The course explores how art worked in politics and religion from ca. 300-1200 CE in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Students encounter the arts of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam, great courts and migratory societies; dynamics of word and image, multilingualism, intercultural connection, and local identity. We examine how art can represent and shape notions of sacred and secular power. We consider how the work of 'art' in this period is itself powerful and, sometimes, dangerous. Course format combines lecture on various cultural contexts with workshop discussion focused on specific media and materials, or individual examples.

This seminar will examine the historical concept of 'plague' from antiquity to the present using works of art, archaeological contexts, and bioarchaeology. Students will also learn the scientific principles behind each disease outbreak, including how the pathogen was first discovered; how it is currently understood by modern infectious disease experts; and how it functions within the human body and as part of ecosystems. The course will explore in particular the three pandemics of Y. pestis, malaria, and smallpox; the social impact of plagues during the ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern periods; and the history of medicine.

This seminar will explore ethical issues in the study and practice of archaeology, cultural resource management, museum studies, and bioarchaeology. Students are expected to substantively contribute to class discussions on a weekly basis, as well as to lead the discussion of one set of readings. Weekly seminars will be accompanied by a group midterm debate on an assigned ethical issue and an individual final research project (with a class presentation and 20-minute final conversation with Prof. Kay).

This course aims to demystify the methods, instruments, and skills of palaeography and textual criticism, while furnishing participants with hands-on experience of discovering, researching, and editing a previously unpublished Greek text. Students are introduced to relevant aspects of codicology and manuscript study more broadly, as well as scholarship on the potential and the limits of editorial practice in the humanities. Strong classical Greek (e.g., ability to handle Attic prose) a must.

The seminar introduces the manuscript culture of ancient and medieval China from the 4th century BCE to the advent of printing in around 1000 CE. We discuss the creation, uses, purposes, and the visual and material aspects of writings on bamboo, wood, silk, and paper. Examining texts buried in ancient tombs, left in watchtowers, or stored in desert caves, we look at writings to accompany the dead; personal letters; calligraphic masterpieces; copies of the classics; and carriers of medical, legal, administrative, or mantic knowledge cherished by the cultural and political elite and soldiers and peasants alike. With two museum visits.

This course examines the history and culture of pre-modern central Europe through the lens of a wide range of literary works produced in German-speaking contexts. Confronting and revising preconceived notions about the medieval and pre-national 'primitive' past, we will discover together the epic accounts of multilingual Franks and Goths, the sophisticated ethos of medieval courts, women writing in the service of God and kings, and the history of German as a poetic language. Readings and discussion in English, working with translations from Old High German, Old Saxon, medieval Latin, Middle High German, Early Modern German, and Yiddish.

Ruled from Constantinople (ancient Byzantium and present-day Istanbul), the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire survived the collapse of the Western Roman Empire by over a millennium. This state on the crossroads of Europe and Asia was Roman in law, civil administration, and military tradition, but predominantly Greek in language, and Eastern Christian in religion. The course explores one of the greatest civilisations the world has known, tracing the experiences of its majority and minority groups through the dramatic centuries of the Islamic conquests, Iconoclasm, and the Crusades, until its final fall to the Ottoman Turks.

This course will focus on the history of the later Roman Empire, a period which historians often refer to as "Late Antiquity." We will begin our class in pagan Rome at the start of the third century and end it in Baghdad in the ninth century: in between these two points, the Mediterranean world experienced a series of cultural and political revolutions whose reverberations can still be felt today. We will witness civil wars, barbarian invasions, the triumph of Christianity over paganism, the fall of the Western Empire, the rise of Islam, the Greco-Arabic translation movement and much more.

In lectures, to provide my interpretation (and a conspectus of differing interpretations) of the civilization of Western Europe, 11th-14th century; by readings, to introduce students to the variety of surviving sources; through the paper, to give students a taste of doing medieval history.

The littoral of the Great Sea has long been viewed as a major place of contact, conflict and exchange for groups belonging to the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This course approaches the encounters of different religions and ethnicities in such a manner as to introduce students not only to the classic historiography on the subject, but also to the main controversies and debates now current in scholarship. Our analysis and evaluation of the connections that developed between individuals and communities will focus on the High Middle Ages.

Reading and research seminar on thirteenth-century France.

The Middle Ages was a period of far-ranging travel, long-distance entanglements, and cultural hybridity. This course will study how geographers and travelers - including eco-travelers like crops and disease - encountered a world grown smaller through empires, trade, and migration, ca. 750-1250 CE. By gathering texts, artifacts, and art from regions often studied separately, this course will test the possibilities for defining a "global Middle Ages" and what that means for our understanding of globalization today. Includes visits from outside experts and trips to special collections.

Moving from Baghdad to Paris, Jerusalem to Addis Ababa, Iceland to Dunhuang, this course examines the musical cultures of some of the most vibrant centers of the Middle Ages. We consider what it means to study medieval music "globally," focusing on the physical traces of premodern music and key moments of cultural contact (trade, pilgrimage, conflict). Students will encounter the distant musical past in a variety of materials and formats (paper manuscripts, papyrus fragments, parchment rolls) in regular visits to Princeton's Special Collections.

How did the earliest followers of Jesus understand his life and death? What scriptures did they read and how do those texts relate to the New Testament? Where did they hold their secret meetings? How did women participate in leadership? What did early Christians do when Jesus did not return? Why did Jesus' followers suffer martyrdom? This course is an introduction to the Jesus movement in the context of the Roman world. We examine major themes and debates through an array of relevant sources, such as lost gospels, Dead Sea scrolls, and aspects of material culture.

The ways in which individuals and societies define space and place is very revealing. The investigation of space and place-how cultures turn material, racial, and/or metaphysical settings into human landscapes defining home, neighborhood, and nation-is a deeply important optic that dramatizes social, racial, political, and religious factors. At the same time, it can be used to track the changes of these realities over time. Because of its unique mix of Jews, Christians, and Moors, medieval Iberia offers near laboratory conditions for the study of space and place in their racial, ethnic, literary, religious, and political identities.