2026-2027 Graduate Courses & Descriptions

Language Courses 

Research Seminars

Language Course Descriptions

GRK1055H1 Greek Epigram - S. Menn

A course on Greek verse epigram, from archaic to Byzantine but centering on the Hellenistic period. We will start with inscribed epigrams (preserved archeologically or in literary sources), mostly epitaphs and inscriptions on temple dedications especially of statues, and then look at how epigram becomes a literary genre, starting with texts attributed to Simonides but looking especially at the earlier strata of the Greek Anthology. We will go from inscriptions on actual objects, to inscriptions on notional objects, to texts that don't even pretend to be inscribed but still model themselves on inscriptions; and from epitaphic and dedicatory to ekphrastic and amatory and other new types of epigrams which develop epitaphic and dedicatory models. And we will go from single epigrams, to series of epigrams responding to each other, to whole books: single-authored (or allegedly single-authored) books of epigrams, books ("anthologies") where you select your favorite epigrams and maybe interweave them with your own variations, and books embedding a series of epigrams in a prose context. The symposium as a context for orally performing epigrams and responding to other people's epigrams, and the Alexandrian Mouseion as a notional symposium lasting for centuries. Some reflections on what makes a genre a genre, and on whether epigram and elegy are the same genre or two different genres, and if time allows some comparison with Roman epigram (Catullus, Martial), modern imitations of ancient epigram, and Sanskrit epigram [subhāṣita].

GRK1000H Advanced Studies in Greek Language - D. Kenny

A course designed to enhance language skills. Prose composition, sight translation, stylistic analysis of classical Greek prose. Students should enhance their skills in reading Greek prose in this course. Specifically, at the end of the course they should: 

• have increased confidence and ability in reading classical Greek prose at sight 
• be able to translate passages of English prose into classical Greek prose 
• have improved their appreciation of classical Greek prose style 

Graduate students entering the program will already have the knowledge they need for accomplishing these objectives; this course will focus on the application of that knowledge and the development of some appropriate skills. 

LAT1000H Advanced Studies in Latin Language - M. Dewar

This course will provide a systematic review of advanced Latin syntax in combination with elementary prose composition, practice in sight translation, and the stylistic analysis of a representative sample of classical Latin prose authors from a variety of genres.

GRK1800 Greek Historiography - E. Lytle

This course is intended as a survey of Ancient Greek historical writing – historiography – as viewed through the relatively narrow lens of the department's Greek prose reading list. Given the limitations of the reading list this survey will be decidedly incomplete – notable absences include Xenophon (at least while wearing his historian’s cap), the many important but fragmentary historians of the fourth century BCE through the end of the Hellenistic period (apart from Polybius), as well as the Christian historians of later antiquity. Nevertheless, the reading list includes a number of key programmatic passages as well as a diversity of texts sufficient to allow us to trace the early development of the genre of Greek historiography, to understand Greek historical writing in the larger contexts of Greek literature and thought, and to familiarize ourselves with some of the key themes in modern scholarship on Greek historiography.

LAT1800 TBD - E. Gunderson

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Research Seminars Course Descriptions

CLA5004H Dithyramb and the Dithyrambic - D. Kenny

The extant corpus of classical Greek poetry includes only a few poems identified as “dithyrambs,” which remain relatively under-studied. But the “dithyrambic” -- conceived not only as a generic category, but also as an aesthetic ideal (and/or failure) -- has exercised enormous influence on the interpretation and reception of ancient Greek literature. Poetic excess, Dionysian ecstasy, archaic immediacy, “the prototype of complete freedom” (F. Schlegel): these are a few of the things the dithyrambic has connoted from antiquity to the present.

Our primary focus in the seminar will be the surviving examples of ancient dithyramb, particularly those of Pindar and Bacchylides, which we will situate in a broader song culture with reference to adjacent forms, including paian (Pindar, Philodamos), tragedy (Euripides), and nomos (Timotheos). We will also examine key theoretical engagements with the idea of the dithyrambic from antiquity (e.g., Plato and Aristotle) and modernity (e.g., Herder, Nietzsche), as well as some specimens of modern “dithyramb.” 

CLA5009H Terence - J. Welsh

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CLA5016H Greek Coinage - B. Akrigg, K. Cooper

This course will be a practical, hands-on introduction to Greek coins and numismatics using the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). It will be co-taught by Dr. Kate Cooper, Mirkopoulos Associate Curator of Ancient Greece & Rome. We will cover the history of Greek coinage and the production of coinage from the sixth to the first century BC, and will examine the use of coins as historical and archaeological evidence. We will also explore the reality of researching in a museum context, and investigate issues of collection history, conservation, and public display. The first session will meet in the Classics department and further sessions will take place in the ROM curatorial centre.

CLA5018H Epigraphy and the Position of Freed Slaves in Roman Towns - C. Bruun

This seminar has two objectives. One is general and methodological: to acquaint participants with how the study of inscriptions enhances our understanding of Roman society. The other objective is topical: to study the situation of freed slaves in Roman towns, primarily in the western part of the empire. The focus is on slavery and the fate of enslaved individuals, but because the epigraphic sources providing information about freed slaves are much more abundant than texts that refer to the still enslaved, the seminar will largely be concerned with freedmen and freedwomen. Questions of social, political, cultural, economic, and religious nature will engage the participants. Besides the epigraphic sources, juridical and literary texts will obviously play a role.

CLA5021H Necropolitics - V. Wohl, R. Comay

In 2003, Achille Mbembe coined the term necropolitics to describe a contemporary political order oriented toward the production of death. Departing from Foucault’s concept of biopower as the management and administration of the living, necropolitics names “forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to living conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead.” From classical antiquity, through the West's long history of colonialism, slavery, and genocide, Mbembe’s concept has never been more pressing than it is today. This course brings together a wide array of texts and artifacts– ancient and modern, written and visual– to examine the production of “death worlds”: individual, collective, and planetary. We aim to explore both the theoretical concept of necropolitics and some of the specific cultural and historical forms it has taken, from the ancient world to the present. Each week will juxtapose a literary and/or visual object with a theoretical text. Our discussions will draw on contemporary debates about mourning and memory, racial capitalism and slavery, settler colonialism, border regimes, carcerality, illness and disability, gender violence, genocide, ecocide, and nuclear holocaust. We welcome students from diverse disciplines and encourage them to bring their own expertise and interests to the discussion.

MAC1000Y Methods in Mediterranean Archaeology - S. Murray

The study of the ancient Mediterranean world has been both enriched and complicated by the diversity of cultures and states that occupied its shores throughout antiquity, and the vastly different bodies of evidence those cultures and states left behind. This diversity of evidence has led to the development of distinctive standard methodologies operating within sub-disciplines. The aim of this course is to provide students with a critical understanding of what constitutes method within the different domains of Classical archaeology, ancient history, and prehistory, and the challenges and opportunities in working across these methods to produce new frameworks for researching the ancient Mediterranean. Students will examine ways in which historical and archaeological methods might be applied comparatively or diachronically across traditional chronological or geographical boundaries. Themes and topics to be discussed will include demography and settlement patterns, religion and art, technology and economy, and connectivity and networks. Readings will be drawn from several core ‘classic' texts on the ancient Mediterranean and specific case-studies. Students will be evaluated based on in-class presentations, participation in discussion, and a major research paper.