AFRC316 - Africa and Roman Lit

In this course, we will explore race and ethnicity in the Roman world by focusing on the life and works of Roman Africans and the ways in which non-African Romans engaged with and presented the peoples of Africa. The course covers Roman literature in translation from the comedies of Plautus produced in the late 3rd - 2nd centuries BCE, to African Christian writing of the 5th century CE. It also covers a wide range of genres: we will examine how Roman writers articulate questions of race in comedy and satire, epic, history, biography, and elegy among others. We will read African writers (Apuleius, Augustine) and ask how their Africanness influences their works. We will read Roman accounts of journeys to Africa, wars with Africa, and encounters with Africans to ask how the Romans saw themselves as different from or similar to Africans. The course will also explore in more general terms how Romans talk about race: did racism exist? What aspects of different cultures and peoples did Romans choose to emphasize when they talked of non-Romans?