Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski contextualizes Homer against the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, tracing Greek history through the Bronze Age Collapse and Dark Age to the beginning of the Classical era.

Professor Kozlowski examines the archaeological excavations at Hisarlik, the site most likely to be Ancient Troy, to weigh how much of Homer's Iliad reflects reality and how much is myth.

Professor Kozlowski continues the Odyssey as Odysseus' crew and the gods betray him, he finally reaches his homeland of Ithaca, and he tests his wife Penelope.

Professor Kozlowski follows Diomedes cutting through the Trojan lines before Hector visits Troy in one of the Iliad's most famous, heartbreaking passages.

Professor Kozlowski embarks on his abridged journey through the Odyssey, including Helen of Troy restored to Sparta and acting especially strangely.

Professor Kozlowski works through what he calls the most boring part of the Iliad, arguing that its slow pace is intentional and deliberate.

Professor Kozlowski examines translations, style and structure of the Iliad, covering eccentricities of the Greek language and Homeric features like dactylic hexameter, enjambment and epic simile.

Professor Kozlowski returns to Achilles and Patroclus as Patroclus marches off to war wearing Achilles' armor in the Iliad.

Professor Kozlowski opens the Iliad with Books 1 and 2: conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, marital squabbling between Zeus and Hera, and the long list of ships.

Professor Kozlowski contextualizes Homer's Iliad through the Trojan War narrative in the Library of Apollodorus, tracing the major gods, goddesses and characters in that mythic tradition.

Professor Kozlowski follows Achilles as he cuts his way through the Trojan army, at least one god, and his own personal shortcomings in the Iliad.

Professor Kozlowski explores the hubris of Hector, the transformation of Achilles' rage, and the famous, ambiguous Shield of Achilles in this thematically rich part of the Iliad.

Professor Kozlowski follows Odysseus' narrated adventures through cannibal cyclopes, good and bad hosts and guests, and the dead he encounters along the way.

Professor Kozlowski covers Diomedes and Odysseus in the Iliad, every Greek hero getting wounded, Sarpedon on Greek social structures, and Hera seducing Zeus for her own ends.

Professor Kozlowski walks through the preparations and duel of the Iliad's Books 3-4, stressing chaos in war and the Greek view of fate, justice and the gods.

Professor Kozlowski concludes the Iliad with the Patroclus Memorial Olympics and the restoration of Hector's body to his family.

Professor Kozlowski reaches the Classical Age of Greece, sketching the role of Homer's epics in Greek culture: the self-identity of Athens and Sparta, the debt of tragedy to epic, philosophers' reactions and the development of myth into history.

Professor Kozlowski turns from Plato's Republic to Aristotle's Politics, covering assumptions about government and how revolutions, demagogues and dissension can undermine democracies, oligarchies and tyrannies.

Professor Kozlowski opens History of Social Thought with Plato's Republic, examining the opening argument and preliminary answers to the question what is justice.

Professor Kozlowski completes Plato's Republic, covering equality for women, communal child-rearing, the Allegory of the Cave, and how governments fall apart, and the Myth of Er.

Professor Kozlowski follows Socrates through Plato's Republic as government grows from its earliest organization into a state of luxury, with a tangent on the Laws of Lycurgus that influenced Plato and Aristotle.

Professor Kozlowski opens his encomium of Plato's Symposium with Greek cultural assumptions behind love, through the speeches of Phaedrus, Pausanias, Erixymachus and Aristophanes.

Professor Kozlowski discusses Hesiod's Theogony and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, showing how the Greeks conflated magic, myth, religion and history in ancient Greek mythology.

Professor Kozlowski completes his encomium of Plato's Symposium, discussing how the love affair of Socrates and Alcibiades may have endangered Athenian civilization.

Professor Kozlowski turns from eros to philia in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics VIII, discussing the three species of friendship and how friendship relates to government.

Professor Kozlowski works through Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics IX, discussing the self-destructiveness of viciousness and how friendship is shaped by attitude and perspective, and the relationship of self to friend.

Professor Kozlowski discusses the underworld and afterlife myth in Plato's Phaedo, exploring how myth relates to philosophy and how Plato uses myth throughout his dialogues.

Professor Kozlowski examines Euripides' The Trojan Women and how Euripides uses and abuses Homeric form and theme to make a political argument meant to prevent the greatest political and military catastrophe in the history of Athens.

Professor Kozlowski opens his series on Pre-Socratic Philosophy with its forerunners: Homer, Hesiod, the Orphics and Pherecydes, and the question of what does and does not constitute philosophy.

Professor Kozlowski surveys Greek history from prehistory through the Classical period, with an overview of Greek culture and a focus on Classical Athens.

Professor Kozlowski discusses the opening of Plato's Symposium and its first two speeches, by Phaedrus and Pausanias, examining the context Plato gives each character.

Professor Kozlowski traces the evolution of Greek national identity from Herodotus and the Greco-Persian War through Hellenism, informed by the Trojan War myths retold by Apollodorus.

Professor Kozlowski discusses Hesiod's Theogony, introducing the first generation of gods and goddesses in the Greek Pantheon.

Professor Kozlowski takes on the speech-myth of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium and how it appeals to modern audiences, along with the speeches of Eryximachus and Agathon.

Professor Kozlowski examines the final speech of Plato's Symposium, delivered by Alcibiades, discussing the many ways it might be read within Plato's understanding of love.