Ethnicity in the Ancient World

Catalog description

This course introduces students to ancient thinking about ethnicity and race. It studies the ways ancient Greeks and Romans conceived of ethnic, cultural, or racial difference, and how these ideas of similarity and difference were constructed. The course also considers how, and to what extent, ancient thinking about ethnicity and race influences modern thinking. The course uses primary and secondary texts to explore how ethnicity was defined by ancient peoples, what traits identified a person as being similar or different, and how the recognition of difference influenced an individual’s life and opportunities in the Greco-Roman world. The course examines different ways that race, ethnicity, and difference were constructed in the ancient world, and compares and contrasts this with modern constructions of these ideas.