V57.0159. 4 points.

Transformations of Southern Europe
V56.0175 Identical to V57.0175. 4 points.

Topics: Medieval History
V56.0260 Identical to V27.0260. 4 points.

Greece and Western Europe
V56.0297 Identical to V57.0297. 4 points.