Hellenic Studies (also Greek Studies) is an interdisciplinary scholarly field that focuses on the study of language, literature, history, and politics of post-classical Greece. Through a wide range of courses, students are exposed to a range of viewpoints which help them understand the historical and political experiences of Byzantine, Ottoman and modern Greece; the ways in which Greece has borne its several pasts and translated them into the modern era; and the distinguished literary and artistic traditions of a country that many regard as the birthplace of Western civilization.