Here is a list of the editions and translations we are using.
To view a plain-text schedule of the readings,
without the Internet links, please click here.
This course is taught in many sections, but remains a single course common to all students.
Here are our Common Course Description and Common Procedures.
9/3, W Introduction; Homer Odyssey, Books 1-4. A good starting site is Exploring Ancient World Cultures, which facilitates comparison between various ancient cultures.
9/3, W First Core Coffee Talk! Margo Scribner talks about writing. 7 P.M. Gaiser Auditorium. Bring your Hacker (Pocket Manual of Style) if you have it.
9/5, F Homer, Odyssey 5-8. Here is an image of three gold drinking cups from the tholos tombs near Pylos.
9/8, M Homer, Odyssey 9-12. The Perseus Project is an enormous database of materials on Greek culture including text, maps and other images.
9/10, W Homer, Odyssey 13-16. If you are interested in the mythological background, a good starting point is The Mythology Project from Princeton University.
9/12, F Homer, Odyssey 17-20. Here is a page with fragments of Ancient Greek Music.
9/15, M Homer, Odyssey 21-24. This site has images of the citadel at Mycenae.
9/17, W Sappho. On e-reserves at Penrose Library. To listen to Sappho in the original Greek, here is Stephen Daitz of CUNY reading the Hymn to Aphrodite.
9/19, F Sappho. Here is a Sappho Page with various resources.
9/22, M Euripides, Medea (entire). Here is an Introduction to Greek Tragedy from the Brooklyn College Core; the Core folks at Reed also have a good site on Greek Theater.
9/24, W Euripides, Medea. An outstanding academic site on the web for material on women in the Ancient World is Diotima, Materials for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World.
9/26, F Euripides, The Bacchae (entire). For a red-figured vase portrayal of the myth, click here.The tragedies all came from Athens. The Ancient Theatre Archive is a "virtual reality tour" of many Greek and Roman theatres produced by Whitman's Tom Hines.
9/29, M Euripides, The Bacchae. For a review of a recent Scottish production, see the the New York Times.
10/1, W Tragedy comparison. Tara Maginnis' costume site has some suggestions on Greek costume.
10/3 F Plato, Apology. Here is an ancient bust of Socrates.
10/6, M Plato, Symposium pp. 1-39. Here is an essay on The Social Construction of Homosexuality which considers the Greek context and the modern perspective of Foucault.
10/8, W Plato, Symposium pp. 40-60. Here is an essay on Plato and His Dialogues from the Exploring Ancient World Cultures site.
10/10, F Plato, Symposium pp. 61-77. The idealism presented by Diotima is related to the famous Allegory of the Cave from Plato's Republic, discussed here in notes by Marc Cohen at the Univ. of Washington.
10/13 M Fall Break
10/15 W Gilgamesh, Tablets I-III. A typical cuneiform tablet of part of the epic measures a mere 15 x 13 x 3 cm. See one here.
10/17 F Gilgamesh, Tablets IV-VIII. Some images have been put up by Laura Gibb (University of Oklahoma), at Myth-Folklore Online. Note especially depictions of Shamash (the sun god), Ishtar (goddess of love, sex and warfare), the monster Humbaba, and Gilgamesh and Enkidu slaying the bull of heaven.
10/20 M Gilgamesh, Tablets IX-XI. Here is some information on the Black Sea floods of ~8000 years ago which may have inspired these tales. (Digression: catastrophic floods also sculpted the landscape of Eastern Washington surrounding Whitman College. Read about glacial lake Missoula and the Missoula Floods at Nova's website ).
10/22 W The Tanakh, Genesis 1-11. Click here for a translation of the Babylonian creation myth.
10/24 F Genesis 12-22. Check out this on-line exhibit of Hurrian artifacts from the Semitic museum at Harvard. Artists' impressions of the Binding of Isaac live here.
10/27 M Exodus 1-15. Here is a detailed timeline for the history of Judaism from the Jewish Virtual Library.
10/29 W Exodus 16-24, 32-34. For more on Moses and the Exodus, see Washington State University's learning module.
10/31 F Job 1-21. Brown Univ. has a nice page on the ancient Nabatean city of Petra.
11/3 M Job 28-31, 38-42. For other ancient ways of dealing with stress, check out this article on brewing Sumerian beer.
11/5 W Cicero, On Duties, I.1-91 (pp. 1-36). Joseph Hughes at Missouri State has a detailed Cicero page, including some nice sources on ancient rhetoric.
11/7 F Cicero, On Duties, I.92-161 (pp. 36-62). Watch various performances of part of Cicero's speech Pro Caelio courtesy of the classics department at UCLA.
11/10 M Cicero, On Duties, II (pp. 63-100). Read Plutarch's Life of Cicero from the Loeb Classical Library.
11/11 T REQUIRED lecture, 4 P.M. Maxey Auditorium. Anthony Long of UC Berkeley speaks on "Cicero's Communitarian Politics".
11/12 W The New Oxford Annotated Bible,The Gospel of Luke, 1-9:50. The World Wide Study Bible comes from Calvin College. It contains handy access to several translations with associated religious commentary from an American Protestant tradition.
11/14 F The Gospel of Luke, 9:51-19:27; Christus Rex maintains a fine site on the Vatican.
11/17, M The Gospel of Luke, 19:28-24. The Library of Congress has an on-line exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
11/19, W Paul, Romans, 1-8. For a collection of websites and articles on the New Testament, including the Gospels and Paul, see the New Testament Gateway.
11/21, F Paul, Romans, 9-end. PBS allows you to follow in Paul's footsteps around the Mediterranean.
Thanksgiving Break
12/1, M Augustine, Confessions 1-3. This site at Penn concerns Augustine.
12/3, W Augustine, Confession 4-6. This site at Calvin College concentrates on the Confessions.
12/5, F Augustine, Confessions 7. Here is a brief biography of Augustine from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
12/8, M Augustine, Confessions 8-9. Here is an artistic rendering of Augustine's conversion by the workshop of Fra Angelico (15th c.).
12/10, W Augustine, Confessions 10. Here is an image of a 16th-century woodcut of "God Enthroned" from a French translation of Augustine's City of God
12/12, F Semester wrap-up. And then to look ahead, here is a brief romp across the next millenium, provided by Andrea Dobson.
12/16, T 2-4 Final Exam
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1/21, W Machiavelli, The Prince, cc. 1-11. Ken Pennington at the Catholic University of America has brought together images to give you an idea of Machiavelli's Florence.
1/23, F Machiavelli, The Prince, cc. 12-20. For a quick overview of Machiavelli's other most famous work, the Discourses on Livy, read the entry from Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
1/26, M Machiavelli, The Prince, cc. 21-26. The Victorian historian Thomas Macaulay defended Machiavelli from the charge of being "Old Nick" in a famous essay.
1/28, W Shakespeare, Othello, Act 1. Go here for a virtual tour of the Globe Theatre.
1/30, F Shakespeare, Othello, Act 2. Interested in seeing Shakespeare? Go to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
2/2, M Shakespeare, Othello, Act 3. Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet is an interesting site to visit.
2/4, W Shakespeare, Othello, Act 4. Here is an ultra-condensed version of Othello from Book-A-Minute Classics.
2/6, F Shakespeare, Othello, Act 5. Othello was remade as an opera (seen in this production by The Sacramento Opera) by Verdi.
2/9, M Descartes, Discourse on Method, parts 1-2. This site at St. Andrews has some background on Descartes and his work in math and physics.
2/11, W Descartes, Discourse on Method, parts 3-4. Here are some notes about Descartes and the Legacy of Mind/Body Dualism, from Bryn Mawr.
2/13, F Descartes, Discourse on Method, parts 5-6. Check here for an otherwordly view of Descartes.
2/16, M President's Day, No class.
2/18, W Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart, cc. 1-2; 7-14. For more on Galen's physiology and Harvey's response it it, try this article from Physiology Online.
2/20, F La Mettrie, Man a Machine (entire). La Mettrie was a physician, as you can see from his eulogy, by none other than Frederick the Great.
2/23, M La Mettrie, Man a Machine
2/25, W Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, pp. 1-18. Here is a short biography of Rousseau from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
2/27, F Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, I. Here is an excellent electronic edition of the "Discours", but it is all in French, so be forewarned
3/2, M, Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, II.
3/4, W Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?" (entire). To get a .pdf, click here (access limited to Whitman community). You can listen to a podcast of a slightly different translation from Learn Out Loud here. Steven Palmquist has a catalogue of Kant web resources .
3/6, F What is Enlightenment/Comparison Day. For fun, check out the explanation of leap days at NASA.
3/9, M English Romantic Poetry: Wordsworth: "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud", "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold".; Keats: "Bright Star". Here is a collection of four Images of Romantic Art.
3/11, W English Romantic Poetry: Wordsworth: "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey". Here are several pages of pictures of the ruins of Tintern Abbey .
3/13, F English Romantic Poetry: Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Melancholy"; Wordsworth: "Mutability". On-line: Shelley: Mutability. The Perseus Project at Tufts has a fine collection of Classical Greek vases, for instance this Attic Red piece from the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, dated to about 440 BCE, showing a satyr chasing a maenad.
3/14-3/29 Spring Break
3/30, M Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, pp. 54-97. Here's a site on Hegel to help with Marx's commentary.
4/1, W Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, pp. 98-101; Preface to a Contribution on the Critique of Political Economy, pp. 209-13. Here is The Marx/Engels Internet Archive.
4/3, F Marx , Communist Manifesto, complete. Here is the text of an 1879 Chicago Tribune article on an interview with Karl Marx.
4/6, M Marx, Communist Manifesto. Can one have a light-hearted take on Marx? The makers of the Manifestoon seem to think so!
4/8, W Bronte, Wuthering Heights, cc. 1-5. For handy dandy family trees of the characters, go to the course web page of Sara Selby at Waycross College.
4/10, F Bronte, Wuthering Heights, cc. 6-12. Meredith Birmingham has put together Bronte family information, with pictures, at The Bronte Family.
4/13, M Bronte, Wuthering Heights, cc. 13-20. For more on gender, try the The Victorian Web.
4/15, W Bronte, Wuthering Heights, cc. 21-29. Here's a website from Brooklyn College devoted entirely to Emily Bronte.
4/17, F Bronte, Wuthering Heights, cc. 30-34. For pictures of the moors in Yorkshire, go here. Wuthering Heights has been voted the greatest love story of all time.
4/20, M Kafka, Metamorphosis, c. 1-2. For more on Kafka, look at The Kafka Project. Which character are you?
4/22, W Kafka, Metamorphosis, c. 3. Here is a nice site with pictures of the Journeys of Franz Kafka.
4/24, F Frayn, Copenhagen, Act I. For more information on Frayn and his play, including an interview, check out PBS' Copenhagen page.
4/27, M Frayn, Copenhagen, Act II.
4/29, W Morrison, Beloved, pp. 3-51 (to the end of the carnival). Check out the Kentucky Underground Railroad site for some historical background (courtesy of Kentucky Educational Television).
5/1, F Morrison, Beloved, pp. 52-124 (Beloved's dress in the water). Here is a page from "Voice of the Shuttle" on minority voices in literature written in English.
5/4, M Morrison, Beloved, pp. 125-195 (end of section one). Here is the text of "My Bondage and My Freedom" by Frederick Douglass.
5/6, W Morrison, Beloved, pp. 199-277 (end of section two). The Library of Congress has an on-line "resource guide for the study of black history and culture" at this site entitled "The African-American Mosaic".
5/8, F Morrison, Beloved, pp. 281-end. "Bartleby" has the text of W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk.
5/11, M Final Review. From the Secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, here is an essay on liberal education and its enduring relevance to society.
5/16, S Final Exam 9-11 A.M.
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We maintain a small archive of the most recent versions of the Antiquity and Modernity reading list. Click on the appropriate year to view a plain-text, black-on-white, schedule of readings for that year.
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This document was last updated September 1, 2008. This page was created by Dana L. Burgess and is currently maintained by Claire Valente; send any comments or suggestions to me.
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