First-Year Seminar: The Trojan War in Myth, Art, and Reality

The Trojan War was one of the most significant events in the history of the world. It was also, almost certainly, fictional. The goal of this class will be to examine the wide-ranging and varied evidence for the story of the Trojan War and its long-lasting cultural influence, from antiquity to the present day. Ultimately, we will seek to understand how every reflection on the Trojan War as a past event - whether poetic, artistic, or archaeological - has also been a reflection of a contemporary society - Iron Age Greece, Imperial Rome, Modern Europe - and an attempt to situate that society within a global history. In doing so, the class will also address questions of pressing contemporary relevance: including how civilizations form and collapse, how fact and fiction are intertwined in the construction of civic and ethnic identities, and how certain kinds of evidence may be alternately privileged or suppressed in the creation of historical narratives. Prerequisites: none
Course Attributes: FA AH; BU Hum; BU IS; AS HUM; AS LCD; FA HUM; AR HUM; EN H

First-Year Seminar: The Trojan War in Myth, Art, and Reality

CLASSICS 1040

Section 01