Course Catalogue

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This course explores the literary, documentary, archaeological, and bioarchaeological evidence for impairment and disability in the ancient world, and examines the lived experience of impaired and disabled individuals in the ancient world.

10 x one-hour seminars and 10 x one-hour lectures across 10 weeks of one semester.

Standard entry to Masters at College level.

CLASSIC4084 Impairment and Disability in the Ancient World

None.

One 3500 word essay - 60%.

One 1500 word object analysis - 40%.

This course aims to:

■ Provide students with the opportunity to become familiar with impairment and disability in the ancient world, an aspect of ancient culture and society that is often overlooked.

■ Engage closely with the different types of evidence for impairment and disability in the ancient world and evaluate their historical worth.

■ Engage closely with theoretical approaches to impairment and disability in other historical periods and the contemporary world and evaluate their appropriateness and relevance to the ancient world.

■ Critique the emerging sub-discipline of ancient disability studies.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

■ Identify cases of impairment and disability in the historical record.

■ Evaluate the ancient literary, documentary, archaeological, and bioarchaeological evidence for these examples.

■ Place these examples in their larger historical, cultural, and social context.

■ Formulate their own opinions regarding how these examples and the evidence for them have been received and repurposed from antiquity to the present, and argue them in a lucid and scholarly manner.

■ Appraise interdisciplinary scholarship from the disciplines of Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology, Bioarchaeology, and Disciplinary Studies.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.