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Course Catalog

TOPICS IN PHILOSOPHY (PL3091)

Topics vary by semester

IMPERIAL ROME: PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, SOCIETY (PL3114)

Studies the Greek and Latin literature of the Roman Empire. Readings will include: Seneca, star prose writer and poet of tragedies that impressed Shakespeare; Lucanus’ anti-Aeneid; Petronius’ Satyrica, the first Latin novel; Tacitus, the dark historian; witty epigrams and biting satire; a speech On Magic; the Stoics Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, one an ex-slave, the other an emperor; and Plutarch’s account of Antony's love for Cleopatra

KEY TEXTS: SOCRATES, SOPHISTS, AND THE STAGE (PL3116)

A grand tour of 5th cent. BCE Athens, a fascinating time of intellectual unrest and innovation. Readings include the founding fathers of drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), Old Comedy (Aristophanes), fragments of the Greek sophists, the historiographers Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon’s Recollections of Socrates and early Platonic dialogues, such as the Apology and the Phaedo.

EMPIRE AND INDIVIDUAL: FROM ALEXANDER TO CAESAR (PL3117)

A tour through 300 years of Greek and Roman history and shifting multiethnic empires, from the death of Alexander to the death of Cleopatra (30 BCE). We read a lot: overviews of the Hellenistic Age and the Roman Republic as well as original works by Menander, Epicurus, Cleanthes, Callimachus, Theocritus, Aratus, Apollonius Rhodius, Polybius, Plautus, Terence, Ennius, Sallustius, Cicero, Caesar, Lucretius, Catullus, and others.

TOPICS IN PHILOSOPHY (PL3910)

TOPICS VARY BY SEMESTER

INTERNSHIP (PL3980)

Internships may be taken for 0 credits. Students may do more than one internship, but internship credit cannot cumulatively total more than 4 credits.

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECT ON POLIT'L ECON (PL4037)

As the bridge-course for the major in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, this team-taught course offers a multidisciplinary perspective on key questions of political economy. First presenting the similarities and differences between philosophical, political and economic approaches to political and economic rationality, the course offers varied analyses of representation and government, the commons, security, inequality and debt. The overall purpose of the course is to engage students, at various levels of theoretical abstraction and empirical precision, with the fundamental issues lying between ethics, politics,and economics.

PORTFOLIO (PL4075)

Under the supervision of the major advisor, students prepare a portfolio of at least 5 essays from their major courses, along with relevant work in other courses, and identify, evaluate and justify the personal focus of their work in an introductory essay. Examined orally by a panel of faculty.