14 December 2000 - 6 January 2001
Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Nafplion, Corinth, Tinos/Santorini

                           
Olympia starting line           Hera's Virgin Spring            Eating in Eden

Course Description
Sacred Sites in Greece was a six-credit, Study Abroad course. The course traced the shift over several centuries of several varieties of religious worship, including goddess worship and Christianity, in the Greek world.  Students focused on understanding sacred sites such as Delphi, Olympia, and Epidaurus within their archaeological, economic, historical, military, and social context.

This is the first course I planned and operated with my colleague and spouse, Lynn Rose.  She teaches ancient history and specializes in classical Greece.  I took courses in early Christianity and Koiné Greek, an interest I am usually not able to pursue while teaching American history.  We traveled to Greece over spring break in March 2000 to plan the course and find hotels and restaurants.  We chose the time between first and second semester to keep prices lower and because she knows how hot Greece can be in the summer.  We included a "practice trip" to Nashville, where there is a full scale replica of the Parthenon.  The Athens of the South is a civic claim to fame.

The mid-winter weather in Greece was kind to us and we even managed a little beach time, enough to build a sand castle, anyway.  During the travel portion of the course, each of the twelve students presented a topic linked to a sacred site.  These ranged from research on the temple of Aphrodite above Corinth, with its 3,000 prostitutes, to the Apostle Paul at the Areopagos in Athens.  The students represented a wide range of majors, which we love to see, and their diverse interests enriched the course through a variety of research topics and creative presentations.

The connections among politics, architecture, theater, religion, and sport were especially interesting.  With the 2004 Olympics scheduled for Athens, Olympia fascinated the students, and we all lined up on the starting line in the ancient stadium.  Women would have been excluded at the time, but this was long before Title IX.  We also made a short stop at one of the gorges considered by ancient Greeks to be an entrance to Hades, and we visited a spring where Hera annually renewed her virginity to maintain Zeus's ardor for her.

Martha and I, along with two students, took a side trip to the Aegean island of Tinos, a Greek Orthodox pilgrimage site.  There is a healing icon housed in a hilltop church overlooking the town and harbor.  We observed a woman crawling up the one-kilometer hill on her hands and knees to express devotion to the Virgin icon, and to ask for healing on behalf of a relative.  We also rented a car and drove around the tiny island.  Other students took a long ferry ride to Santorini, and still others stayed in Athens for further exploration on their own.