How did the ancient Greeks construct their ‘racial’ and ‘ethnic’ identity? In this course, students are introduced to contemporary race theory as well as the difficulties and benefits of applying these theories to the study of ancient societies. Students come to understand the distinction between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ as socially constructed phenomena. By exploring the discursive function of myth and ancient historiography in promoting claims of common ancestry, geographical origins, language, religion, culture and values, they investigate the changing and conflicting ideas of what it meant to be Greek over time in antiquity: from the Archaic through the Classical and Hellenistic to the Roman Imperial periods. Topics such as ancient racism, ancient cosmopolitanism, the barbarians, and imperialism will be explored, especially in connection with slavery, trade, colonization and war.

Students also learn about the central role played by education in the construction of race and ethnicity, both in the ancient Greek and in the modern Western contexts. They examine the role of a classical education in fostering a sense of commonality of ancestry, geographical and linguistic origins, religion, culture and values. In respect to antiquity, students look at attempts to create a classical canon in the Roman period by writers of Greek in the so-called Second Sophistic movement. In particular they focus on the tendentious privileging of Homeric and Late Archaic and Classical poetry and Attic (i.e. Athenian) prose as “pure” Greek over the contemporary Hellenistic poetry and so-called Asiatic and koine prose. The impact of this construction on subsequent thinking about what should count as Greek language and literature in Western European/American education is also explored. On the more negative side, students will look at the influence of ancient conceptions, philosophies and theories about race and ethnicity on modern theories, especially the theories of racial and ethnic superiority that emerged in the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Students will be examining the ‘explosive’ aspects of what the ancient Greeks mean in the racial politics of America today. Students will study the relationship between ‘Greekness’ and the construction of “Whiteness” and “Blackness” as the dominant ethnic and racial binary in American culture. They will also consider some of the key issues in the “Black Athena” controversy in the American academy as well as the debate among African-American authors about the place of Classics in African-American literature.