A new course to be developed using sources available on the Worldwideweb to supplement normal work in class & library.
"Classical" for our purposes will include mainly the Romans and Greeks
living around the Mediterranean sea for a period of time that ran from about
2000 BCE to about 500 CE. The uniqueness of the Mediterranean environment
& the importance of the environment as a condition for cultural development
have been the subject of recent discussion & will be one of the arguments
discussed & queried in the course:
see in particular the germinal argument by Jared Diamond, "Why Did Human History Unfold
Differently on Different Continents for the Last 13,000 Years?":
"Diamond's Theorem" as I would like to call
it will be a starting point for the work of the course, since it suggests
that unique features of geography gave the Mediterranean basin a distinctive
role in stimulating and facilitating human development, with consequences
that determined the shape of our modern world.
Diamond's UCLA address distills the argument of his Guns, Germs, and Steel:
The Fate of Human Societies (New York: Norton 1997). See my review of
Diamon in Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
Suggestions for other themes are especially welcome at this initial stage.
E-mail: jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu .