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Classic 213 :   Geopoetics in Hellenistic Literature
Course Catalog No: 32346
4104 Dwinelle
T
Sherry Lee
2:00-5:00

This graduate seminar explores Hellenistic poetry through the concept of “geopoetics,” examining how questions of geography, environment, and place shape literary production in the aftermath of Alexander’s empire. We will consider how poets such as Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius of Rhodes represent and re-organize space across multiple dimensions: the urban environment of Ptolemaic Alexandria; imperial, colonial, and local geographies; mythological and fictional (especially bucolic) landscapes. The course will investigate how Hellenistic literature reflects and responds to shifting cultural and political realities, engaging with such themes as migration, cultural hybridity, colonization, Hellenic identity, and the production and reception of Greek literature beyond the Greek mainland.