(A) Required Experience: 

This is a 9-week course addressed to students who have (at least) a basic background on ancient civilizations, and a special interest in the Ancient Greek literary production, or in the ancient Greek artistic and cultural production in general. 

(B) Teaching style and students interaction:

The learning process of this class is based substantially on stidents' class participation, class dialogue, questions based on the ongoing discussion, and new ideas based on the participants. There is not one universal solution to teach. Rather I combine techniques to achieve the maximum of my strengths and of my students. Having taught so far young kids, teenagers, University students and mature learners, I know that teachers need to approach students with understanding. After all, such a small class has the advantage of making the combined technique of dialogue-discussion-lecture feasible and efficient. 

(C) Class structure: 

1st Week: An introduction to the god Dionysos, to whose honor all ancient Greek theatrical festivals and competitions took place. The cult of Dionysos in the city of Athens was at the center of the birth of theatre in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. Who is Dionsysos, and how is it possible a god of wine and wild forests to be connected to one of the highest forms of art?

2nd Week: An introduction to the Ancient Greek Theatre as a religious, political and social institution, as an architectural landmark of the cities, as the place of work of (exclusively male) actors, as well as a meeting point for the citizens 
- An introduction to the greatest and most tragic of the greatest ancient Greek treatrical play writers of Athens: Euripides.

Weeks 3 to 5: Discussion and Interpretation of Euripides play' Medea, which students are asked to read and prepare in advance. The work deals with a woman (Medea), betrayed and abandoned by her husband, desperate for love, unprotected and bewildered, seen as barbarian and dangerous, all alone in a strange land, as well as with her own special "way" of overcoming her obstacles and getting revenge. 

Weeks 6 and 7: Discussion and Interpretation of Euripides play' Hippolytos, which students are asked to read and prepare in advance. The work deals with a woman (Phaedra) in love with a man (Hippolytos) who rejects her (he is the son of an Amazon and inherits from her his absolute dedication to maiden goddess Artemis) and their mutual downfall. The work has been considered the most powerful aritculation of the ancient Greek perception that eros (love) is 'the most dangerous of all relations', a concept connected to magic in the way eros exercises power over autonomous individuals who are under the magnetic pull of love. 

Weeks 8 and 9: Discussion and Interpretation of Euripides play' Helen, which students are asked to read and prepare in advance. The work deals with the famous queen of Sparta, and yet known mostly as "Helen of Troy!" It is a very interesting turn of the famous story about the Trojan War's origins, which Euripides elaborates, namely the idea that Helen never really went in Troy. Instead she sojourned in Egypt, while an image of hers was brought to Troy. Of all Greek tragedies, this one is by far the lightest and funniest. Nobody dies, and the ending is happy. The most interesting element of this play is the fact that its very plot expresses the tension of what is and what only seems to be. At the end of the day, the Greeks fought a protracted and bloody war for the sake of an illusion. 

Note: The other two parts of this tripartite series of 8-week courses include those Euripidian plays related to war and its vicissitudes for women and children (Hecuba - The Trojan Women - Andromache - Phoenician Women) and those Euripidian plays related to some of the darkest stories in Greek mythology (Iphigeneia in Aulis - Iphigeneia among the Taurians - Bacchae).