LBST 533 - Thinking through Money

How are relationships - relationships between friends, spouses, lovers, children and parents, fellow citizens, soldiers and commanders, students and teachers - like or unlike commercial transactions? And what, in fact, characterizes commercial transactions? In Classical Athens these were especially pressing questions, since Athenian society had been transformed by monetization, which provided a new conceptual framework for thinking about social relationships and obligations, and put pressure on traditional understandings. The great literary forms of this period - tragedy, comedy, the Socratic dialogue - reflect and respond to this conceptual pressure, and this course will explore both the process of monetization and how Classical Athenian intellectuals responded to the questions it raised by interrogating different kinds of relationship in works such as Euripides’ Medea, Sophocles’ Antigone, Aristophanes’ Knights, Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s Republic.

Unit(s): 0.5
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Graduate course. Offered spring 2027.
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Identify interactions and influences among various disciplines, fields, theories, analytical strategies, and source materials.
Deploy skills, methods, and knowledge developed in coursework.
Demonstrate close, analytical interpretations of source materials in one’s writing.
Conduct complex research, synthesize it, and argue persuasively in support of a claim based on evidence.
Analyze the value and significance of one’s own academic and creative work, and situate it within the context of similar works.
Express oneself articulately in oral discussion and in presentational modes when appropriate, and express oneself articulately in writing.