The Use & Abuse of Ancient History

Catalog description

This course will evaluate the ways in which ancient events, individuals, art, and literature have been recycled, manipulated, and (mis)understood by modern societies, particularly in political contexts. We will tackle an entire range of the (mis)uses of ancient history, including its recontextualization in the service of pseudoscience; generational racism; historical revisionism; partisan politics; and sensationalized fiction. However, the course material is not only concerned with a presentist approach; we will develop these issues within an historical continuum, examining also the ways in which censorship, revisionism, and (mis)appropriation was incorporated into ancient narratives about their own distant pasts. The nature of the course framework is such that the students will receive a wide-angled survey of the ancient world, moving through periods associated with Ancient Near Eastern empires, all the way to imperial Rome. The class will be lecture and discussion-based.