The seminar will be devoted to the careful reading of the extant corpora of Sappho and Alcaeus (including recently published fragments), as well as surveying the secondary literature on these two poets. We will situate their output within the broader system of archaic Greek poetry in its cultural context, and consider such issues as audience, performance context, genre, re-performance/reception, and interaction with other genres (e.g., epic, iambic). In relation to the newest Sappho fragments, we will also consider issues of provenance, the looting of and illegal trade in papyri, and ethical papyrological practices.