Ancient Greece, Complex Histories

In the West, we have inherited multiple, intertwining histories of Greece, from knowledge of famous Greek battles, or Greek political institutions, to the classical references that are woven into the architecture of modern cities and references in our literature and politics. Ancient Greece, Complex Histories takes the complex, overdetermined framing of Greek history as its point of departure. This is so much more than a simple, conventional course in Greek history. Instead, it is an immersive, research-led seminar course that relates the study of primary and secondary sources for ancient Greek history to larger interpretative debates about how to do Greek history and the cultural politics of this history. Alongside staple authors for the study of Greek history, Herodotus and Thucydides, and sources from Greek epic (Homer, Hesiod) and drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes), we will read lesser studied authors (such as Aineias Tacticus), and we will work with the full gamut of material culture from masonry to highly wrought artistic objects. As we explain in the following paragraphs, the course will also have a strong meta-critical element.

The study of Greek history is currently experiencing a turn to macrohistories of the ancient Mediterranean, which emphasize the rich ecology within which ancient Greek cities emerged and existed, and their links with other parts of the world. For the purposes of our course, the first five days in the Peloponnese will give us an opportunity to consider geological and environmental factors in Greek history, from water supply to transport links by sea and land. We will also think about the precariousness and vulnerabilities of ancient Greek cities and the attempts that cities made to preserve aspects of their culture in historical memory. In ancient Greek religion, the divine was also part of this ecology and when we study some of the famous megalithic ritual sites we will consider how the Gods were built into the landscape and what this took, from the quarries from which the marble was taken, to the population of itinerant craftsmen involved in the religious architecture and art of ancient Greek sanctuaries and cities.

The sites that we will be visiting have been tourist sites, on and off, since classical antiquity, as epitomized by the Guide to Greece written by Pausanias in the second century CE. As such, they are rich palimpsests, in which fragments of travel writing and visual art have helped to shape the way in which these sites appear in the popular imagination. We will use our own travels in Greece to reflect critically on the history of travel writing and how this genre has contributed to an imaginary Greece. As Artemis Leontis has observed in Topographies of Hellenism (1995), the tradition of modern European travelers to Greece, with their letters, diaries, sketches and watercolors, helped to create the idea of Greece as the locus of classicism – an idea that makes it harder to uncover the actual history of Greece.

One of the intellectual imperatives for a course on ancient Greece history in Greece is to recognize that the history of Greece that we learn is filtered through different national traditions. This history is predominantly influenced by Northern European Philhellenism in Germany, Britain, and France in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century, which in turn influenced North American conceptions of Greek history. Parallel to and predating these traditions, the Greek history of ancient Greece provides an example of a modern nation state that has been overshadowed by its homonymous ancient double throughout its history. As we have seen in the Eurozone crisis, the different proprietary claims that the rest of Europe makes on Greek antiquity continue to shape the fortunes of the modern state. With the construction of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, which opened to the public in 2009, the Greek government has renewed claims for the repatriation of Greek antiquities, most notably the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum. The readings for the course will encompass works of critical museum and heritage studies that elucidate the economics, politics, and cultural anthropological dimensions of the archaeology of Greece – what the scholar Yannis Hamilakis has referred to as the “archaeopolitics” of Greece.

The course will incorporate daily visits to an incredible variety of important sites, closely coordinated with our seminar study and guided by our faculty and expert guides.  Detailed information is available in the course brochure.

The course begins with a reception and dinner on Sunday, August 1 after a bus ride from Athens to Nafplio…. and ends when we return from Athens on Thursday, August 12. We will stay at luxury hotels in Nafplio and Athens with the option for single or double rooms.

The program cost is $11,250 per person double occupancy without airfare. Single supplements are available. Deposit is $2,000 per person. Balance is due on March 31, 2021.  We also invite you to bring a companion/guest; details and costs for this are described in the full course brochure.  Cancellation refund and COVID-19 refund policies are detailed on the registration page and in the course brochure  – so you can register without worries.  Looking forward to seeing you there!