First-Year Seminars 110AG - The Lives and Afterlives of Antigone

Antigone's confrontation with the power of the state and her political dissent have made her one of the central global literary figures for political struggle. Reading plays, novels, and poems from Ancient Greece to 20th century Germany, Ireland, and South Africa and 21st Century Britain, Pakistan, and the United States, we will explore the question of a person's conflicted relationship with the demands of state law, family bonds, individual conscience, and collective justice and think about the role of literary representation as a form of historical witness. Writers include Sophocles, Bertolt Brecht, Kamila Shamsie, and Judith Butler.

Mount Holyoke first-year students only, by placement.