Classics-Art-Latin wha?!

clirion

So i got accepted into arts today and was going thru the art choices, now i just was looking at classical studies and was rather shocked at what i saw.

NO ALEXANDER, at all, for 3 years, they dont do alexander, instead theres Táin bo, and Beowulf...but no alexander, i think thats a disgrace. Alexander is a huge passion of mine since leaving cert and i wanted to further study in it, now i cant ;;.


Another issue i think, whats with Latin? I really didnt expect latin at all, i know they have plans for the leaving cert classics and latin to be merged, but i wasnt expecting it to be the case in nuig, does anyone know how difficult this latin will be? I was quite happy reading the translated works but now im going to have to read em with my terrible latin ;;

Is this new for this year, or has this always been the case?

spinandscribble

Alright, first take a deeeeeeep breathe. I just finished my degree in classics and psych in may so i might be of help. the changes started last september.

Classics has a new head, Mr Clarke. This changes are down to his vision of the department and what it should become. He favors linguistics so now it is part of the course. Like it or not this is the way it's becoming in the academic world, sure you can't do classics in trinity or the big names in the uk without latin or greek. Its a good thing long term if you want an academic career.

secondly, there was Alexander, yes i agree it was a pity there isn't any more, my year was the last year to have a module on him. the whole Beowulf/tain Bo thing is what we in my final year consider an attempt to break the department down to join celtic civ and become an ancient studies department. i had to study that part of the new course and while enjoyable, it was definitely strange to be studying it. The course is to show the tradition of Achilles, THE classical hero has lived on throughout european literature. a bit of a postgrad/MA field of research but it makes you understand the classical tradition.

A good point in the new Dept is the oral. before the oral would be on the homer book we read the term before but now we can pick whatever topic we want to build a project on. i found this fantastic.

clirion

thanks for the reply, and your name lookd familar and the fact that you did Psychology and Classics....and lol, low and behold we've chatted before on msn one drunken results night lol.

i'll prolly still do classics, if only for first year, just a pity about latin and alexander. I was hoping in a perfect world to study alexander in uni, then do his trek sometime, but now i'll have to do that independantly, oh well.

and classics only was to serve as a secondary subject, for Psychologial Studies.

what other subjects did you do in first year? Im thinking of Philsophy and Sociology for the other 1st year subjects, if you have any info on them

spinandscribble

yes i believe we covered this while you were drunk i'm going on msn now if you wanna chat about it