The World Responds to the Greeks

This course examines various literary, artistic, and cultural traditions that respond to some of the most recognizable Greek motifs in myth, theater, and politics, with the aim of understanding what these motifs might be offering to these traditions in specific social-historical contexts, as well as what these traditions bring to our conventional understanding of these motifs, how they reconceptualize them and how they alter them. The overall impetus is framed by a how conditions of modernity, postcoloniality, and globality fashion themselves by engaging certain persistent imaginaries of antiquity.Texts include various renditions of Antigone in African, Caribbean, Asian or Latin American traditions, poetry by Walcott, Cavafy, and Césaire, essays by Fanon, Soyinka, Senghor, and C.L.R. James.