ANME 251 - Ancient Greek Athletics

For better or worse, the ancient Olympics (motto now “Faster, Higher, Strong-Together”) has proved itself one of the most influential of Greek institutions. This course will study the values and meanings given to the ancient Olympics by studying the representation of athletic victory in the poetry and dedications that celebrated victors. What ideas of athletic victory did these memorials produce? How did they link athletic success to moral excellence, natural talent, family history, masculinity, beauty, or divine favor, and build up these very notions so that they seemed real and significant? Who could claim the political capital of athletic excellence for their own-victors? Their cities? Second-place finishers? Non-Greeks? What events counted as events-women’s events, team events, running with a shield, dog racing? And what kind of work even qualified you as a victor? Throughout we will use comparisons to the meanings that other sporting movements have sought to claim, and so we will take time to study Roman sports and the modern Olympic movement, again focusing on how various artistic forms (poetry, film, mass choreographed performances) construct victory. Course conducted in English.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): LITL 251
Notes: No Greek required.
Not offered: 2023-24
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).