This course offers a multidisciplinary introduction to one of the finest and most influential of all Greek tragedies. We discuss its major themes, its historical and literary context, and investigate how it might have been understood by its original Athenian audience. We also consider examples of the play's modern poetic reception (reading Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Athol Fugard's The Island) and of its influence on gender studies and political theory. Select passages of Greek are translated in class that have particular thematic and interpretative importance and that illustrate Sophocles' poetic technique and literary art.