Topics in Ancient Drama

This course is designed as an accompaniment to the Greek or Latin play that is put on by the Barnard and Columbia Ancient Drama Group each year, though it is open to any student interested in the aesthetics and politics of theater and drama. Course focus and some content will rotate year to year, calibrated to serve the play or plays chosen by the student director. We will read these and other relevant other plays or similarly adjacent texts, as well as scholarly literature on topics centered around the body in performance, including ancient theaters and stage space, costumes and masks, deportment and gestures, proxemics, and so on. We will also explore aspects of ancient drama and theatricality that relate to translation and reception, as well as inflections of gender and status. Other topics may include the mythic background (e.g., in epic and/or lyric), politics of aesthetics in ancient Athens, and gender-genre dynamics. Each component will extend over three or four classes and consider the ancient plays through readings of primary texts (in translation) and conceptual / contextual backgrounds. There will be an additional class hour for those who wish to read the play in the original language (signed up for as a 1-point directed reading)