Archaeology is a visual discipline: it searches for material evidence of the human past and presents its discoveries with an array of graphic media. This hybrid studio/seminar combines training in drawing as an observational tool for excavation with critical analysis of visual media based on archaeological and art historical theory. Build your drawing portfolio with hands-on study of artifacts from the University's collections, delve into archives, and learn digital recording tools. What are the challenges of reconstructing fragmentary evidence? Do drawings shape our perception of the past?

"What is a Classic?" asks what goes into the making of a classic text. It focuses on four, monumental poems from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Gilgamesh, which are discussed through comparison across traditions, ranging as far as Chinese poetry. Students will consider possible definitions and constituents of a classic, while also reflecting on the processes of chance, valorization, and exclusion that go into the formation of a canon. Topics will include transmission, commentary, translation, religion, race, colonization, empire, and world literature.

An introduction to the classical myths in their cultural context and in their wider application to human concerns (such as creation, sex and gender, identity, transformation, and death). The course will offer a who's who of the ancient imaginative world, study the main ancient sources of well known stories, and introduce modern approaches to analyzing myths.

Which affected Roman history more: Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE, or the massive eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano the following year? This course will study the local and global contexts and consequences of a small republican city-state's rise to imperial domination, through analysis of primary sources in translation and recent archaeological findings. Our emphasis will be on the development of Roman society, the rise and fall of republican government, and the Republic's many afterlives.

In this course we will investigate ancient ideas about magic, alternative divine powers, and the relationship between practitioners and clients in this system. Interest in magic and its promise to influence the world is shared across socio-economic classes, and appears in literary texts from Greek epic to Roman novels as well as in material finds including magical papyri, gold Orphic tablets, curses scratched on lead and other charmed objects. We will consider this material in light of modern theoretical approaches to magic, witches and the uncanny in order to see where these ancient practices fit into the current scholarship.

This seminar will consider how travel could and did take place in the Roman empire during the first century. A close reading of the Acts of the Apostles will afford insights into the experiences of Paul of Tarsus on his journeys around the Mediterranean as he engaged in economic activities and spread new religious ideas. Topics will include modes and seasons of travel, dangers and challenges on land and sea, interactions with Roman government officials and soldiers in various provinces, how to meet and greet the locals, building networks of contacts for future visits, and how to plan and finance an ambitious expedition abroad.

This course will examine the origins, evolution and organization of the democratic system in Athens, and address some of the most controversial questions about the topic: To what extent was Athens democratic? What were the links between Athenian democracy and its aggressive imperialism? What are the similarities and differences between ancient and modern ideas of democracy?

This course will introduce concentrators to the study of classical antiquity. Students will become acquainted with different fields of study within the Department, including literature, ancient history, linguistics, and the long reception of antiquity in the middle ages and modernity in order to acquire an understanding of the history of the discipline and its place in the twenty-first century. Sessions will involve guest visits from members of the faculty. Particular attention will be paid to acquiring the skills necessary to pursue independent research for the spring Junior Paper.

A survey of major literary forms and works from the Archaic to the Greco-Roman period.

This seminar focus on ancient Roman letter-writing as a generic and social practice. How did the Romans themselves think of it, to what uses did they put it, what advantages did they think it offered? We read a selection of ancient Roman letters, documentary and fictional, in prose and poetry, as well as ancient theoretical texts, to answer some of these questions. We approach letters from different perspectives, functional, literary, and typological, and move beyond letter collections to consider letters embedded in history, biography, and epic.

An interdisciplinary, diachronic, and critical study of the senses in the ancient world. Explores how a variety of senses might be recovered from the past and assesses the possibilities and limitations of sensory approaches. Surveys the types of primary evidence that might be used, weighs the possibilities for objective interpretation, and considers the reasons for regional and chronological variation. Senses examined in their social, political, and cultural contexts and with attention to conceptions of bodies, perception, and ontology. Strengths and weaknesses of the secondary literature on the topic evaluated.

Introduction to Greek historical and comparative grammar, including a survey of dialects from Mycenaen to the koiné. We focus on early literary dialects, including inscriptions. We give special attention to early epic, primarily Homeric linguistics and poetics. The course offers ample time to explore whatever topics in the history of the Greek language are of particular interest to whoever is enrolled.

A collaborative workshop to practice scholarly writing at the dissertation level and beyond, providing guidance on planning and completing the dissertation and on other aspects of becoming a professional scholar and teacher, such as mastering the craft of the journal article (conceiving, writing and submitting), writing effective syllabi for different kinds of courses, and turning the dissertation into a book (with the opportunity to talk to an editor from a university press).

The course will focus on the formation of the Christian West from Ireland to the Eastern Mediterranean until ca. 1000 CE. We will start with the insignificance of the Fall of Rome in 476 CE, to move on to much more fundamental changes in the Ancient and medieval world: the Christian revolution in the 4th century, the barbarian successor states in the fifth, their transformation into Christian kingdoms, or the emergence of new nations and states whose names are still on the map today and which all came to be held together by a shared culture defined by the Rise of Western Christendom in the first Millennium.

What does it mean to trace a 3000-year history of Hellenism? This course takes a critical approach by examining the construction of narratives of identity, belonging, and continuity from antiquity through Byzantine and Ottoman periods to today. We explore the grounds on which claims to Greekness have been based-from language and culture to religion, race, and territory-while considering how these claims play into distinctions like east-west and civilization-barbarism. Our critical inquiry into the 3000-year history of Hellenism allows us to contend with the political and intellectual stakes of the very premise that such a history could exist.

This course unfolds from a variant on the anthropologist Stefan Helmreich's question "what was life?" to trace vitalism across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while interrogating its contemporary theoretical implications in relationship to biopolitical theory and the ontological plasticity of life at the horizon of technological expansion. We consider scalar complexity, from the cell to the cosmos and the new planetary connectedness. We also consider differently scaled histories of life through receptions of classicized Greek texts in modern vitalisms and the unstable temporality between the modern and the contemporary.

The world's astonishing linguistic diversity owes to the fact that languages change, and that each language takes a unique and unpredictable trajectory of change. In this course, students explore how and why languages change. Employing core methodologies (the Comparative Method and Method of Internal Reconstruction), students learn to analyze phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic language changes. Topics include the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language and the people who spoke it. Strong focus on applying methods to a variety of data sets. See below for prerequisite information.

A study of Plato's last dialogue, Laws, with emphasis on understanding its philosophical doctrines and the ways they are developed and defended over the course of a long and complex literary composition. Topics addressed include the origin, goals, and proper formulation of law; virtue, education, and the ethical importance of art; freedom and the rule of law; and a detailed blueprint for the constitution and statutes of an ideal city. On many of these points readers familiar with the Republic may be surprised by what they find in the Laws.

This course will examine the history, contemporary reality, and likely future of higher education, especially in the United States but also abroad. We will consider the changing and often conflicting ideals and aspirations of parents, students, instructors, and administrators from classical Rome to Christian institutions in the European Middle Ages to American athletic powerhouses today, seeking answers to fundamental practical, economic, and political questions that provoke vigorous contemporary debate.

The diverse world of ancient Judaism was "lost" for centuries. Major archaeological findings and the "discovery" of ancient Jewish works that were preserved by Christian scribes, reveal a rich mosaic of thriving Jewish communities in Egypt, Babylonia, Judea, the Galilee, and across the Mediterranean. They established temples and synagogues, created splinter groups, and fought foreign empires. They also wrote stories and philosophical works, legal contracts, and healing amulets. In this course we will examine sophisticated literary sources alongside artifacts of day-to-day life, to catch a glimpse of the lives and culture of ancient Jews.