Living, Naturally: Organisms, Ecologies, and Norms in Greco-Roman Antiquity

Nature shapes how many of us think about the world. It's a balanced ecological system; the opposite of culture; a way of explaining how living things work; and a way of regulating how living things, especially people, should live. We will look at how ideas about natures, Nature, and "living naturally" take shape in texts from ancient Greece and Rome. We'll consider the Greek and Roman texts in relationship to other ways of imagining human and non-human life and the world in the Mediterranean and other cultures. We'll think, too, about how these ancient ideas bear on how we think about nature today-and how we might think differently.