CCIV 243 WOMEN AND THE POLIS

SPRING 2004

CCIV 243
T Th 2:40-4 pm
Prof. Marilyn A. Katz
Department of Classical Studies
335 Science Tower
Office Hours: TTh 12-1 pm
mkatz@wesleyan.edu

This course will study women in ancient Greece in relation to the history and institutions of the polis (city-state), and will give equal weight to each of the two course title topics ("women" and "polis"). Beginning with the subject of (1) women and the origins of the polis in the archaic period, we will go on to study (2) women in relation to the religious, political, economic, social, and judicial institutions of the polis in the classical period, and then (3) to reconsider each of these two main topics in more depth, by discussing together the results of students' researches into a variety of sub-topics. The main focus of the course will be on women and the socio-cultural institutions of ancient Greece in the archaic and early classical periods. In each week of the course, reading from a secondary source will be paired with reading of a primary text.

Preference for registration for this course is given to Classics and Classical Studies Majors, Women's Studies Majors, Seniors, and Juniors, with no preferential distinctions among these groups. Sophomores have second priority; Frosh are not eligible for admission.

Course Requirements

1. Reading: Required Texts and Other Materials

All texts assigned for purchase are available at Atticus; be sure to check the Book Co-op, too, for used versions of some of these. There are also links on the Web to most of the assigned readings. Copies of all required and optional texts for the course are on 4-hour reserve for the course in Olin. Copies of some texts are also available in the Classical Studies Seminar Room (334 Science Center), which is open 24 hours a day. These texts can be used only in the seminar room and should not be removed.

Gonick, Women in Ancient Athens, Leckie, "Misogyny," and Katz, "Did the Women of Ancient Athens Attend the Theatre in the Eighteeenth Century?" (Web Sites). These are background materials available on the Web. Please read them before coming to the first class on January 22.

Assigned Texts to be purchased:
Fine, The Ancient Greeks (Harvard, 1983)
Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Harvard, 1995)
Henderson, trans., Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women (Routledge, 1996)
Hesiod, Works and Days and Theogony (Hackett, 1993)
Herodotus, Histories (Penguin, 1996)
Xenophon, Conversations of Socrates (Penguin, 1990)
Lloyd, ed., Hippocratic Writings (Penguin, 1984)
Fantham et al., Women in the Classical World (Oxford, 1994) (optional; resource text)
Morkot, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece (Penguin, 1996) (optional)


Assigned Reading on Web Sites:
Katz, "Daughters of Demeter"
Katz, "Women, Children and Men"
Thomas Martin, Overview of Archaic and Classical Greek History (optional)
Selections from Homer, Pindar, Alcaeus, Sappho, Thucydides, Demosthenes

Other Materials:
For each week, there are supplementary materials (background information and study questions) available on the web site for the course. Students should familiarize themselves with these materials as they are preparing their assignments, and before coming to class.

2. Writing: Written Assignments

Each student will be required to develop an HTML project (a World Wide Web Site) for the course.
Early on in the semester, there will be a evening-hour tutorial session to teach you the basics of constructing a Web Site; a student will also be available for consultation throughout the semester.

The midterm for the course will consist of an HTML outline for your project. Topics are posted on the CCIV 243 Paper Topics Site. There are also links to sites which will help you in developing your project.

If you would like to get an idea of what such a project might look like, consult the "papers" submitted for Classics 135 at Tufts University in Spring 1997. This will also show you that working on such a project offers a great deal of scope for imagination and that, once you get through the basics of Web Page construction, it will be fun!

During the last five class sessions, and during the three hours reserved for this course during exam period, students will present their WEB SITE PROJECTS to the class. The assigned reading for these classes will cover the material on which the Web Site is based. (For each project, the assigned reading will be roughly equivalent to one Greek tragedy.)

Link here to access the sites posted by the students in this class as their final projects.

3. Discussion: Class Attendance and Other Requirements

This course is a discussion seminar. Students are expected to complete the readings and other assignments before class, hand in outlines on time and come to class prepared to discuss the material assigned for that day. Each student will receive a grade for class participation, which will include a grade reflecting their comments on other students' projects, and this grade will make up 50% of the final grade for the course.

Thus, if you do not come to class prepared on a regular basis, and do not participate in class discussion regularly, you will do poorly in this course. Take this requirement seriously and consider its implications before enrolling for this course!

To make it easier for you to do well in this part of the course, there is a HyperNews Site for the course on which you can (a) continue discussion of issues raised in class and introduce new issues related to the week's topic, and (b) contribute your thoughts and ideas in the event that you have to miss class for medical, sports, family emergency, or other pressing reasons.
To see what a course HyperNews Site looks like, link here to the HyperNews Site for CCIV 110 (Fall 1997), where students posted their papers and commented on each others' papers. (This link will be removed shortly after the beginning of the Spring 1998 semester.)
See also the Forum for Religion 204 (Fall 1997). Follow this link to the Homepage for Religion 204 and click on Forum in the left-hand Frame. This site resembles closely what ours for CCIV 243 will look like.

Your HTML outline and HTML final project (described above under 2. Writing) will make up 50% of your final grade.

Syllabus and summary of course deadlines

Note: From the Syllabus you can link to all course materials. Locally-created maps and images, however, will not be visible on the WWW; they will appear on all pages accessed from servers within the Wesleyan domain only.

Image credits:
1. Hydria with Domestic Scene by the Niobid Painter. ca. 460 BCE. New York: The Solow Art and Architecture Foundation. Source: Ellen Reeder, Pandora: Women in Classical Greece, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995.
2. White-ground lekythos by the Klügmann Painter with Woman Reading from Papyrus Scroll. ca. 440 BCE. Paris: Louvre (CA 2220); ARV2 1199.25.
3. Red-figure stemless cup by Douris with School Scene. ca. 490 BCE. Berlin: Staatliche Museum (F2285). ARV2 431-2.48. Source: T. B. L. Webster, Everyday Life in Classical Athens, New York, G. P. Putnam, 1969.
4. Terracotta pair of women conversing from Myrina. ca. 200 BCE. London: British Museum (C529, H. B. Walters, Catalogue of Teracottas [1903]). Source: J. G. Pedley, Greek Art and Archaeology, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1993.

Last revised 18 October 2004