How did ancient Greeks respond to the trauma of death? In this class, we will look at the material culture from ancient Greek burials to discover what it can tell us about ancient Greek death, life, society, and beliefs. The rich and sometimes startling material includes grave markers, containers for the deceased, tomb offerings, and images. We will complement the material record with close reading of primary sources.

Art in late antiquity has often been characterized as an art in decline, but this judgment is relative, relying on standards formulated for art of other periods. Challenging this assumption, we will examine the distinct and powerful transformations within the visual culture of the period between the third and sixth centuries AD. This period witnesses the mutation of the institutions of the Roman Empire into those of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The fundamental change in religious identity that was the basis for this development directly impacted the art from that era that will be the focus of this course.

This course examines the role of the senses in art and architecture to move beyond conceptions of art history that prioritize vision. While the experience of art is often framed in terms of seeing, the other senses were crucially involved in the creation of buildings and objects. Textiles and ceramic vessels invite touch, gardens involve the smell of flowers, sacred spaces were built to amplify the sound of prayers and chants. The focus will be on the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. Readings will range from medieval poetry and multisensory art histories to contemporary discussions of the senses in design and anthropology.

This seminar is devoted to this history of portraiture in the Greek and Roman world. Emphasis will be given to artistic matters as opposed to issues of identity. Many of the seminar's sessions will be held in the Princeton University Art Museum, which holds a wide variety of examples. Course will also include a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to study additional works.

Pottery is the most common discovery on a Greek archaeological site. What can it tell us about the ancient Greeks, their lives, and their arts? This class offers an in depth exploration of the major pottery shapes and styles produced in Greece, studying how and why vases were made and used. Most seminars will involve hands-on work with objects from the Princeton University Art Museum collection. In addition, the class will visit the ceramics studio and learn the principal techniques of pottery manufacture.

This seminar focuses upon the visual imagination in Byzantium. Dreams and visions serve as subjects and models for our enquiry into this topic. The imagination is distinct from perception or intellection. As such, it need not adhere to the expectations of representation. Phantasia tests our common expectations of Byzantine image making, and so merits analysis. Primary sources (texts and images) from the third to the sixteenth century are discussed.

"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.

Living as we do in a culture that is primarily either secular or monotheistic and in which the sacred and profane are largely kept separate, how can we possibly understand the world of ancient polytheism? The ancient Greeks did not have a word for "religion", nor did they conceive of "religion" as a distinct domain of human experience. Rather, the practices, beliefs, and rituals that we would term "religious" were embedded in every aspect, public and private, of life. We will explore how people interacted with their gods in their everyday lives, both individually and collectively, and how this interaction shaped and structured Greek society.

The development of Greek legal traditions, from Homer to the Hellenistic age. The course focuses on the relationship between ideas about justice, codes of law, and legal practice (courtroom trials, arbitration); and the development of legal theory.

The ancients were fascinated by dreams and debated a variety of views about the nature, origin, and function of dreams. Are dreams divine messages about the future, our souls' indications of impending diseases, or just distorted versions of earlier thoughts? Do dreams have meaning and if so, how can we understand them? We will explore ancient approaches to dreams and their enigmas in literature and philosophy, medical texts, and religious practices. Although our focus will be on Greek and Roman texts, we will also pay attention to earlier Near Eastern sources as well as modern dream theories from Freud to scientific dream research.

This course runs in two parallel strands. In the first we study the history of Greek philology from the beginnings to the present day. Important stopping points include the Museum of Alexandria; Byzantine philology from Eustathius to Triclinius; the Italian and French Renaissance; the genesis of Lachmann's method; Nietzsche vs Wilamowitz; Parry and the philology of oral texts; world philology; machine learning and the future of philology. In the second, practical, strand we work with the Princeton-based language model Logion to explore the benefits and limitations of computer-supported philology and tackle real-life philological problems.

We analyze the principles guiding the exclusion of certain free inhabitants from the political communities in which they lived and often prospered, the initiatives taken by ancient states to integrate them despite their secondary rank, the non-citizens' own efforts at integration, and the evolution of these interactions over time. We also study the factors that influenced both exclusion and integration (ethnicity, religion, etc.) and how the broad and ever-changing spectrum of what we call 'non-citizens' provides us with a window into the formation/transformation of categorial infrastructures from the ancient to the medieval world.

A seminar covering the basic methodology of numismatics, including die, hoard and archaeological analysis as well as a survey of pre-modern coinages. The Western coinage tradition is covered, from its origins in the Greco-Persian world through classical and Hellenistic Greek coinage, Roman imperial and provincial issues, Parthian and Sasanian issues, the coinage of Byzantium, the Islamic world, and medieval and renaissance Europe. Students research and report on problems involving coinages related to their own areas of specialization. Open to undergraduates by permission of the instructor.

Africa, Europe and the Middle East meet at the Mediterranean. This course will look at two millennia of Mediterranean history to see how this sea has been both shared and contested. This course is organized around a geographical entity rather than a political framework such as a state. As such, environmental and maritime history will be a theme running throughout the course.

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.

The Crusades were a central phenomenon of the Middle Ages. This course examines the origins and development of the Crusades and the Crusader States in the Islamic East. It explores dramatic events, such as the great Siege of Jerusalem, and introduces vivid personalities, including Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. We will consider aspects of institutional, economic, social and cultural history and compare medieval Christian (Western and Byzantine), Muslim and Jewish perceptions of the crusading movement. Finally, we will critically examine the resonance the movement continues to have in current political and ideological debates

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the history of the Syriac language and Syriac-speaking Christians. We focus on important individual authors, key historical moments, and significant themes and aspects of the history of Syriac-speaking Christians in the Middle East. Since Syriac-speaking churches have traditionally been classified by Western authors as "heretics" we also examine the nature of orthodoxy and heresy. Students are introduced to and trained in the use of the most important instrumenta studiorum of Syriac studies.

The goal of this seminar will be to introduce students to some of the most important ideas and debates surrounding the two major religious revolutions of Late Antiquity: the triumph of Christianity and the subsequent emergence and world conquests of Islam. The course will focus on extensive reading in both primary and secondary literature and students will be introduced to and trained in using major instrumenta studiorum for this period; texts may also be read in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. No prior knowledge of Late Antiquity, Christianity, or Islam will be assumed.

This course is intended for students with little or no previous knowledge of modern Greek. It focuses on the fundamentals of grammar and syntax, with parallel emphasis on reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Through sustained practice and a wide range of materials and activities, students are provided with skills and vocabulary necessary in order to understand and produce written texts and communicate effectively at an elementary level. With integrated references to various aspects of everyday life and experience, the course also serves as an introduction to modern Greek society and culture.

Course designed to develop proficiency by focusing on active vocabulary expansion, grammar and syntax not covered in the elementary sequence, and increased competence in reading, writing, listening comprehension, and oral communication. A wide range of materials and activities enable students to enhance and refine key language skills, while also gaining a deeper understanding of modern Greek society and culture.

Over the past 3,000 years, texts written in Greek played a central role for how people in Western Eurasia understood themselves, their society, their values, and the nature of the universe. Over the same three millennia, the Greek language played a central role in a variety of political communities, including ancient Athens, the empire of Alexander, the Roman empire, Byzantium, and the modern nation state of Greece. In this course, we will trace the history of these two phenomena: the political life and fortunes of Greek speakers and the cultural life of texts written in Greek, seeking to understand the relationship between the two.

While the structures of animal and vegetal organisms have been used as sources of metaphor/analogy with human design and architecture, this course investigates the tectonic capacities of non-human specimens beyond a merely metaphoric usage. Animals and plants also make things, yet they may make things differently than humans, evoking alternative possibilities. The course assesses debates from evolutionary biology, morphology, aesthetics, architecture, color theory, philosophy, contemporary art practice, and film. Topics include milieu, tectonics, aesthetics, form, surface (camouflage and mimicry), agency, analogy, and fabrication.

The major Near Eastern diplomatic crises and the main developments in internal Near Eastern history. The focus will be upon the possible connections between diplomatic crises and the process of modernization. Oral reports and a short paper.

This course discusses the ideas and arguments of major ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and thereby introduces students to the history and continued relevance of the ancient period of western philosophy. Topics include the rise of cosmological speculation, the beginnings of philosophical ethics, Plato's moral theory and epistemology, Aristotle's philosophy of nature, metaphysics and ethics. The course ends with a survey of philosophical activity in the Hellenistic and late ancient periods.

An exploration of Aristotle's Metaphysics Gamma, with emphasis on the philosophical questions surrounding the definition of metaphysics, focal meaning, the establishing of principles.

A study of the fundamental questions of political theory as framed in the context of the institutions and writings of ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, from the classical period into late antiquity and the spread of Christianity in Rome. We will canvass the meaning of justice in Plato's "Republic", the definition of the citizen in Aristotle's "Politics", Cicero's reflections on the purpose of a commonwealth, and Augustine's challenge to those reflections and to the primacy of political life at all in light of divine purposes. Through these classic texts, we explore basic questions of constitutional ethics and politics.

A study of fundamental questions of political theory framed in the context of the institutions and writings of ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, from the classical period into late antiquity and the spread of Christianity. Topics include the meaning of justice in Plato's Republic, the definition of the citizen in Aristotle's Politics, Cicero's reflections on the purpose of a commonwealth, and Augustine's challenge to those reflections and to the primacy of political life at all in light of divine purposes. We consider both the primary texts and secondary literature debates to equip students with a working mastery of this tradition.

This seminar offers comprehensive survey of primary sources essential for research, general exams, future teaching. Some topics: strategies of group formation; how various Jewish and "pagan" critics characterize and interact with Jesus' followers; exploring NT sources and "secret gospels" to clarify issues that ignite creation of "orthodoxy"/"heresy"; controversies on authority/social/sexual practices; the politics of persecution; how Christians defied Roman authority in trial/martyr accounts. Finally, how did this unlikely movement morph into "the catholic church" in the 4th century, legitimized and transformed by Roman imperial authority?