Mythologies of the Ancient Mediterranean World

Myth here is treated as a cultural document — a way ancient societies explained cosmos, kingship, mortality, and identity — rather than a collection of colorful stories, and you read Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman traditions side by side to see what each civilization was actually doing with its gods and heroes. The work is reading-heavy (Gilgamesh, Hesiod, the Aeneid, plus modern theorists like Segal) anchored by a midterm, a paper, and in-class commentary on films like Pasolini's Medea and Cacoyannis's Electra. It pairs naturally with HART's archaeology and classics sequence, giving you the interpretive vocabulary you'll lean on whenever later courses put you in front of a temple relief, a cult object, or an epic text.