Center for Global Antiquity

jonathan_conant@brown.edu

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

felipe_rojas@brown.edu

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

peter_van_dommelen@brown.edu

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

laurel_bestock@brown.edu

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

christie_carr@brown.edu

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

matthew_rutz@brown.edu

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

john_steele@brown.edu

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

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

joseph_pucci@brown.edu

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

amy_russell@brown.edu

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

beverly_bossler@brown.edu

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

tamara_chin@brown.edu

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

dore_levy@brown.edu

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

dore_levy@brown.edu

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

jonathan_russell1@brown.edu

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

mariah_min@brown.edu

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

mary-louise_gill@brown.edu

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

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

stephen_e_kidd@brown.edu

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

jonathan_conant@brown.edu

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

regina_noto@brown.edu

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

jeffrey_moser@brown.edu

Felipe Rojas Silva

felipe_rojas@brown.edu

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

nancy_jacobs@brown.edu

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

kenneth_sacks@brown.edu

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

neil_safier@brown.edu

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

linford_fisher@brown.edu

HIST 1835A/MDVL 1835A: Unearthing the Body: History, Archaeology, and Biology 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

cynthia_brokaw@brown.edu

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

ronald_martinez@brown.edu

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

jeffrey_niedermaier@brown.edu

Maru Pabon

maru_pabon@brown.edu

LATN 1110A: Apuleius

Description not available.

Sasha-Mae Eccleston

sasha_mae_eccleston@brown.edu

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

joseph_reed@brown.edu

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

joseph_reed@brown.edu

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

andrew_laird@brown.edu

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

emily_kress@brown.edu

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

emily_kress@brown.edu

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

gabriel_rocha@brown.edu

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

leela_prasad@brown.edu

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

jae_han@brown.edu

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

david_buchta@brown.edu

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

ivan_ramos@brown.edu

Spring 2026

ANTH1201 / ARCH 1881: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems and Spatial Analysis

This course offers an introduction to the concepts and techniques of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Through weekly lab assignments and work on independent projects, students develop skills in cartography and coordinate systems, spatial database design, image processing, basic spatial analysis, hydrological modeling, and three-dimensional modeling. Discussions and case material draw primarily from the application of GIS in archaeology, anthropology, and cultural geography, including the study of archival materials and the ethics of geographic representation. Provides foundation for upper division coursework in spatial analysis. Software focuses on ESRI products (ArcMap, ArcScene, ArcCatalog, ArcGIS Pro).

Parker VanValkenburgh

parker_vanvalkenburgh@brown.edu

ANTH1560: Environmental Archaeology: Sustainability, Catastrophe, and Resilience

How did people in the past respond to environmental crisis? How did they modify their environments to suit their needs - sometimes to long-term detriment? How did they engage in sustainable practices, and build resilience into their local ecologies? In this course you will learn how archaeologists reconstruct paleoenvironments using multidisciplinary approaches, including botanical analyses, soil studies, and GIS modeling. You will learn how archaeologists tackle the problem of identifying ethnoecological relationships in the deep past, and how they track the impacts of these relationships on human history and the environment. Key case studies will be drawn from ancient societies in the Mesopotamia, Polynesia, West Africa, the American Southwest, Western China, the North Atlantic, and the Maya area.

Shanti Morell-Hart

shanti_morell-hart@brown.edu

ANTH1665 / ARCH1517: Growing Up Ancient: Childhood, Gender, and Identity in the Ancient World

How were childhood and femininity culturally constructed in the ancient world? How did factors like class, race, religion, and imperialism shape the actual bodies and perceived identities of women and children? This course will explore these questions by incorporating perspectives from archaeology, biological anthropology, and social history. Through analyses of ancient material culture and texts, readings from contemporary scholarship, and hands-on activities, students will draw connections between women and children of the past and present, in diverse cultural contexts. Case studies range from the Wari and Inca to the Roman world, medieval Europe, and Indigenous North America.

Maya Krause

maya_krause@brown.edu

ANTH1720 The Human Skeleton

More than simply a tissue within our bodies, the human skeleton is a gateway into narratives of the past--from the evolution of our species to the biography of individual past lives. Through lecture and hands-on laboratory, students will learn the complete anatomy of the human skeleton, with an emphasis on the human skeleton in functional and evolutionary perspective. We'll also explore forensic and bioarchaeological approaches to the skeleton. By the course conclusion, students will be able to conduct basic skeletal analysis and will be prepared for more advanced studies of the skeleton from medical, forensic, archaeological, and evolutionary perspectives.

Andrew Scherer

andrew_scherer@brown.edu

ANTH2520: Mesoamerican Archaeology and Ethnohistory

Seminar focusing on current issues in the archaeology and history of Mesoamerica, including Mexico and Northern Central America. Draws on rich resources at Brown, including the John Carter Brown Library.

Stephen Houston

stephen_houston@brown.edu

ARCH 1214 / HIST 1210A: The Viking Age

For two centuries, Viking marauders struck terror into hearts of European Christians. Feared as raiders, Norsemen were also traders and explorers who maintained a network of connections stretching from North America to Baghdad and who developed a complex civilization that was deeply concerned with power and its abuses, the role of law in society, and the corrosive power of violence. This class examines the tensions and transformations within Norse society between AD 750 and 1100 and how people living in the Viking world sought to devise solutions to the challenges that confronted them as their world expanded and changed.

Jonathan Conant

jonathan_conant@brown.edu

ARCH 1278 / CLAS1120S: Greeks and ‘Others’ in the Mediterranean

Activities of Greek adventurers, traders, settlers, and mercenaries – embodied in Plato’s famous dictum ‘frogs around the pond’ – are well-known and the subject of much debate in Classics and Mediterranean Archaeology. This course examines the varied encounters between the Greeks and groups local to different parts of the Mediterranean, usually subsumed under the often unhelpful umbrella term ‘others’. In this course, we will examine the most iconic of these encounters, and think how they shaped all actors involved. We will do so by referencing and questioning archaeological, iconographic, and textual evidence. We will also think about how different types of mobility forged connectivity and interregional networks, shaped exchange and trade, and enabled flow of ideas. We will also investigate how intercultural contact affected people’s lives and how it changed their views of themselves and others.

Jana Mokrisova

jana_mokrisova@brown.edu

ARCH1606 / ASYR 1100: Imagining the Gods: Myths and Myth-making in Ancient Mesopotamia

Creation, the Flood, the Tower of Babel--well-known myths such as these have their origins in ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Using both ancient texts in translatioin and archaeology, this course will explore categories of Mesopotamian culture labeled "myth" and "religion" (roughly 3300-300 BCE), critically examining the ancient evidence as well as various modern interpretations. Topics will include myths of creation and the flood, prophecy and divination, death and the afterlife, ritual, kingship, combat myths and apocalypses, the nature and expression of ancient religious experience, and representations of the divine. There are no prerequisites.

Matthew Rutz

matthew_rutz@brown.edu

ARCH1612 / CLAS1230: The Persian Empire and Achaemenid Culture

CLAS1230 explores the Persian Empire (6th to 4th centuries BCE), its beginnings, development, historiography. We will incorporate Achaemenid culture, and its reception, in a broad spatial and temporal context. The course approaches the ancient world from the perspective of 'the Other'. Taking a Perso-centric view, the course incorporates the multi-disciplinary fields associated with Achaemenid studies since the 1980s. Primary source documents, maps, and readings, will be assembled to provide students with visual, material, and written evidence from the regions of the Persian Empire. Central to this course will be our own engagement with difference/different cultures, and their presentation(s). The majority of the materials will be delivered via the Canvas site. No prior knowledge of antiquity is assumed.

Graham Oliver

lorenzo_castellano@brown.edu

ARCH1765: Pandemics, Pathogens, and Plagues in the Greek and Roman Worlds

Terror of mass illness is nothing new; as long as there have been humans, there has been disease. These pandemics and plagues have had mortal impacts on past societies, much as contemporary plagues affect today’s economies, social and political structures, and populations. This class considers disease and society in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, beginning with the Plague of Athens in 430 BC and continuing to the outbreak of the ‘first pandemic’ of bubonic plague in AD 541. We will examine these case studies through archaeological material, written accounts, DNA analysis, palaeoclimate reconstruction, and palaeopathology.

Tyler Franconi

tyler_franconi@brown.edu

ARCH1772 / ANTH1721: The Human Skeleton

More than simply a tissue within our bodies, the human skeleton is a gateway into narratives of the past -- from the evolution of our species to the biography of individual past lives. Through lecture and hands-on laboratories, students will learn the complete anatomy of the human skeleton, with an emphasis on the human skeleton in functional and evolutionary perspective. We will also explore forensic and bioarchaeological approaches to the skeleton. By the course's conclusion, students will be able to conduct basic skeletal analysis and will be prepared for more advanced studies of the skeleton from medical, forensic, archaeological, and evolutionary perspectives.

Maya Krause

maya_krause@brown.edu

ARCH1863: 12,000 Years of Farming: From Domestication to Globalization

12,000 years ago, humans began a profound transformation from foragers to farmers, thus initiating the complex, and arguably troubled, history of agriculture on our planet. This course uses case studies spanning many geographic, chronological, and cultural contexts, paying detailed attention to how humans, plants, animals, soils, and climate have interacted in agricultural landscapes in both the ancient and recent past. Students will examine the socio-economic, cultural, political, and environmental factors that impacted farming, considering topics such as how cultivation shaped early complex societies, the role of technological innovation, the destruction of landscape for agricultural ends, and the effects of climatic variability.

Lorenzo Castellano

ARCH2000: Mediterranean and Near Eastern Archaeologies: Research Traditions and Practices

This course offers an overview of the history and practice of archaeology in and of the Mediterranean and Near East for the past two centuries. What impact have national and linguistic boundaries, foreign schools, and colonialism had on the archaeology of the region? Through surveys of research and analysis of original publications (site reports, syntheses, autobiographies, etc.) and primary documents (personal letters, diaries, photographs, sketches, notes, etc.), students will be exposed to the theories, methods, and purported goals of archaeological endeavors in the Mediterranean, as well as to the major academic and political debates that have shaped the field.

Felipe Rojas Silva

felipe_rojas@brown.edu

ARCH2232: Moving in the Mediterranean: Mobility in Archaeology, Science, and Text

Human mobility presents one of the key issues for archaeology — not to mention contemporary culture and politics. This seminar will explore theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of human mobility and its role for Mediterranean societies, from long-distance migration to intra-regional population circulation. We will do so through a multidisciplinary lens incorporating material-based, scientific, and textual approaches, to grapple with the question of how different sources of information – collected, analyzed, and theorized – can be integrated. Case studies such as Greek “colonization”, mercenaries in Egypt, and businesswoman in the Aegean will guide our discussions.

Jana Mokrisova

jana_mokrisova@brown.edu

ARCH2237 / CLAS2237: Frogs Round a Pond: Studies in Mediterranean Connectivity

Horden and Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea was swiftly established as a landmark study of the ancient Mediterranean with its publication in 2000 and has remained such in the intervening years. The monumental work covers three millennia of human history and highlights the long-standing connectivity of highly fragmented Mediterranean microregions. While drawing on a long and rich tradition of Mediterranean-centered scholarship, it is distinguished by its authors as a study of the human history of the Mediterranean rather than of history in the Mediterranean. This course considers the research traditions out of which this work developed and explores its marked influence on scholarship in the 25 years since its publication.

Candace Rice

candace_rice@brown.edu

ARCH2950: Intensive Readings in Ancient Language for Archaeologists

In this course, students with some previous training in an ancient language will have an opportunity to hone their linguistic skills while reading ancient texts that are specially relevant to archaeologists. The primary purpose of the course is to prepare students to take doctoral ancient language exams and to identify weak spots in individuals' knowledge of the ancient language. Emphasis will be placed on identification and justification of morphology and syntax, as well as on reading comprehension and idiomatic translation.

Tyler Franconi

tyler_franconi@brown.edu

ASYR1725: Scientific Thought in Ancient Iraq

This course will investigate a variety of ancient scientific disciplines using primary sources from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). By reading the original texts and studying the secondary literature we will explore the notion of scientific thought in the ancient world and critique our own modern interpretation of what “science” is and how different traditions have practiced scientific methods towards a variety of aims. Looking at a range of disciplines will allow us to compare and contrast the different ways in which scientific thinking is transmitted in the historical record.

John Steele

john_steele@brown.edu

ASYR2500: Readings in Sumerian

Advanced readings in Sumerian cuneiform texts in the original script and language. Readings will be selected from a particular genre, historical period, or site. This course is intended primarily for graduate students and may be repeated for credit. A reading knowledge of Sumerian cuneiform is required. A reading knowledge of both German and French is strongly recommended but not required.

Christie Carr

christie_carr@brown.edu

ASYR2710: Babylonian Astronomy

An advanced seminar on Babylonian astronomy, taking both a technical and a cultural perspective on the history of this ancient science.

John Steele

john_steele@brown.edu

CLAS1140: Classical Philosophy of India

This course introduces the classical traditions of philosophy in India. After presenting a general overview of this discourse and its basic Brahminic, Buddhist, and Jain branches, the course will examine the ideas and debates between various schools on issues of epistemology (the nature of perception, inference, testimony, etc), metaphysics (the nature of the self and ultimate reality, the question of the reality of the world, etc), and ethics (the theory of karma, non-violence and asceticism, and devotion).

David Buchta

david_buchta@brown.edu

CLAS1220: The Fall of Empires and Rise of Kings: Greek History 478 to 323 BC

The Greek world was transformed in less than 200 years. The rise and fall of Empires (Athens and Persia) and metamorphosis of Macedon into a supreme power under Philip II and Alexander the Great provide the headlines. The course covers an iconic period of history, and explores life-changing events that affected the people of the eastern Mediterranean and the topics that allow us to understand aspects of life and culture of the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. and through these transformations, offers insights into the common pressures that communities confronted. No prior knowledge of ancient history is required.

Johanna Hanink

johanna_hanink@brown.edu

CLAS1750H: Heroes and Heroism in Graeco - Roman Antiquity and Beyond

Examines the concept of hero, an ancient Greek word, which had a wide variety of meanings and was employed to designate a series of diverse characters of myth. We will trace the evolution of this idea through a detailed analysis of its uses in Greek and Roman texts, and also contrast its ancient sense with present day conceptions of the hero and heroism. All readings will be in English. The course is open to all undergraduates, but preference will be given to juniors and seniors.

Pura Nieto Hernandez

sasha_mae_eccleston@brown.edu

CLAS1930F: Women Writing Epic

This course will introduce students to English translations and adaptations of ancient Greek and Roman epics to consider the contemporary politics of representing and publishing women. These poems chronicle men talking with or fighting each other, all in the hopes of reproducing “great” men. Women often function as backgrounded appendages or, if significant, effect something catastrophic. We will revisit these dynamics and explore how literary genre genders authors and readers in relation to war, citizenship, race, class, sexuality and/or celebrity. How does epic negotiate social identities or formations? What needs to happen for women to write epic? What happens when women write epic? Which kind of women does the publishing industry want/allow to write epic now?

Sasha-Mae Eccleston

CLAS2080H / HIST2992J: Topics in Roman Republican History

This seminar will examine some of the major controversies in Roman Republican history, with possible excurses to the archaic and triumviral periods. The focus will be on political and cultural history, and on questions of method and theory. Topics will be partially dictated by student interest. Assessment include student presentations and leading discussions, writing an abstract for a term paper, and a term paper.

Amy Russell

amy_russell@brown.edu

COLT1210: Introduction to the Theory of Literature

An historical introduction to problems of literary theory from the classical to the postmodern. Issues to be examined include mimesis, rhetoric, hermeneutics, history, psychoanalysis, formalisms and ideological criticism (questions of race, gender, sexuality, postcolonialism). Primarily for advanced undergraduates. Lectures, discussions; several short papers.

Jeffrey Niedermaier

jeffrey_niedermaier@brown.edu

Maru Pabon

maru_pabon@brown.edu

COLT1410S: Classical Tragedy

This course will read the great Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and some Senecan tragedy. We will then read Renaissance and later tragedies that use the classical world as a setting, such as Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and tragedies that rewrite classical themes, including O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.

Molly Ierulli

molly_ierulli@brown.edu

EGYT1320: Introduction to Classical Hieroglyphic Egyptian Writing and Language (Middle Egyptian II)

Continuation of a two-semester sequence in which students learn the basic hieroglyphs, vocabulary, and grammar of one of the oldest known languages. Building on the first part of this course (EGYT 1310), this semester will focus on the verbal system of Middle Egyptian. By the end of this introductory year, students read authentic texts of religious, historical, and literary significance. Prerequisite: EGYT 1310.

Jonathan Russell

jonathan_russell1@brown.edu

Rafa Saade Saade

jose_rafael_saade@brown.edu

EGYT1430 / ARCH1621: Pyramids, Power, Propaganda: Ancient Egyptian History to 1300 BCE

The first half of pharaonic history in ancient Egypt saw the invention of writing, the development of kingship, creation of a bureaucracy capable of erecting pyramids that still stand, and colonial expansion of Egypt both south into Nubia and east into the Levant. In this class we will critically examine ancient sources to understand not just what happened in this dynamic span of time but also how we as scholars can know about it. Who wrote what texts for what purposes, and how does the nature of these sources affect our ability to understand Egypt? Can we use literature as historical evidence? Utilizing primary sources in translation - sometimes multiple translations of the same text so we can critique translators - this course equips students to approach the history of an ancient but perennially fascinating place and culture. No prerequisites.

Laurel Bestock

laurel_bestock@brown.edu

EGYT2610: Introduction to Demotic

Begins with discussions and exercises in the grammar and peculiar script of this late stage of the Egyptian language, followed by readings of actual ancient texts, including The Instructions of Onkhsheshonkhy, The Petition of Petiese, and The Story of Setne Khaemwas. Knowledge of Demotic remains essential for a proper understanding of Egypt during the Saite, Persian, Ptolemaic, and Roman periods. Open to undergraduates with consent of instructor. Prerequisites: EGYT 2410 or 2210.

Jonathan Russell

jonathan_russell1@brown.edu

GREK1082: Readings in Athenian Oratory

Readings, in Ancient Greek, of selections from 4th C. BCE Athenian oratory, with emphasis on building and reviewing the grammar and vocabulary of Attic prose. As the speeches demand, thematic topics (historical, linguistic, juridical, etc.) will also be covered. Students should have completed at least four semesters of college-level Ancient Greek or the equivalent before taking the course.

Johanna Hanink

johanna_hanink@brown.edu

GREK1111B: Polybius

This course focuses on Book IV of Polybius' Histories, deals with the late third century BCE, the Roman impact on Hellenistic Kingdoms and Greek communities, and Polybius as writer and historian. The course is addressed to students with at least a medium-level command of Ancient Greek (that is, they have completed at least two years of study at the college level). The course enhances student knowledge of Ancient Greek, develops an appreciation of important themes and recent research into Polybius and his work, and improves the student's capacity to translate Ancient Greek (into English) and comment on ancient Greek text. Assessment is by a combination of translation, commentary, and essay assignments. There is no mid-term or final examination.

Graham Oliver

GREK1820: Greek Literature Survey after 450 BCE

Surveys Greek literature after 450 BCE. Authors studied include Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, as well as the literature of the fourth century and beyond. Emphasis on literary interpretation and the intellectual currents of the times. Extensive readings in the original.

Stephen Kidd

stephen_e_kidd@brown.edu

GREK2020E: Greek Choral Lyric: Pindar and Bacchylides

Choral lyric played an essential role in the religious, cultural, and festive life of the Greeks in the fifth century B.C. Both Pindar and Bacchylides were acclaimed as masters of this art, and their compositions were performed in all parts of the Greek world. With proper preparation, we can enjoy in their original language their elevated poetry and appreciate the information it harbors concerning myth, local traditions, economics and power relations of class and gender. We will also consider such topics as the circumstances of their performance, literary sources and allusions, and the poets' own social position.

Pura Nieto Hernandez

michael_steinberg@brown.edu

HIAA2210: Asian Reprographics A Long History of Impression

This seminar examines the early history of reprography in East Asia. Defining reprography broadly to encompass all pre-photographic technologies of graphic impression, it explores the transfers that occurred within and between piece-mold bronze casting, ceramic molding, sealing, rubbing, and woodblock printing as they developed in succession and tandem over the past four millennia. In particular, the seminar considers the extent to which technics of transfer facilitated the movement of images across medium and time.

Jeffrey Moser

jeffrey_moser@brown.edu

HIST2930: The Roots of History

“The Roots of History” encourages critical thinking about some of the different ways in which historians approach thinking and writing about the past. In particular, we will explore some of the major theoretical stances that have influenced the discipline of history. Our focus throughout will be the interplay between theory and practice. By examining how historians have grappled with questions posed by influential thinkers (often working within other fields of knowledge), we will chart the trajectory of the discipline and assess its working methods. Required for all first-year PhD students in History.

Michael Steinberg

HIST2950: The Practice of History

This graduate seminar is about the professional skills, tools, and careers of historians—from hallmark best practices to new directions. We will engage different kinds of careers historians are pursuing today, the practical skills and resources necessary to meet them, and how historians are deploying those skills in multiple professional arenas, both in and beyond the academy. We shall also discuss some of the prevalent (although often unwritten) social and cultural norms of academia and university life to prepare you to navigate your training, career, and various institutional contexts that accompany and follow completion of a Ph.D. in History

Michael Vorenberg

michael_vorenberg@brown.edu

HIST2982B: Perspectives on Jewish History

Jewish history has a complex dynamic. The development of Jewish society is fed not only by Jewish tradition but also by developments in non-Jewish society. Equally, the place of Jews in the non-Jewish world is determined not only by the attitudes of non-Jews but also by the economic, social, and political agency wielded by Jews themselves. This graduate seminar will, in a broad chronological framework, examine the complicated interplay of forces which shaped both the Jewish experience in the non-Jewish world and the non-Jewish world’s treatment of its Jewish minority. Among the topics to be discussed: the places of Jews in premodern Christian and Muslim societies; Jewish early modernity; the historical trajectory of Jew-hate; changing Jewish responses to non-Jewish culture; Jewish power, powerlessness, and political development; the modern Jewish experience before, during, and after the Holocaust.

Adam Teller

adam_teller@brown.edu

HISP2030C: Medieval Masterpieces

Examines three medieval Spanish masterpieces: Cantar de Mio Cid, Libro de buen amor, and Celestina. Other works are read to explore lines of continuity and discontinuity in these three works and their respective genres.

Mercedes Vaquero

mercedes_vaquero@brown.edu

HMAN1977C: We the People

How do individual people come together to make a People? We will read key ancient texts including Aristotle, Livy, and Cicero, enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau and Hobbes, and modern theorists from Arendt and Schmitt to Chakrabarty and Mouffe to see how the “we” of We the People has been used both to include and exclude. We will also consider practices of political action both ancient and modern. Can a People create itself by a vote, a manifesto, or a riot? What is the relationship between the People and populism? The course is explicitly grounded in the ancient world; as well as analyzing how ancient concepts have echoed through the centuries, we will also look to the distant past for difference, asking how we might propose alternative genealogies of the People.

Amy Russell

amy_russell@brown.edu

LATN1060G: Tacitus

We read Book 11 (47-48 CE) during Claudius’ reign as emperor, focusing on the downfall of Claudius’ wife, Messalina, who plots to replace him with her lover, and his depiction of Claudius’ censorship, especially the admission of Gallic citizens into the Roman Senate (and we compare Claudius’ speech on this subject to the parts of the oration that are preserved on the Tabula Lugdunensis, a bronze tablet found in Lyon, France). We also read most of Book 15 (64-65 CE), with its reportage of Nero’s reign, especially the Great Fire of Rome and the Pisonian conspiracy. We consider Tacitus’ masterly style, historiographic methods, Tendenz, and an overarching question: how did the imperial system ever survive these regimes?

Adele Scafuro

LATN1110F: Fortunatus

Wide reading in the occasional poetry of the most prolific writer of the early Middle Ages, attending to diction, meter, imagery, allusion, and paying special attention to the (homo- and hetero-) erotic pieces written to the poet's friends.

Joseph Pucci

joseph_pucci@brown.edu

LATN 1110M: Plautus

Plautus’ Menaechmi, Rudens, and Captivi are three Plautine masterpieces. We read at least two, and do so with as much understanding of archaic Latin and theatric convention as we can muster. Students are expected to be in command of Latin syntax and morphology. Plautine metrics are difficult: reading the Latin text aloud is essential. Aspects of performance are given attention: Plautus, himself an actor, wrote his plays to be performed; we, too, must give thought (if not practice) to the Plautine stage and how that affects our understanding. For comparison, we shall have performance readings of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and possibly Shinza the Barber (a Japanese Kabuki play).

Adele Scafuro