Classical Studies with Integrated Foundation year

Our Integrated Foundation Year for Arts and Humanities will take you through a carefully-designed programme to help you to progress confidently onto your undergraduate degree.

Arts and Humanities subjects, like Classical Studies, provide key ways of understanding our complex world, its histories, and current debates facing contemporary society. Identity, political and social conflict, our interaction with new digital and genetic technologies, our stewardship of the environment are all issues where the voice of creative and critical thinking are key. Literary texts, films, plays and digital games offer important ways in which societies have debated - and continue to represent - their values and their futures.

The Foundation Year provides progressive structures in which you are able to gain knowledge and understanding of approaches to humanities study and your chosen degree subject. All Foundation Year students take ‘Global Perspectives’, as well as four subject-based courses which provide approaches to the study of arts and humanities subjects, giving you critical skills to explore a range of literary, visual, and cultural forms, including plays, films, and digital media.

Once you have completed your Foundation year, you progress onto the full degree programme, BA Classical Studies.

If you are captivated by classical literature and philosophy and are keen to understand more about ancient history and classical archaeology, Classical Studies is an ideal degree course for you.

Classical Studies is a flexible degree that offers a great deal of choice in subjects related to the ancient world. It’s ideal for those who want to gain a deep understanding of lots of aspects of ancient Greece and Rome – its literature, history, philosophy and archaeology – even its languages; Greek and Latin can be studied at whatever level you’re at and for one, two or three years.

There is also the possibility of spending a year abroad, experiencing how classical society has had a lasting impact on history, culture and politics.

As a student of Classical Studies you will be part of our Classics Department, where the quality of research that informs our teaching and a friendly, individual approach which shapes the way we guide our students combine to create an unbeaten academic experience.

Course Modules

Core Modules

Foundation Year

• Cultures of Thinking

• Culture and Memory

• Society on Screen

• Textual Cultures

• Foundations of Classical Studies

Year 1

• Studying Classical Antiquity

Year 2

• All modules are optional

Year 3

• Extended Essay (Dissertation)

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Year 1

• Beginner’s Greek

• Intermediate Greek

• Beginner's Latin

• Intermediate Latin

• Introduction to Greek Literature

• Roman Literature of the Empire

• Introduction to Ancient Philosophy

• Greek History and the City State

• Key Themes in Roman History

• Introduction to Greek Archaeology

• Introduction to Roman Archaeology

• Advanced Greek

• Advanced Latin

Year 2

• Intensive Latin

• Homer (In Translation)

• Greek Drama (In Translation)

• Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Art and Power in Augustan Rome

• Virgil’s Aeneid: The Empire in the Literary Imagination

• Greek History to 322 BC

• Augustus: Propaganda and Power

• Historiography of the Roman World

• The Good Life in Ancient Philosophy

• Spinning the Past: Greek Historiography from Herodotos to Diodoros

• The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic

• Rome and its Empire from Augustus to Commodus

• The Later Roman Empire

• Byzantium and its Neighbours, 641-1081

• From Dig to Digital: Archaeological Theory, Method and Practice

• Life in the Big City

• Advanced Greek

• Intensive Greek

• Athenian Law and Social History

Year 3

• Further Aspects of Modern Greek Language and Culture

• Alexander the Great

• Understanding Pompeii and Herculaneum

• City of Athens

• The Good Life in Ancient Philosophy

• Advanced Greek

• Advanced Latin

• Art, Architecture and Identity in the Hellenistic World

• Athenian Law and Social History

• Augustus

• Christians and Pagans from Constantine to Augustine (AD 306-430)

• Contemporary Approaches to Latin Literature

• Encounters with Latin Poetry (in Latin)

• Extended Essay (Dissertation)

• Food in the Ancient World

• History and Fiction

• Intensive Greek

• Intensive Latin

• Intermediate Greek

• Intermediate Latin

• Latin Epic (in Latin)

• Latin Letters (in Latin)

• Of Masks & Voices: Gender and Performance in Ancient Greece

• Plato (in Greek)

• Roman Protests and Riots

• Tacitus and the Making of Empire

• Thinking Myth: classical myth and its reception

• Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/undergraduate/classics/classical-studies-with-integrated-foundation-year/

In your Foundation Year, teaching methods include a mixture of lectures, seminars, workshops, individual tutorials, and supervisory sessions. Outside of the classroom you’ll undertake guided independent reading and study. You will also be assigned a Personal Tutor, who’ll be with you for the duration of your degree, and will have regular scheduled sessions to support learning and the development of study skills. Assessments are varied; quizzes, short written exercises, essays, examinations, poster preparation and presentation, blog/vlogs, short digital films, dissertations and personal development plans. In addition, the Foundation Year offers a full range of skills-based training and the opportunity to take a micro-placement to enhance your employability.

Once you progress onto your full degree course, you’ll follow a modular structure, whereby students take 12 course units at the rate of four whole units per year. The second year project unit and the third year dissertation are compulsory but all other course units are elective, thereby offering great flexibility and choice.

You’ll continue to be taught through a mixture of lectures, seminars and individual tutorials, depending on the subjects studied. Outside classes, you will undertake group projects and wide-ranging but guided independent study, including completing language exercises and reading prescribed and open material. Private study and preparation remain essential parts of every course, and you will have access to many online resources and the university’s comprehensive e-learning facility, Moodle.

In your final year the Classics department provides ongoing support for your dissertation work, which usually includes:

• Lectures and practical sessions on Dissertation Research Methods e.g. planning your topics, carrying out research, using specialist resources, finding information in print and online, and managing your search results and references. These sessions are run in conjunction with the Library Service and are generally also open to second year students.

• Short departmental writing ‘surgeries’, in which academic staff offer general writing support if you experiencing problems and/or those who have specific queries.

Assessment takes place by a combination of ongoing language tests, written assignments for non-linguistic course units and end of year exams. Your final year dissertation will also count towards your degree award.