[kokosas]

I took this class in the 08-09 year which was the first time that it had been offered. It was taught by Dr. Sean Corner.

Corner is a great prof, he definitely knows his stuff! I find that you either get him or you don't. His manner of speaking is a bit more... not exactly eloquent but advanced? He doesn't really speak in laymans terms so if you're having trouble grasping the course content you may have even more trouble following his lectures. If that is the case I highly suggest you talk to him about it because he is very approachable and easy to talk to. He's gone out of his way to help me more than once. He is not an easy marker but he is definitely a fair one. He looks for detail as opposed to a vague "uh.. it happened around this time"

The course itself was interesting but it is based in Philosophy. If you do not enjoy Philosophy then you may not want to take this course. The material follows the advancement of thought from the beginning of our knowledge (with Homer and Hesiod) down to Plato and Isocrates. Unfortunately, we did not get into much Plato and nothing of Isocrates because we ran out of time.

Here are some of the primary source authors/thinkers we studied:
Homer
Hesiod
Hecataeus
Herodotus
Thucydides
Socrates
Plato
Anaximander
Anaximenes
Xenophanes
Antiphon
Democritus
Protagoras
Sappho

The course is very reading intensive. I don't know if that is going to change by the time it is offered again but there were usually 2-3 articles (ranging anywhere from 10 pages to 20+ pages) plus the primary source text which varied in length. This was one of my biggest problems with this course, I could not keep up with the readings on top of my other classes.

Other than that, I enjoyed this class and I would highly suggest that anyone take it if they are looking for a challenge.

This course was crosslisted as History also. History kids, don't do it! I love Dr. Corner's classes, but this was way over my head. It would have been better suited as a Philosophy/Classics as kokosas stated.

The course is great though, because you get plenty of opportunities to improve your mark. There are two midterms plus the final, so if you bomb one of the midterms, it's not impossible to get a good mark. This is also one of those classes where you have to go to lecture and do the readings for the midterms.

I definitely didn't do as well in this class as my other history classes, but it was a really interesting course, and considering it was the first time the course was offered, I think Dr. Corner did a great job with the class