This course continues the work of Ancient Mediterranean Studies 110 and 111, which examined the wayssocieties have inherited and redefined their cultural realities, accumulating along the way knowledge andexperiences which shape their religious, political and philosophical identities. In AMS 110, students focusedon how texts emerge differently according to their traditional and communicative contexts. In the secondsemester the focus shifted to examining how subsequent generations re-created, reinterpreted, at timescanonized, and at other times discarded parts of their received textual inheritance as they began to inter-act with larger literary, philosophical, and religious movements. AMS 210 begins geographically in Byzan-tium, about 900 miles east of Ravenna, where Dante died in in 1321, and about three hundred years earlieras the Seljuk Turks move westward into the territory of Byzantium. Our focus this semester will be the waysome cultures disappeared or nearly disappeared and how lost cultures reemerged.
Prerequisites: AMS 110 and AMS 111 OR HUM 101 and HUM 102