| Course ID: | CLAS 4280/6280. 3 hours. |
| Course Title: | Solitude in Ancient Rome |
Course
Description: | An analysis of what it meant to be alone in the Roman world. The course examines the literature on solitary experience and explores spaces of solitude in ancient built environments. Coursework prompts students to reflect on contemporary ideas about loneliness and isolation from a historical perspective. |
| Oasis Title: | Solitude in Ancient Rome |
| Prerequisite: | CLAS 1000 or CLAS 1000E or CLAS 1000H or CLAS 1010 or CLAS 1010E or CLAS 1010H or CLAS 1020 or CLAS 1020E or CLAS 1020H or CLAS 3000 or CLAS 3010 or CLAS(ANTH) 3015 or CLAS(ANTH) 3015E or CLAS 3030 or CLAS 3040 or CLAS3050 or permission of department |
| Grading System: | A-F (Traditional) |
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| Course Objectives: | 1. To guide students toward a historical and inclusive understanding of solitude as a key cultural concept
2. To develop and enhance students’ interpretative skills with a wide variety of ancient sources, including letters, poetry, philosophy, and material culture
3. Students will practice using their own experiences with journaling, letter-writing, and/or social media to inform the study of antiquity and its reception in later cultures
4. Students will complete a final project involving writing and active learning applications appropriate to the study of classics and classical reception |
| Topical Outline: | Unit 1: Genres of Solitude
I. Lonely Letter Writers, Ancient and Modern
II. Poetic Solitaries in the Long Virgilian Age
III. Novels and Their Reclusive Readers
IV. Learning to Be Alone, Philosophically
V. Isolation and the Textual Tradition
Unit 2: Spaces of Solitude
VI. Alone in the City
VII. Alone in the Countryside
VIII. Alone at Home
Unit 3: Politics of Solitude
IX. Exile before Ovid
X. Ovid’s Exile
XI. Exile after Ovid
XII. Voluntary Exile and Religion
Unit 4: En-Gendering Solitude
XIII. Among Women
XIV. Queering Solitude
XV. We are Alone: Solitude and Solidarity |