This course will explore ways in which democratic Athens conceived of legal and social status, for both citizens and non. Here was the first experiment with radical democracy in the west. But who was included and excluded and on what terms and logic? How did Athenian law define and treat categories of person within the state’s compass? Enslaved people, freedmen, and non-citizens? Male, female, and minor citizens? Illegitimate offspring, homosexuals, and sex-workers? How did law and social norms work together to shape behavior within different groups? and where did they clash?
The watchword for this course will be ‘open’. For part of our work I shall assign readings, which you read and we all discuss. But each student will also be responsible for identifying, reading, and very briefly describing/critiquing (in writing) scholarship that speaks in some way to her/his own interests. We shall keep these ’running notes’ in a shared location. This will (1) help shape discussion, (2) aid development of SCS style presentation ideas, and (3) give everyone the seed of a notes file / annotated bibliography, which can be kept and expanded for future use (studying for exams, developing lectures, whatever).
Each student will also be responsible for writing several very brief (1p), rough, idea logs. These are an opportunity to generate seeds of ideas for future development; don’t edit, don’t revise, don’t polish, don’t stress; just try to have and express the raw beginnings of an idea. These too we will deposit in a shared folder. Generating ideas is very hard work. So, we’ll do that work in the open and to the benefit of each other.
Finally, each student will have the opportunity to write a an SCS style abstract and presentation, for which we will share drafts, read each other’s work; if students would like to co-author, great; if students would like to write discrete papers that somehow fit together, as if in a ‘panel’, great. If students would like to hole up in the library and write alone, also great. In any case, we’ll share our work with each other.