This course traces the emergence of democratic institutions and practices in the ancient world, paying special attention to Athenian democracy from the time of Cleisthenes’ reforms to the death of Alexander the Great. Students will build the skill set: necessary to successfully evaluate and integrate a variety of relevant evidence to construct a historical narrative. Central to this narrative are the paradoxes of inclusion and exclusion, and liberty and oppression within democratic societies. Targeting the core issues of citizenship and citizens’ rights, this course examines the circumstances which gave rise to the mass enfranchisement of new socio-economic classes, yet deprived women, foreign-born residents, and overseas subjects of key forms of political, legal, and bodily sovereignty. So too, we address Athenian slave-holding practices, not only to understand the hierarchies of power upon which Athenian “egalitarianism” rested but in order to compare productively the democracies of the ancient past with the American present.
This course is Cross-Listed with CLAS 3008.
