Introduction to Ancient Greek History

How I View Ancient History

The study of ancient history organically blends aspects of storytelling with geography, archaeology, religion, and psychology. With often incomplete primary sources available to us, and needing to sift through the author's bias of the ones we do have, studying ancient history absolutely requires a combination of disciplines to come alive accurately and well. In my approach to history, the people's stories remain the bottom line. The humans of history are the focus. Names, dates, and places play an important role, but the personalities and motives are what emerge most clearly in my classes. These people might have lived thousands of years ago, and for some of us they might have lived very far away from where we live now; but they were human beings just like we are today. I always strive to tell their stories the best, most honest way I can, and to teach my students to do the same.  In the process of studying ancient history, we can also learn to practice kindness, compassion, and respect to these people of the past - and this practice can carry over into our everyday modern lives as well!



How I Teach Ancient History

This course is primarily a combination of lecture and discussion in style. I will use Prezi slides with beautiful photographs and maps to help move the lessons along. Each week students will complete readings outside of class, and I will provide discussion and content questions to go along with the readings. Readings come from the textbook (see Materials), and also from online sources that I will provide in the Classroom via web links. These readings and discussion questions will frame much of our in-class time together as well. Questions and observations are welcome and encouraged. Having taught ancient history for several years at various age levels, I have experience with adapting ancient content for a modern audience, and making it relevant and applicable despite its physical and temporal distance from us today. I have traveled to Greece several times, and will include photos from my travels to enliven our discussions of the ancient peoples. At least a couple times we will play some interactive games (Kahoot, anyone?) to review key parts of our study, and from time to time I will ask students to watch a video on YouTube as part of their homework in addition to the regular reading and course discussions. Students will be encouraged to complete an independent learning project which they will present to the class. I will include a list of topics as well as more detailed instructions in the Classroom page. Students may complete/present up to two projects if they wish!


Here is the list of topics we will cover each week in class. A full course schedule of readings and assignments will be provided in the Classroom. Please note that sometimes the topic listed for a particular week continues into the following week, but for ease of reading the schedule, I have broken it down as follows:

Week 1 - The Earliest Greeks: Minoans and Mycenaeans

Week 2 - The World of the Polis: Athens and Sparta

Week 3 - The Wars with Persia

Week 4 - The Golden Age of Athens

Week 5 - The Peloponnesian War

Week 6 - Alexander the Great