Art History 115
Freshman Seminar: Greek Art in Society

This freshman seminar will explore the relationships between Greek art and the society which produced it. We will investigate a series of topics including the Trojan War in art and literature (and relate it to the recent movie Troy); the Olympic games, following the Summer 2004 Olympics in Athens; and the symposium in art and literature. We will focus in part on content and context, the roles that works of art played in ancient Greek society, and in part on methodology, how scholars and students use those works of art and literature to reconstruct an ancient culture. In particular, we will work extensively with on-line resources, including Perseus, a multimedia database of Greek art and literature. As the internet has fundamentally changed the way students and scholars do research, we will discuss in depth how to use internet resources critically. Students will do original research and present the results of their work to the class.

Open to Freshmen only.