CLA 42 — Sex, Lies, and Politics: The Comedies of Aristophanes
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Barbara Clayton
Date(s): Jan 15—Mar 5
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Thursdays
Class Meeting Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Tuition: $475
Refund Deadline: Jan 17
Unit(s): 1
Enrollment Limit: 60
Status: Closed
Quarter: Winter
Day: Thursdays
Duration: 8 weeks
Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jan 15—Mar 5
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $475
Refund Deadline: Jan 17
Instructor(s): Barbara Clayton
Enrollment Limit: 60
Recording Available: No
Status: Closed
What do a swarm of old men dressed as wasps, a madcap professor named Socrates, a utopia called Cloud Cuckoo Land, and a women’s sex strike to end war have in common? All belong to the outrageous and ingeniously imaginative world of Aristophanes, the great comic poet of ancient Greece. This course explores six of his surviving plays: Wasps, Clouds, Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria, and Assemblywomen. These works are filled with fearless obscenity, biting political satire, and inventive gender-bending, yet they remain deeply grounded in their own historical moment. Like a nearly 2,500-year-old Saturday Night Live, Aristophanes revels in lampooning politicians, philosophers, and ordinary Athenians alike. Composed during and in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), his plays reflect a democracy under pressure and a citizenry weary of conflict. Behind their exuberant humor lies a sobering vision: comedy not merely as diversion but as a critical lens through which Athens confronted its most pressing challenges.
BARBARA CLAYTON
Independent Scholar
Barbara Clayton has taught Classics at Oberlin College, Santa Clara University, and Stanford, where she was a lecturer in a freshman humanities program for many years. Since 2015, she has taught for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. She is the author of A Penelopean Poetics: Reweaving the Feminine in Homer’s Odyssey. Clayton received a PhD in Classics from Stanford. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Jeffrey Henderson, Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women, 2nd edition (ISBN 978-0415871310)
(Required) Aristophanes and William Arrowsmith(Ed.), Three Comedies (ISBN 978-0472061532)
(Required) Menander & Maurice Balme(trans.), The Plays and Fragments (ISBN 978-0199540730)
(Required) Aristophanes and William Arrowsmith(Ed.), Three Comedies (ISBN 978-0472061532)
(Required) Menander & Maurice Balme(trans.), The Plays and Fragments (ISBN 978-0199540730)