The following list includes graduate courses taught by faculty members of the Graduate Group and graduate courses offered by other programs and departments. Graduate students are also strongly encouraged to explore courses in other fields and disciplines that align with their scholarly interests. While certain courses are considered mandatory, we are committed to enabling our students to develop their own scholarly profiles, and there is great flexibility in crafting an itinerary through the program. All course choices are made in consultation with the Graduate Group Chair.
CLST 6000 Proseminar in Ancient History and Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures
James Ker
F 8:30-11:30am
This is the required proseminar for first-year graduate students in Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures (GLLL) and Ancient History (ANCH). It offers an up-to-date orientation to the professional academic fields conventionally known as classical studies and ancient history. The course is responsive to present debates within, and about, these fields.
ANCH 6102 Problems in Hellenistic History
Julia Wilker
M 1:45-4:45pm
This course will explore seminal trends and debates that have shaped modern inquiries in the period between the campaigns of Alexander and the Battle of Actium. The purpose of the seminar is to gain familiarity with the field of Hellenistic studies broadly defined as well as specific approaches. Special emphasis will be laid on the debate of whether terms such as “Hellenism” or “Hellenization” adequately describe the complex political, social, and cultural dynamics of the period and the new frameworks of interaction, confluence, and power structures that shaped it.
CLST 5305 Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome
Brian Rose
TR 12:00-1:30pm
An intensive exploration of Rome's urban topography during the Republican and Imperial periods (6th c. B.C. through 4th c. A.D.) Using archaeological and textual sources, including the Etruscan and Roman collections of the Penn Museum, the goal will be to reconstruct the built environment and decoration of Rome over the course of a millennium. Of interest to students of classics, archaeology, art history, and architecture. Some familiarity with Rome will be a plus, but is not required.
CLST 5318 Landscapes and Seascapes of the Ancient Mediterranean
Tom Tartaron
W 12:00-3:00pm
The Mediterranean environment is both diverse and unique, and nurtured numerous complex societies along its shores in antiquity. This seminar offers a primer on theoretical and methodological approaches to studying landscapes and seascapes of the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to the early modern era, at scales from local to international and on land and underwater. Concepts from processual, post-processual, and current archaeologies will be considered, and field techniques including excavation and surface survey, remote sensing and geophysics, GIS modeling, and ethnography/ethnoarchaeology are examined. Course content and discussion focus on case studies that illustrate how these tools are used to reconstruct the appearance and resources of the natural environment; overland and maritime routes; settlement location, size, function, and demography; social and economic networks; and agricultural, pastoral, and nomadic lifeways. Seminar participants will develop case studies of their own geographical and chronological interest.
GREK 6610 Reading Greek
TR 10:15-11:45am
Intensive reading in ancient Greek literature, focusing on the skills and practices required to read closely a 150-page “short list” of key texts and becoming familiar with authors, chronology, meters, dialects, and genres. Exercises include analysis, sight translation, and practice versions of the Qualifications Examination in Greek.
CLST 7609 Topics in Greek and Roman Literary History
Joseph Farrell
W 1:45-4:45pm
This seminar will explore perspectives on controversial inflection points in Greek and Roman literary history.
CLST 6300 Materials and Methods in Mediterranean Archaeology
Ann Kuttner
R 1:45-4:45pm
This course is intended to provide an introduction to archaeological methods and theory in a Mediterranean context, focusing on the contemporary landscape. The class will cover work with museum collections (focusing on the holdings of the Penn Museum), field work and laboratory analysis in order to give students a diverse toolkit that they can later employ in their own original research. Each week, invited lecturers will address the class on different aspects of archaeological methodology in their own research, emphasizing specific themes that will be highlighted in readings and subsequent discussion. The course is divided into three sections: Method and Theory in Mediterranean Archaeology; Museum collections; and Decolonizing Mediterranean Archaeology. The course is designed for new AAMW graduate students, though other graduate students or advanced undergraduate students may participate with the permission of the instructor.
ANTH 6000 Contemporary Archaeology in Theory
Lauren Ristvet
T 10:15am-1:15pm
This graduate seminar addresses contemporary anthropological archaeology and considers the varied ways inferences are made about past and present human behavior from the archaeological record. It reviews such fundamental topics as the use of analogy, Middle Range theory, symbolism and meaning, social and cultural evolution, ideology and power, feminism and gender, and indigenous (non-Western) perspectives. It also foregrounds basic issues regarding heritage, looting, and ethics.
AAMW 6290 Architects and Empire: Roman Architecture and Urbanism
Mantha Zarmakoupi
MW 5:15-6:45pm
Architecture is the most striking legacy of Rome and the well-preserved remains of Roman buildings dominate our vision of the empire. Although Roman architecture has been studied since the Renaissance, it is only since the middle of the 20th century that it has come to be appreciated for the developments in concrete construction, which led to a revolution in the treatment of interior space and landscape architecture. Indeed, Rome’s architectural revolution radically changed both cities and countryside. Romans developed a wide range of new architectural forms and technological innovations in order to meet the increasingly sophisticated and diverse needs of their society. The purpose of the course is to shed light on Roman architectural and urban projects within their social, political, religious, and physical contexts. Throughout, the emphasis will be on concepts of organizing space, issues of structure, materials, decoration and proportion, the role of architecture in Roman society, and on the varied ways that architecture was employed by individuals and communities to express and enhance their status.
MELC 5100 Seminar on Egyptian Archaeology and History
Josef Wegner
W 1:45-4:45pm
MELC 6108 The Archaeology of Nubia
Josef Wegner
TR 3:30-5:00pm
The course will examine the archaeology of Ancient Nubia from Pre-history through the Bronze and Iron Ages, ca. 5000 BCE to 300 AD. The course will focus on the various Nubian cultures of the Middle Nile, and social and cultural development, along with a detailed examination of the major archaeological sites and central issues of Nubian archaeology.
CLST 7317 Ruins and Reconstructions
Lynn Meskell
W 1:45-4:45pm
This class examines our enduring fascination with ruins coupled with our commitments to reconstruction from theoretical, ethical, socio-political and practical perspectives. This includes analyzing international conventions and principles, to the work of heritage agencies and NGOs, to the implications for specific local communities and development trajectories. We will explore global case studies featuring archaeological and monumental sites with an attention to context and communities, as well as the construction of expertise and implications of international intervention. Issues of conservation from the material to the digital will also be examined. Throughout the course we will be asking what a future in ruins holds for a variety of fields and disciplines, as well as those who have most to win or lose in the preservation of the past.
AAMW 5570 Archaeology of Landscapes
Chad White
M 10:15am-1:15pm
Traditionally, archaeological research has focused on the "site" or "sites." Regional investigation tends to stress settlement pattern and settlement system determined through archaeological site survey. This seminar will stress the space between the sites or "points" on the landscape. Most previous attempts at "landscape archaeology" tended to focus on the relationship of sites and the natural environment. This course will highlight the cultural, "anthropogenic," or "built environment"--in this case human modification and transformation of the natural landscape in the form of pathways, roads, causeways, monuments, walls, agricultural fields and their boundaries, gardens, astronomical and calendrical alignments, and water distribution networks. Features will be examined in terms of the "social logic" or formal patterning of cultural space. These can provide insights into indigenous structures such as measurement systems, land tenure, social organization, engineering, cosmology, calendars, astronomy, cognition, and ritual practices. Landscapes are also the medium for understanding everyday life, experience, movement, memory, identity, time, and historical ecology. Ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and archaeological case studies will be investigated from both the Old and New Worlds.
ARTH 5400 Medieval Art Seminar: Relics, Pilgrimage and Material Culture
Sarah Guerin
T 5:15-8:15pm
For Christians of medieval Europe, pilgrimages were one of the key embodied experiences of faith. Reliquaries, churches with their shrines, portals, manuscripts and music: all were crafted to augment the corporeal experience of the divine. This seminar will take the material culture surrounding the relic and its veneration as a lens for exploring the Middle Ages, from the Early Christian to the High Gothic. Cross-disciplinary methodologies and cross-cultural examples will be considered to advance our understanding of these phenomena. While proceeding chronologically, each week will focus on a distinct strategy for shaping the interaction between faith and matter.
ANTH 5221 Material World in Archaeological Science
TR 10:15-11:45am
By focusing on the scientific analysis of inorganic archaeological materials, this course will explore processes of creation in the past. Class will take place in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will be team taught in three modules: analysis of lithics, analysis of ceramics and analysis of metals. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how the transformation of materials into objects provides key information about past human behaviors and the socio-economic contexts of production, distribution, exchange and use. Discussion topics will include invention and adoption of new technologies, change and innovation, use of fire, and craft specialization.
CLST 5620 Intro to Digital Archaeology
Jason Herrmann
MW 3:30-5:00pm
Students in this course will be exposed to the broad spectrum of digital approaches in archaeology with an emphasis on fieldwork, through a survey of current literature and applied learning opportunities that focus on African American mortuary landscapes of greater Philadelphia. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, we will work with stakeholders from cemetery companies, historic preservation advocacy groups, and members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to collect data from three field sites. We will then use these data to reconstruct the original plans, untangle site taphonomy, and assess our results for each site. Our results will be examined within the broader constellation of threatened and lost African American burial grounds and our interpretations will be shared with community stakeholders using digital storytelling techniques. This course can count toward the minor in Digital Humanities, minor in Archaeological Science and the Graduate Certificate in Archaeological Science.
CLST 7313 Archaeobotany
F 8:30-11:30am
Chantel White
In this course we will approach the relationship between plants and people from archaeological and anthropological perspectives in order to investigate diverse plant consumption, use, and management strategies. Topics will include: archaeological formation processes, archaeobotanical sampling and recovery, lab sorting and identification, quantification methods, and archaeobotany as a means of preserving cultural heritage. Students will learn both field procedures and laboratory methods of archaeobotany through a series of hands-on activities and lab-based experiments. The final research project will involve an original in-depth analysis and interpretation of archaeobotanical specimens. By the end of the course, students will feel comfortable reading and evaluating archaeobotanical literature and will have a solid understanding of how archaeobotanists interpret human activities of the past.
ANTH 5244 Introduction to Human Osteology
TR 10:15-11:45am
This course introduces students to the human skeleton as a biological and sociocultural product of lived experience. Main objectives of this course include: 1) learning to identify all 206 bones in the adult human skeleton at their various stages of development; 2) learning to identify skeletal landmarks associated with muscle attachment; and 3) learning the major muscle groups associated with shoulder, elbow, hip and knee joints. Students will also explore historical, methodological and theoretical developments in bioanthropology that help us to understand how empirical observation of the skeleton is a social process. Finally, students will be introduced to the process of constructing biological profiles based on skeletal and documentary analysis, including age-at-death, sex, and pathological conditions.