ANCS 350-01, Spring 2022

Race and ethnicity continue to be important factors shaping the contemporary world. To what extent did these concepts exist in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans, and how can their understandings of them help us understand our own times?

This course will begin with an introduction to the concepts of race and ethnicity, both how they have been explained within the world of Greek and Roman studies and within the social sciences. From an understanding of race and ethnicity grounded in these theoretical works, we will move on to engage with primary sources, both literary and visual. We will discuss the ways that Greeks differentiated themselves from other people, including Celts, Germans, Scythians, Persians, and Ethiopians.

Throughout the course, we will discuss the construction of race and ethnicity and consider views on both sides of the debate as to whether race is a useful way to understand ancient identities. At the end of the term, we will examine racism within and perpetuated by the discipline of Classics (the study of Ancient Greece and Rome) and debates about its future.