Classics (research) (MA)

About the programme

The Research MA Classics and Ancient Civilizations covers two years and can be studied in four tracks: Classics is one of them. While diving into the literary, cultural and intellectual worlds of Greece and Rome, you will be involved in current research, and stimulated to reflect on the significance of Classics to the 21st century.

About our Common Courses
The Research Master Classics shares two Common Courses with Assyriology, Egyptology and Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (the other Classics and Ancient Civilizations specializations). These courses are geared towards connecting the various disciplines and cross-fertilizing work in your own specialization. Students are invited to examine cultural phenomena that transcend their own discipline and engage in discussions with fellows from neighbouring fields. Since classes in the Research Master level always follow recent trends in research, specific topics presented in the Common Courses may change every year.

Thesis and Thesis Seminar
In the fourth semester, you are expected to start writing your thesis. In addition to individual guidance by your supervisor, the Research Career seminar will bolster up your work on the thesis by training you in specific writing and presentation skills. You will also learn, based on your thesis preparation, how to write a research proposal on the basis of academic requirements used by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Moreover, you will learn how to the process of blind peer-review works and how to write a paper that is admissible to a peer-reveiwed journal.

Research school course
Research master’s students also take courses offered by the national research school in classical studies, OIKOS (up to 5 EC per academic year; 10 EC in the entire study program).

Programme structure

First year
Course	EC
Common Course: Ancient Cosmogonies	10
Seminar Greek: Tranquillity of mind: Plutarch on a forgotten ideal	10
Seminar Latin: Orpheus in Latin Poetry	10
Empire and Diversity in the Roman World	10
Greek Papyrology	10
Material Culture of Ancient Religion	5
Seminar Ancient Philosophy: Ancient Women Philosophers	10
Architecture as a Source for Historical Reconstruction in the ancient Near East	10
Seminar Greek: Friendship in Greek Literature	10
Seminar Latin: The Reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the 20th Century	10
Editing Greek Papyri	10
Masterclass Classical Art – Definitions, Politics, Limits	5
Philosophy in Late Antiquity	10
Religions of the North: Impact of the Roman Empire on Religion in the Northwestern Provinces	10
Research Workshop: Greek and Latin Epigraphy (10 EC)	10
Research Workshop: Greek and Latin Epigraphy (5 EC)	5
Shem in the tents of Japhet: Exploring cultural negotiation in Greco-Roman Jewish-Greek literature	10
Religions of the North: Impact of the Roman Empire on Religion in the Northwestern Provinces	10

Second year
Course	EC
Common Course: Ancient Cosmogonies	10
Research Career Seminar	10
Seminar Greek: Tranquillity of mind: Plutarch on a forgotten ideal	10
Seminar Latin: Orpheus in Latin Poetry	10
Empire and Diversity in the Roman World	10
Greek Papyrology	10
Material Culture of Ancient Religion	5
Seminar Ancient Philosophy: Ancient Women Philosophers	10
Architecture as a Source for Historical Reconstruction in the ancient Near East	10
MA Thesis Classics and Ancient Civilizations (Research)	30
Seminar Greek: Friendship in Greek Literature	10
Seminar Latin: The Reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the 20th Century	10
Editing Greek Papyri	10
Masterclass Classical Art – Definitions, Politics, Limits	5
Research Workshop: Greek and Latin Epigraphy (5 EC)	5
Research Workshop: Greek and Latin Epigraphy (10 EC)	10
Shem in the tents of Japhet: Exploring cultural negotiation in Greco-Roman Jewish-Greek literature	10
Philosophy in Late Antiquity	10
Religions of the North: Impact of the Roman Empire on Religion in the Northwestern Provinces	10

For a more detailed programme, see the Prospectus.

Please note that this guide applies to the current academic year, which means that the curriculum for next year may slightly differ.

Ineke Sluiter

Professor of Greek Language and Literature

“We have a wonderful and international team of colleagues here at Leiden: Dutch, German and American classicists and guest-researchers come together to work side-by-side in a friendly yet competitive and challenging academic environment.Between us, we offer a wide range of expertise, including Homer, rhetoric, Greek and Roman drama, papyrology, philosophy, or Neo-Latin.”

Research enterprises

"I personally love to involve students in research enterprises – and they are very active and enterprising themselves: we have a manuscript club, where we decipher the oldest manuscript of Homer’s Iliad. The Iliad text is surrounded on all sides by very hard-to-read commentaries that go back to the 3rd century BCE. Our students are currently helping to create a digital edition of this as part of the Homer Multi-text Project, which we are working on together with Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies."

Approaches to Classics

"Our courses offers a great mix: on the one hand we teach the continental approach to Classics, with its emphasis on technical skills and philology and, on the other, the more problem-driven and theory-oriented approach from the Anglo-American world.”