Catullus and Horace Online Graduate Class This Summer

The Department of Classical Studies at UNC Greensboro will be offering a graduate course online this summer:

Latin 601: Lyric Poetry
Taught by Hugh Parker, Ph.D.
July 11-July 29
1 – 3:30 pm EDT, M-F

This three-week course will be taught in real time (synchronously). The program that we will be using to communicate is called Elluminate. It’s a web-based program, and there is nothing that students need to buy or download. All you will need to have is a computer and a headset with a microphone (the course is strictly audio, so you can wear whatever your want to class).

The focus of LAT 601 will be Catullus and Horace. We’ll read selections from the first 60 or so poems of Catullus and from Horace’s Odes; we’ll spend about a week and half on each author. This course is being offered to the students in our M.Ed. in Latin program and is an ideal course for Latin teachers. You don’t need to be enrolled in the M.Ed. program to take the course.

The only requirements are a bachelor’s degree (sorry, university regulations will not allow us to admit undergraduates to this class) and permission of the instructor, which is easily obtained.

This class is meant to be an introduction to the poetry of Catullus and Horace; no previous experience with lyric poetry, Catullus, or Horace is necessary. We will certainly be discussing the poems that we read as works of literature, but the primary purpose of the course will be to improve everyone’s Latin, and so in addition to talking about the literary qualities of the poetry, we’ll be discussing and reviewing grammar as needed.

As far as books for the course go, any text of Horace’s Odes will be fine. A good one for a class of this sort is Daniel Garrison, Horace: Epodes and Odes, University of Oklahoma Press (ISBN: 0806130571). For Catullus, there is so much disagreement on the text of Catullus, it's best that we all used the same book, Kenneth Quinn, Catullus. The Poems, Bristol Classical Press (ISBN: 1853994979).

If you have any questions about the class, please contact Dr. Parker at hcparker at uncg dot edu or (336) 334-5703. He will be happy to help in any way he can.

Hugh Parker is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Classical Studies, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he teaches Latin, Greek, and classical civilization courses. His chief interests in Classics are Latin poetry, Silver Latin literature, and medieval Latin. When not worrying about Latin, his chief interests are European and American literature, playing the banjo in a spectacularly inexpert way, and cocker spaniels.

David Wharton
Director of Graduate Studies,
Department of Classical Studies
Director, Linguistics Program
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC
http://www.uncg.edu/cla

Wharton, D. [Latinteach] Catullus and Horace online this summer. Latinteach listserv (latinteach@nxport.com, 11 Apr 2011).