Center for Global Antiquity
Relevant Courses (2025 - 2026)
Relevant Courses (2025 - 2026)
The following courses have been suggested by CGA faculty as especially relevant to interested students. Courses marked with an asterisk have also received CGA funding for additional programming. Many of our Affiliated Departments also include course listings for the current year, as well as past or future years, on their websites. To view all courses being offered at Brown University in the current academic year, visit the university's online listings, Courses@Brown.
ANTH1236: Urban Life: Anthropology in and of the City
This course examines how anthropologists have worked in the city -- to understand dwelling and lived experience from the center to the margins of society; as well as how anthropologists have contributed to the study of the city -- conceptualizing the city itself in relation to its inhabitants, and working to understand how cities develop, decline, or are sustained. Anchored in key theory, classic texts, and contemporary ethnography, the course traces also the history, present, and possible futures of the discipline. Students learn the methods of urban ethnography, and gain hands-on experience through local field exercises and related writing assignments.
Rebecca Louise Carter
ANTH1623 / ARCH1771: Archaeology of Death
Examines death, burial, and memorials using comparative archaeological evidence from prehistory and historical periods. The course asks: What insight does burial give us about the human condition? How do human remains illuminate the lives of people in the past? What can mortuary artifacts tell us about personal identities and social relations? What do gravestones and monuments reveal about beliefs and emotions? Current cultural and legal challenges to the excavation and study of the dead are foregrounded.
Patricia Rubertone
ANTH1760: Disability and Culture in the Past and Present
Like gender and race, disability is a cultural and social formation that identifies particular bodies and minds as different, regularly as undesirable, and rarely as extraordinary. This course introduces the theoretical, cultural, and political models of disability and explores the lived experiences of persons with disabilities across time and within different social contexts. Through a discussion of scholarly readings, literature, film, photography, art, and archaeology, this seminar considers disability in relation to: identity; impairment; stigma; monstrosity; marginalization; discrimination; beauty; power; media representations; activism; intersectionality; and gender and sexuality.
Kim Fernandes
ANTH1910B / ARCH1822: Anthropology of Place
Place is at the core of anthropology’s study of people and their cultures and serves as a unifying theme that bridges its social, archaeological, and linguistic subfields. Through reading the works of anthropologists, geographers, and historians and discussion, students will learn how place is theorized, studied, perceived, lived, imagined, and contested. Among the topics examined are the relationship of place to power and surveillance, identity, memory, utopia, diaspora, and mobility.
Patricia Rubertone
ANTH2501 / ARCH2006: Principles of Archaeology
Examines theoretical and methodological issues in anthropological archaeology. Attention is given to past concerns, current debates, and future directions of archaeology in the social sciences.
Shanti Morell-Hart
ANTH2590 / ARCH2412: Space, Power, and Politics
This course critically examines the politics of space and landscape from an interdisciplinary perspective. After reading key texts in political philosophy and cultural geography, we explore themes in recent scholarship including the spatial production of sovereignty, capital, and political subjectivity and the evolving role of digital cartography in public culture and politics. Case studies are drawn from archaeology, art history, ethnography, cultural geography, and history.
Parker VanValkenburgh
parker_vanvalkenburgh@brown.edu
ARCH1283 / CLAS1130: The Fragility of Life in Ancient Greece
This interdisciplinary course explores the fragility of life in the Ancient Greek city-state form multiple perspectives: those of state-building, the population stress in the city, the capacity for the family to maintain and sustain itself, to those of the individual: man, woman, and child, whose life experiences left them vulnerable to disease and economic hardship. This course explores Ancient Greek socio-economic history addressing health, disease, fertility and childbirth, migration, mobility, and population and family ‘management’ as well as topics fundamental to historical demography (mortality, birth rates, and growth) over the longue durée approach (Archaic through Roman Imperial eras).
Graham Oliver
ARCH1711 / ASYR1090: Iconoclasm: Destroying Images in the Near East and Beyond
What drives someone to smash, erase, or otherwise obliterate the image of another? Why do the portraits (and sometimes even the names) of people become targets of destruction? Who has engaged in systematic violence against images and why? If images are inert, why have people repeatedly felt the need to kill them as if they were alive? What does iconoclasm have to do with social memory and forgetfulness? Through a series of detailed case studies we will survey the intentional destruction of images, monuments, and texts in the Near East over many millennia. In thinking about the religious, political, and aesthetic motivations that once incited ancient iconoclasm, we will also consider more recent and even contemporary incidents during which people have found the monuments around them to be deserving of annihilation.
Felipe Rojas Silva
ARCH1769 / HIST 1835A: Unearthing the Body: History, Archaeology, and Biology at the End of Antiquity
How was the physical human body imagined, understood, and treated in life and death in the late ancient Mediterranean world? Drawing on evidence from written sources, artistic representations, and archaeological excavations, this class will explore this question by interweaving thematic lectures and student analysis of topics including disease and medicine, famine, asceticism, personal adornment and ideals of beauty, suffering, slavery, and the boundaries between the visible world and the afterlife, in order to understand and interpret the experiences of women, men, and children who lived as individuals—and not just as abstractions—at the end of antiquity.
Jonathan Conant
ARCH2105: Ceramic Analysis for Archaeology
The analysis and the interpretation of ceramic remains allows archaeologists to accomplish varied ends: establish a time scale, document interconnections between different areas, and suggest what activities were carried out at particular sites. The techniques and theories used to bridge the gap between the recovery of ceramics and their interpretation within anthropological contexts are the focus of this seminar. This course will include hands-on, lab-based materials analysis of ceramics and their raw materials.
Peter Van Dommelen
ARCH2720: Abydos: The Layered Pasts of a Sacred Site
The site of Abydos in southern Egypt played a pivotal role at almost every period of Egyptian history: burial place of the first kings, location of the earliest monumental temples and — centuries later — beautifully decorated New Kingdom temples, pilgrimage site for followers of Osiris, an urban center, nurturing home for early Christian monasticism. This seminar allows students to learn deeply the material culture of a single place of singular importance over time, to examine the layered effects of various pasts upon the ideas and practices around the study of ancient Egypt.
Laurel Bestock
ASYR1400: Introduction to Sumerian
Over five thousand years ago the first cities emerged in southern Iraq, and around that same time writing was invented, most likely to record the language we now call Sumerian. Even after it was no longer spoken, Sumerian became a powerful conduit for the region's cultural heritage, preserving its literature and religious traditions for millennia. In this course students will learn the fundamentals of Sumerian grammar, develop a basic working vocabulary, and explore the cuneiform script through weekly readings in original texts. Selections will come from royal inscriptions, court cases, myths, magical incantations, and even ancient schoolwork.
Christie Carr
ASYR2400: Akkadian Literary and Religious Texts
Readings in Akkadian literary and religious texts in the original language and script. Possible genres include myths, proverbs, and literary miscellanea as well as prayers, hymns, incantations, rituals, prophecies, and divinatory texts. This course is intended primarily for graduate students and may be repeated for credit. A reading knowledge of Akkadian cuneiform is required. A reading knowledge of both German and French is recommended but not required.
Matthew Rutz
ASYR2950: Scribal and Scholarly Practices in Babylonia and Assyria
This seminar will explore the development of written traditions among the cuneiform scribes of ancient Babylonia and Assyria. Topics covered include the mechanics of writing on clay tablets, the training of scribes and the school curriculum, the status of scribes in society, the development of literary and scholarly traditions, the creation of tablet archives, the circulation of scholarly knowledge, and the range of scholarship (e.g. science, medicine, ritual, literature) found in Babylonia and Assyria.
John Steele
CLAS 1120B: Epic Poetry from Homer to Lucan
Traces the rich history and manifold varieties of the genre of epic poetry in the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome beginning with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (VII c. B.C.) and ending with Lucan's Civil War (I. c. A.D.). Masterpieces such as Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses are included. Original sources read in translation.
Pura Nieto Hernandez
pura_nieto_hernandez@brown.edu
CLAS 1120G/MDVL1120G: The Idea of Self
Literature gestures us toward a certain kind of knowledge not quite psychological, not quite philosophical. We read widely in the classical and medieval traditions in order to gauge the peculiar nature of what this knowledge tells us about experience and the ways in which expressions of selfhood abide or are changed over time. Authors include but are not limited to Sappho, Pindar, Catullus, Horace, Augustine, and Fortunatus.
Joseph Pucci
CLAS 1310/HIST1930R: Roman History I: The Rise and Fall of an Imperial Republic
The social and political history of Ancient Rome from its origins to the death of Augustus in 14 CE. Focuses on the social conflicts of the early Republic; the conquest of the Mediterranean and its repercussions; the breakdown of the Republic and the establishment of monarchy. Readings emphasize ancient sources in translation.
Amy Russell
CLAS 1750P: Homicide, Revenge, & Marital Disasters: Reception of Greek Drama in Rome, England, & Japan
(1) We examine theater and its relation to society, particularly, its reflection of legal culture (detections of murderers, adulterers, and young lovers); we also examine law’s ‘theatricality’ (‘productions’ of trials). (2) We also explore more broadly how dramas were performed, using as comparanda Japanese Noh and Kabuki (in each, for example, we find all-male casting). (3) Attention is also directed toward twentieth century receptions of these plays; we focus largely on Japanese productions, particularly of Yukio Ninagawa, mastermind of Japanese theater who directed numerous Greek tragedies and Shakespearean plays in different venues, absorbing and subverting phenomena of traditional Japanese theater.
Adele Scafuro
COLT 1310G: Silk Road Fictions
The course introduces students to cross-cultural comparative work, and to critical issues in East-West studies in particular. We will base our conversations on a set of texts related to the interconnected histories and hybrid cultures of the ancient Afro-Eurasian Silk Roads. Readings will include ancient travel accounts (e.g., the Chinese novel Journey to the West, Marco Polo); modern fiction and film (e.g., Inoue Yasushi, Wole Soyinka); and modern critical approaches to the study of linguistic and literary-cultural contact (e.g., Lydia Liu, Emily Apter, Mikhail Bakhtin, Edward Said). Topics will include bilingual texts, loanwords, race and heritage, Orientalism. No prior knowledge of the topic is expected and all texts will be available in English.
Tamara Chin
COLT 1420B/MDVL 1420B: A Mirror for the Romantic: The Tale of Genji and The Story of the Stone
In East Asian Buddhist culture, the mirror is a symbol of the mind in both its intellectual and emotional aspects. These masterworks detail the lives and loves of Prince Genji, cynosure of the medieval Japanese court, and Jia Baoyu, the last hope of an influential Chinese clan during the reign of Manchus. We examine both works as well as the sources of Genji and literary aesthetics of the Tang dynasty.
Dore Levy
COLT 1430D: Critical Approaches to Chinese Poetry
Examination of works of Chinese poetry of several forms and periods in the context of Chinese poetic criticism. Knowledge of Chinese not required, but provisions for working with original texts will be made for students of Chinese language.
Dore Levy
EAST 1311: Reading the Song Dynasty
The Song dynasty (960-1279) was among the most important and transformative periods in Chinese history. The Song was marked by rapid economic growth; new technological discoveries; the expansion of overseas trade networks; the development of new forms of elite status; the dramatic enlargement of the literate elite, and new family and kinship structures. These changes, in combination with the increasingly wide use of printing in this period, created new kinds of sources for historians to study. This course introduces students to a variety of Song textual genres and how they can be used as sources for historical research. In addition to some secondary works in English, we will explore primary source genres ranging from government documents, local gazetteers, and biographical accounts to scholar’s “notebooks” (biji), personal letters, and poetry. Basic competence in Classical Chinese (gu wen) is required.
Beverly Bossler
EGYT 1310: Introduction to Classical Hieroglyphic Egyptian Writing and Language (Middle Egyptian I)
Learn how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs! The classical language of ancient Egypt, Middle Egyptian was spoken ca. 2000–1600 BCE and remained an important written language for the rest of ancient Egyptian history. Students will learn the hieroglyphic writing system, vocabulary, and grammar of one of the oldest known languages and read excerpts from stories, royal monuments, tomb inscriptions, and amulets. By the end of this course, students will be able to decipher textual portions of many monuments and objects in museums. This course may also be taken on its own, and it also serves as the first of a two-semester sequence. No prerequisites.
Jonathan Russell
ENGL 1311P/MDVL 1311P: Medieval Drama
What were plays in England like before the professionalization of theater? Who starred in them, where were they staged, what were they about-- and what's that sheep swaddled in baby clothes doing in that woman's cradle, anyway? In this course, we will explore works of early English drama, thinking through issues such as the relationship between miracle and stage magic, the place of performance in civic life, and the complicated and ever-flexible role of Christianity in the Middle Ages as expressed through literature. The semester will end with a hands-on staging of a medieval play, as produced entirely by the class; students will be able to contribute to this in whatever way they choose. No previous experience of medieval literature or theatrical performance necessary.
Mariah Min
GREK 1050B: Euripides
We will read two plays of Euripides, Andromache of ca. 425 and Orestes of 408, both dramatizing the aftermath of the Trojan War; as time permits, we will read relevant fragmentary plays and papyrus fragments. We will give a close reading to the two plays and their textual problems, esp. in Andromache, and in the case of that play, we will be concerned with its double plot and oft-cited lack of coherence. In both plays, we will also be concerned with their emotional onslaught, mythological fireworks, theatrical dynamics, and the connection to their dramatic locales (in Phthia in the earlier one, in Argos, in the later) and to the politics of the times, that is, respectively, to the first years of the Peloponnesian War and to the tumultuous politics of the last decade of the fifth century.
Adele Scafuro
GREK 1110J: Plato: Theaetetus
Theaetetus is in many ways Plato's most modern dialogue. The central question is: what is it to know something? Is knowledge some sort of skill? Is it perception? True judgment? Some sort of account together with true judgment? We will read the dialogue in Greek and discuss Plato's fascinating investigation of knowledge.
Mary-Louise Gill
GREK 1140: Introduction to Greek Linguistics
Examines changes that took place in Greek from the time of its separation from its parent language (Proto-Indo-European) to the dialects of Classical times (5th-4th C.B.C.). This course is also an introduction to the methodology of historical linguistics, concentrating on phonology. Proficiency in ancient Greek is required.
Pura Nieto Hernandez
pura_nieto_hernandez@brown.edu
GREK 2070A: Lucian
The funniest and most impressive writer of Greek prose during the imperial period (not to mention the alleged inventor of science fiction), it is no wonder that Lucian was a favorite author from the Renaissance to the early 20th century. But he was also regularly reviled -- Martin Luther once thundered at Erasmus, “you ooze Lucian from every pore” (it wasn’t a compliment). This class will focus on his philosophical satires and contextualize those satires within the philosophies of the second century CE. Along with primary and secondary readings – not only from Lucian but also authors like Galen and Sextus Empiricus – we will discuss the texts, the times, and the nature of Lucian’s philosophical skepticism.
Stephen Kidd
GREK 2110D: Greek Epigraphy
An introduction to the study of Greek epigraphy. We shall examine treaties, laws, decrees and other documents, mostly from Athens but also from other parts of the Greek world. Practical issues (e.g., the actual reading of letters and the identification and dating of documents) and analytic questions (e.g., regarding historical context) will be explored.
Graham Oliver
HIAA 1019/MDVL 1019: The Cathedral as a Living Object
In the Middle Ages, sometimes referred to as the “age of cathedrals,” ecclesiastical buildings of incredible size, grandeur, and artistic merit were built. These constructions of glass, stone, and wood were covered in paint, gilding, and sculpture and filled with incense, music, and processions, all of which added to the overwhelming, multisensorial experience of stepping into a cathedral in this period. This course will look at the remarkable art of the cathedral – the buildings, as well as the art within them, and how these buildings changed over time. They are living objects and this course aims to help us see the many eras and changes in these buildings, to know them as they truly are – made anew over and over, to serve the evolving needs of the people who use(d) them.
Regina Noto
HIAA 2402/HMAN2402E: Trace and Absence: Comparative Perspectives on the Past in Things
Long before there were archaeologists, there were people who knew how to interpret traces of the past. Those traces have always been in flux, subject to changing cultural, environmental, and technological factors. While stone carvings, bones, ruins, and other durable objects have long encouraged reflections about the beings who created them, there are also those who have considered smells, flowers, dreams, and other seemingly ephemeral phenomena to be traces of distant pasts. What can be a trace of the past? How have people followed these traces? And how might the insights and oversights of these past ways of knowing the past inform our own efforts to identify or create traces for an uncertain future? This course explores some of the many ways in which individuals and communities have found and followed traces of earlier times.
Jeffrey Moser
Felipe Rojas Silva
HIST 1081: The Environmental History of Subsistence and Extraction in Africa before 1900
How did Africa become the poorest continent? To answer this, this course explores relationships between environment and society from ancient times through the beginning of the colonial era. Topics include foraging, cultivating, herding, metallurgy, population movement, long-distance trade, the Atlantic slave trade, European conquest, and imperial occupation. We also examine concepts of wealth, poverty, and justice. Reviewing case studies from different regions, we consider the ecological, demographic, social, economic, and political factors that shaped production, as well as the global developments that made Africa vulnerable to resource extraction for external profit. No experience of African history required.
Nancy Jacobs
HIST 1202: Formation of the Classical Heritage: Greeks, Romans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims
Explores essential social, cultural, and religious foundation blocks of Western Civilization, 200 BCE to 800 CE. The main theme is the eternal struggle between universalism and particularism, including: Greek elitism vs. humanism; Roman imperialism vs. inclusion; Jewish assimilation vs. orthodoxy; Christian fellowship vs. exclusion, and Islamic transcendence vs. imminence. We will study how ancient Western individuals and societies confronted oppression and/or dramatic change and developed intellectual and spiritual strategies still in use today. Students should be prepared to examine religious thought from a secular point of view. There is no prerequisite or assumed knowledge of the period.
Kenneth Sacks
HIST 1360: Amazonia from the Prehuman to the Present
This course merging lecture and discussion will examine the fascinating and contested history of the largest rainforest on the planet and one of the world’s most complex fluvial ecosystems: Amazonia, in equatorial South America, from its pre-human history to the present day. The course will include readings and discussions on the region’s ecological origins; the social history of its diverse Indigenous populations, immigrant groups, and African-descended populations; exploration myths and European colonial projects; and more recent efforts to exploit and protect Amazonia’s extraordinary natural and human resources. The course will use tools and resources from archaeology, anthropology, biology, and social and cultural history, and will also examine popular representations of the Amazon through novels, newspapers, podcasts, and film.
Neil Safier
HIST 1512: First Nations: The People and Cultures of Native North America to 1800
This course explores the history of North America through the eyes of the original inhabitants from pre-contact times up through 1800. Far from a simplistic story of European conquest, the histories of Euroamericans and Natives were and continue to be intertwined in surprising ways. Although disease, conquest, and death are all part of this history, this course also tell another story: the big and small ways in which these First Nations shaped their own destiny, controlled resources, utilized local court systems, and drew on millennia-old rituals and practices to sustain their communities despite the crushing weight of colonialism.
Linford Fisher
HIST 1835A/MDVL 1835A: Unearthing the Body: History, Archaeology, and Biology at the End of Antiquity
How was the physical human body imagined, understood, and treated in life and death in the late ancient Mediterranean world? Drawing on evidence from written sources, artistic representations, and archaeological excavations, this class will explore this question by interweaving thematic lectures and student analysis of topics including disease and medicine, famine, asceticism, personal adornment and ideals of beauty, suffering, slavery, and the boundaries between the visible world and the afterlife, in order to understand and interpret the experiences of women, men, and children who lived as individuals—and not just as abstractions—at the end of antiquity.
Jonathan Conant
HIST 1961D: Heaven Above, Suzhou and Hangzhou Below: Urban Culture in Early Modern China
The commercial boom of sixteenth and seventeenth century China stimulated the growth of a lively popular culture in the great cities of the southeast—Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. These cities became magnets for ambitious scholars, pleasure-loving merchants, courtesans, artists, and writers and sites for the production of some of the great masterpieces of Chinese vernacular fiction, drama, book art, and painting. After some background reading in socioeconomic history, the course focuses on analysis of the literature and art of the period and what it reveals about the short-lived “floating world” of late imperial China.
Cynthia Brokaw
HISP 2520T/MDVL 2520T: Critical Disability Studies (Medieval and Early Modern)
Using disability studies and disability theory, the medical humanities, the history of science and technology, and the history of the body as helpful theoretical frameworks, this course will study the representation of disability in Medieval and Early Modern primary sources and in contemporary critical interventions. Although “disability” is often (erroneously) exclusively attributed to later literary and historical moments, the “non-normative” body was frequently centered in premodern negotiations of selfhood, embodiment, agency, and individual and collective identity. In addition to exploring and developing a critical vocabulary for discussions of medieval and early modern disability, and considering fully the charge of anachronism, students will be asked to engage with Medieval and Early Modern texts (and select Classical intertexts) that prioritize disease, diagnosis, impairment, medicine, and corporeal variance, etc., to better understand the determinative role that disability plays in the premodern Weltanschauung.
Alani Hicks-Bartlett
alani_hicks-bartlett@brown.edu
ITAL 1010/MDVL1010: Dante in English Translation: Dante's World and the Invention of Modernity
Primarily for students with no knowledge of Italian. Given in English. Concentrators in Italian should enroll in ITAL 1610; they are expected to read the material in the original. Close study and discussion of Dante's deployment of systems of retribution in the Inferno and rehabilitation in the Purgatorio with a view to imagining a society based on love and resistant to the effects of nascent capitalism and the money economy. Dante's work summarizes and transforms the entire ancient and medieval tradition of literature, philosophy, and science.
Ronald Martinez
HMAN 2402F: Grounds of Comparison: Approaching the Humanities from “Elsewhere”
An injunction to compare has taken hold in humanities work, and it should be welcomed. Yet the “grounds” of comparison are largely Euro-colonial turf, even when all the comparanda involved arrive from far outside the bounds of Western modernity. Led by readers of literature outside the circle of the modern West, this seminar asks: Can we compare from elsewhere? How can we attain comparative vantage points on culturally and temporally unalike texts without occupying the spaces of epistemic and political domination? Together we will interrogate grounds of comparison through explorations of transregional and transhistorical readings, including Third-Worldist manifestos, medieval Arabic philosophy, and multiscriptal poetics from early Japan. We consider the stakes and ethics of comparison and comparatism; strategies for decentering staid paradigms without turning our backs on theory or history; and potential affinities among mutually remote texts and their readers.
Jeffrey Niedermaier
Maru Pabon
LATN 1110A: Apuleius
Description not available.
Sasha-Mae Eccleston
LATN 1810: Survey of Republican Literature
Our purposes in this survey of Latin literature are to acquire a comprehensive historical perspective on Latin poetry and prose until the end of the Republic and a sense of its phases and the dynamics of its tradition; and to read different styles of Latin poetry and prose with confidence and ease.
Joseph Reed
LATN 2010I: Appendix Virgiliana
We will survey the Latin poetry of the Julio-Claudian period, focusing on collections of pseudonymous texts that have come down under the names of Virgil and others and that include epic, lyric, epigrammatic, elegiac, and other types of poetry, ranging in theme from high-flown panegyrics to raunchy Priapea. Some of these exerted great influence on later writing; some are almost unknown. We will aim for a more nuanced view of Latin poetry and Roman culture between and around the better-studied poetic texts of the period.
Joseph Reed
LATN 1120I/EMOW 1120I: Latin Epic from Mexico
The Latin epics produced in colonial Mexico contain a wealth of exciting material, and only one, Rafael Landívar’s Rusticatio Mexicana, has ever been translated into English. The course will introduce this remarkable tradition of writing which began in the 1500s, before focusing on two striking examples from the early eighteenth century: José de Villerías y Roelas’ Guadalupe (1724), a narrative of the celebrated apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531, a decade after the Spanish conquest; and (ii) José Mariano de Iturriaga’s Californiad (1740), an account of the visions and divine prompting that led the Jesuit missionary Salvatierra to seek to convert the indigenous inhabitants of Baja California. This is a 1000 level Latin class: some familiarity with Virgil and experience of reading the Aeneid will be a helpful prerequisite.
Andrew Laird
PHIL 1118: Plato's Republic
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates and his companions inquire into why it is better to be just than unjust. The ensuing conversation ranges widely, addressing the best way to set up a city, the parts of the soul, knowledge and its objects, pleasure, poetry, and many more topics besides. This seminar-style class is a close reading of the dialogue, supplemented with recent secondary literature.
Emily Kress
PHIL 2150J: Aristotle's De Anima
A close reading of Aristotle’s De Anima, supplemented with recent secondary literature and other relevant Aristotelian texts. Topics include the nature of the soul, nutrition, perception, thought, imagination, and desire.
Emily Kress
POBS 2600F: Histories and Cultures of the Medieval and Early Modern Lusophone World
This course introduces students to foundational primary and secondary texts (historical, literary, visual) for studying the diverse societies of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia that came into contact with agents of the Portuguese empire between c. 1400-1800. Students will gain research competency in interpreting medieval and early modern Lusophone texts in light of classic and more recent scholarship. Reading comprehension in Portuguese is encouraged but not required. Class will be conducted in English.
Gabriel Rocha
RELS 1730/SAST1700: Epics of India: Ethics, Politics, and Expressive Traditions
Existing for centuries, kept alive through vibrant forms of composition, transmission, performance, the epic tradition in India is a constantly emerging one. We will read translations of the Sanskrit Ramayana and the Mahabharata and retellings of these stories to explore why India’s epics occupy such an energetic place in the ritual, literary, visual, and political imaginary of India. Why do these great epics continue to speak beyond borders of time and culture? In what ways does the epic culture of India challenge Western ideas about text and authorship? Why have the epics and given rise to wide and divergent interpretations, critiques, and recreations? How do different regions claim and create their regional identity through their own epic traditions? How do devotional traditions or national politics play in the interpretation–and revival—of epics?
Leela Prasad
RELS 2050: Religious Identities in Sasanian Persia
Sasanian Persia is rapidly emerging as a locus of study among scholars of Syriac Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Ancient Iran. This course synthesizes recent advances in scholarship within these individual fields and experiments with alternative modes of contextualization. Primary sources include the Talmud, the Hekhalot corpus, Syriac martyrdom narratives, Manichaean literature, and Mandaean texts. We will also interrogate broader methodological questions, including comparative projects between “Roman” and “Persian” contexts, models of scholarly representation, and the limits of agonistic/assimilative frameworks. Reading knowledge of one of the following languages required: Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Coptic, Arabic, or Middle Persian.
Jae Han
SANS 1400: The Sanskrit Grammatical Tradition
Introduction to the Sanskrit tradition of vyākārana (grammatical derivation and analysis) through reading Pānini's Astādhyāyī and commentaries upon it.
David Buchta
TAPS 1230: Global Theatre and Performance: Paleolithic to the Threshold of Modernity
This course explores performance practices that predate the European Renaissance across disparate parts of the globe. Considered will be Paleolithic rock art and other evidence of ritual practices in Europe, Africa, and the Americas; ritual dramas of Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire; Sub-Saharan African traditions and theatre/dance forms in ancient India, medieval Japan and the indigenous Americas. In short, we will explore a wealth of differing ancestral theatrical modes and methods that continue to leave their mark in contemporary diasporic expressions.
Ivan Ramos