Questions of Ancient History

lhist1331  2024-2025  Louvain-la-Neuve

Questions of Ancient History
5.00 credits
30.0 h
Q1
Teacher(s)
Liard Florence (compensates Van Haeperen Françoise); Van Haeperen Françoise;
Language
French
Prerequisites

The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.
Main themes
Attentive to spatial and temporal changes, the course will be based on a documentary corpus available in translation. It will develop, for Antiquity, the knowledge of institutional frameworks, in the sociological sense of the term: constituted by a set of tasks, beliefs, rules, practices and behaviours instituted between people, these institutional frameworks have a particular purpose and a certain stability over time. These institutions can be political, social, religious, economic, cultural and religious. Their knowledge is essential for research on Antiquity and will introduce them to recent historiographical problems and methods.
Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

At the end of this course, the student will be able to place an institution (considered in a broad sense) in its political, ideological, economic, social and cultural context, to analyse its skills and functioning, and to identify the actors involved, for Antiquity. It will also be able to place in their historiographical context the questions currently being debated by the research.Méthode
 
Content
The course is structured around current research themes in Ancient History, investigated through the analysis of different types of (literary, legal, epigraphic, archaeological, etc.) sources. The course will stress the importance of combining these sources in a multidisciplinary approach, and on historiographical questions that they raise. 
The chosen theme for the academic year 2024-2025 pertains to military victories and defeats in Classical Antiquity and the way these events are relayed by ancient sources. Based on a selection of study cases, the sources will be considered through the following aspects : textual strategies in the narrative of victory and defeat in ancient written sources ; the demonstration of victory in public space (i.e. throphees, triumphs, etc.) ; the allegory of victory as a moral value and/or a source of political power. The course also investigates the case of colonisation in Ancient Greece and Rome, and more broadly the status and adminstration of conquered peoples and territories. In each of these course chapters,  emphasis will be placed on the diversity of primary sources available to the historian and on the way to search, use and compare them.
Reading materials will be made available to the students as a complement to the classroom course and they will provide the grounds for classroom discussions. Lectures by experts, either in English or in French,  in the field will also be planned during the academic year. Each student will be required to prepare review essay toward the end of the course session which will be part of the final evaluation for the course.  
Teaching methods
Classroom lectures, conference attendance, and reading assessments
Evaluation methods
Oral exam consisting of a commentary on ancient sources analyzed in class (with preparation time) and questions on the course content (without preparation time). In addition, as an integrative part of the evaluation for the course, each student will be requested to prepare a review essay and present it to the classroom toward the end of the teaching session. 
Online resources
Slide shows
Reading assessment (made available to students on Moodle)
Bibliography
une bibliographie d'orientation relative au sujet choisi pour l'année académique sera disponible sur Moodle
Faculty or entity


Programmes / formations proposant cette unité d'enseignement (UE)

Title of the programme
Sigle
Credits
Prerequisites
Learning outcomes
Bachelor in Ancient Languages and Literatures : Classics

Minor in History

Bachelor in History