{"id":11165,"date":"2025-03-25T15:32:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T19:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/?page_id=11165"},"modified":"2026-03-02T09:58:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:58:55","slug":"future-graduate-courses-fall-2025","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/academics\/future-graduate-courses-fall-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate Courses (Spring 2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAS CL351\/651 Latin Seminar<\/strong>
\nAesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy<\/span>
\nPrereq: CAS CL 212 or equivalent<\/em>
\nTopic for\u00a0<\/span>Spring 2026: Tacitus. <\/em><\/span>
\nReading the monographs of Tacitus: Agricola<\/i>,\u00a0Germania<\/i>,\u00a0and\u00a0Dialogus de Oratoribus<\/i>. Often considered to be Tacitus\u2019s \u201ctraining\u201d for his\u00a0magna opera<\/i>\u00a0(the\u00a0Historiae<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Annales<\/i>), these three works reveal ingenious writing and thought across several genres, including biography, ethnography, history, dialogue,\u00a0rhetoric, and literary criticism. They also provide some insight into the Tacitus the person. Students will have the opportunity to tailor their final assessment to their individual needs (translation exam prep, history of Latin (and Greek!) language exam prep, writing towards publication, et al.)\u00a0<\/span>This course may be repeated for credit as topics change.<\/span>
\nMWF 2:30-3:20PM\u00a0 Dr. Brandon Jones<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

CAS CL391\/691 Greek Seminar\u00a0<\/strong>
\nAesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy<\/span>
\nPrereq: CAS CL262 or equivalent<\/em><\/span>
\nTopic for Spring 2026: Homeric Hyms. <\/span>
\nWe’ll be reading two great Homeric Hymns, the\u00a0<\/span>Hymn to Demeter<\/i>\u00a0and the\u00a0<\/span>Hymn to Aphrodite (<\/i>in dactylic hexameters)<\/span>.<\/i>\u00a0One is an\u00a0intimate\u00a0story of mother and daughter, death and fertility, and cult; the other, the witty\u00a0story of love and seduction, love and death, love and culture, and the birth of Aeneas. Both myths play off of Greek marriage practices. Those in CL691 will attend all TR classes and meet biweekly for additional readings from other Greek Hymns.<\/span>
\nTR 2:00-3:15PM\u00a0 \u00a0Professor Stephen Scully<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

CAS CL501\/RN794 Magical Texts<\/b>
\nT 3:30-6:15PM\u00a0 \u00a0Professor Frankfurter<\/strong>
\nAn advanced course in the interpretation of ancient magical texts that emphasizes the use of theoretical models (Malinowski, Levi-Strauss, Tambiah, J.Z. Smith, et al.) for understanding the complementary uses of sound and symbol, myth and nonsense, and forms of verbal\/scribal efficacy in magic, all with attention to social context. Texts include a selection of ritual manuals, amulets, binding tablets, and mystical ascent texts from Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian antiquity.<\/p>\n

CAS CL562 Survey of Greek Literature 2<\/strong>
\nR 2:00-3:15PM<\/span> \u00a0 Professor Steven Smith<\/a><\/strong>
\nGreek Survey II overs\u00a0Greek\u00a0literature from the classical period to late antiquity and will help students prepare to take the PhD\u00a0Greek\u00a0Translation Exam and the PhD History of Greek Literature Exam. Selections from the\u00a0<\/span>PhD<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Greek<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Translation Reading List<\/span><\/a>\u00a0will be paired with appropriate selections from later periods (Thucydides with Procopius, for example, and Demosthenes\u2019\u00a0<\/span>On the Crown<\/i>\u00a0with Plutarch\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Life of Demosthenes<\/i>). These pairings will enhance students\u2019 grasp of generic developments and thematic continuity\/change over the very long history of Greek literature. Students may expect to prepare between 10-20 pages of\u00a0Greek each week. Supplemental readings in modern scholarship (1-2 seminal essays each week) will help students become familiar with important scholarly questions related to the authors, genres, and texts covered. There will be weekly quizzes and a final exam.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

CAS CL720 Graduate Greek Seminar<\/strong>
\nTopic for Spring 2026: Philosophy in Virgil
\nF 3:30-6:15PM\u00a0 \u00a0 Professor Stephanie Nelson<\/a><\/strong>
\nWas Virgil a philosopher? Did he espouse a particular philosophical school in his poetry? How do mythical or religious world views or voices interact with scientific, rational, or philosophical ones? The ancient biographies of our poet consistently associate Virgil with Epicureanism, as do the pseudonymous works attributed to him, though readers over the centuries have also detected sympathy for other philosophies in his poetry, and many assume that Virgil at some point abandons the \u201cEpicureanism of his youth.\u201d In this class, we will read selections from the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, as well as the Appendix Vergiliana, Lives of Vergil, and fragments of Philodemus to explore these questions and consider how poetry and philosophy interact in Virgil\u2019s works.<\/p>\n

CAS CL791 Graduate Greek Seminar<\/strong>
\nF 12:00-2:45PM\u00a0 \u00a0 Professor Stephanie Nelson<\/a><\/strong>
\nThis course will examine Athenian comedy and tragedy by looking at selected texts and at vases that appear to refer to both these texts and to other Greek dramas. Questions to be examined include the relation\/difference between visual and textual evidence, the extent to which we can recapture the actual experience of the drama, the relation of a 5th c. location for the performances to a later, Italian reception in material culture, and the significance of differences in representation between tragedy and comedy. In addition to an overall consideration of the plays and pots assigned for consideration each student will be asked to prepare a particular pot for presentation to the class. Readings of the plays will be in translation and class will meet periodically at the Museum of Fine Arts. Meets with Becky Martin\u2019s AH 533, Fridays 12:00-2:45<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAS CL351\/651 Latin Seminar Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy Prereq: CAS CL 212 or equivalent Topic for\u00a0Spring 2026: Tacitus. Reading the monographs of Tacitus: Agricola,\u00a0Germania,\u00a0and\u00a0Dialogus de Oratoribus. Often considered to be Tacitus\u2019s \u201ctraining\u201d for his\u00a0magna opera\u00a0(the\u00a0Historiae\u00a0and\u00a0Annales), these three works reveal ingenious writing and thought across several genres, including biography, ethnography, history, dialogue,\u00a0rhetoric, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9604,"featured_media":0,"parent":7103,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11165"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11569,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11165\/revisions\/11569"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/classics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}