Academic Year 2023-2024

09/06/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Illustration from a medieval manuscript showing a pig on a table being dissected by Galen with an audience of about 10 men standing around the table and watching.

Dissecting History:

Repopulating the World of Roman Medical Research

Claire Bubb

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Our understanding of Roman medicine is dominated by one overshadowing figure: the prolific author and doctor Galen. His massive output, incisive intelligence, and aggressive self-promotion served to dominate the historical record very early on, with the result that other ancient voices in the field were not copied and have, accordingly, been mostly silenced. The reception following this lecture will celebrate Claire Bubb's book publication, Dissection in Classical Antiquity: A Social and Medical History (Cambridge, 2022), and other recent publications by ISAW community members.
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09/13/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Photo of back side of a sculpture head on a clear mount with black background

Sacro-Creative Action and the Making of Gods in and beyond Rome

John Hopkins

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. It is well known that Roman life was steeped in religious practice. Historians also generally understand that the predation of an imperializing, centrally administered government in Rome began to deploy religion as a syncretizing, assimilationist and appropriative measure in Italic and Mediterranean occupation from the third century BCE, at least.
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09/20/2023 01:00 PM Online
Photo of a group of nine archaeological team members excavating square grids in a grassy field with mountains in the background

Ireland Before the Saints and Scholars:

Excavations at the Iron Age Site of Dún Ailinne, Co. Kildare

Pam J. Crabtree

This lecture will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. While Early Medieval Ireland is well-known from both history and archaeology as the “land of saints and scholars”, the Iron Age period that precedes it is poorly known. Dún Ailinne in County Kildare is one of the few Iron Age sites that have been extensively excavated.
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10/12/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Photo of a rectangular one-story building with central courtyard in desert oasis environment with palm trees.

17th Annual Leon Levy Lecture

In Search of the “Evanescent” Garamantes: The Central Sahara in the 1st Millennium BCE

Lucia Mori

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The history of the Sahara, which is nowadays the largest hot desert in the world, is still to be written for the most part. Until some decades ago, there had been only little acknowledgement of pristine and early African urbanization before the Islamic period, except for the Mediterranean and Nilotic civilizations.
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10/18/2023 01:00 PM Online
Stylized image of a tiger in relief on a portable stone object with a drilled hole for hanging

Writing as Wen: The Ontology of Shang Script

Roderick Campbell

This lecture will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Approaches to writing in Early China have been founded on a problematic set of assumptions -- namely that writing systems are strictly and only representations of natural language. This, in turn, has served to obscure that Shang script is a system of graphic signs and therefore belongs to wider systems of representation.
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10/25/2023 05:30 PM Online
Photo of an ancient Greek temple in Athens with the city visible in the background

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop

Fire Deities of the Ancient Greeks: Histories, Beliefs, and Practices

Organized by the China Institute and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. The use of fire is an important human skill, fundamental to life in the present and in the past. In ancient societies, people relied on the help of a variety of divine figures for fiery activities such as cooking, heating homes, and crafting objects like metals and pottery. This workshop will explore the context and development of ancient Greek beliefs about fire, including the importance of the figures of Prometheus, Hephaistos, and Athena.
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10/30/2023 10:00 AM Online
A group of three people gathered around a table and laptop in library in front of bookshelves

Open House for Prospective Students
ISAW's open house for prospective doctoral students will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. The event will include an opportunity to meet the ISAW faculty; an information session about our academic program; a Q&A session with current students; and sessions on archaeology, digital humanities, exhibitions, and the library at ISAW.
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11/01/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Alabaster statue of a standing man wearing a robe in front a relief panel

Yemen — The Fate of Archaeological Heritage

Jérémie Schiettecatte

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. In the early 1970s, Yemen was emerging from a long period of isolation. Archaeological research gradually took off, making it possible to retrace the major stages in the evolution of the land of the Queen of Sheba. The monumentality of its architecture and the refinement of its arts were revealed, along with thousands of ancient monumental inscriptions. The outlines of a South Arabian civilization were gradually taking shape. Ancient South Arabia has turned out to be quite different from the misleading image of a desert Arabia roamed only by nomads.
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11/08/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Al Ani leaning against a tree with the words "Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq". November 8, 2023 - February 25, 2024

Through the Lens Gallery Talk: Curators and Artists in Conversation

Exhibition Lecture

Pedro Azara, Nadine Hattom, Mahmoud Obaidi

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Please join us as Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Co-curator of ISAW’s Through the Lens, Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq exhibition, hosts a conversation with Pedro Azara (Barcelona University) and artists Nadine Hattom and Mahmoud Obaidi as they discuss the genesis of this project. Pedro, Nadine, and Mahmoud will address the themes of the exhibition, discuss the contemporary artworks on display, and evaluate the role of photography in the depiction and understanding of ancient Iraq.
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11/14/2023 05:30 PM Online
Event banner with text on green background; image of painted wall fragment depicting veiled person in blue clothing

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop

Reckoning with Ancient Fragments: The Transcultural World of the Sogdians

Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. The medieval civilization of the Sogdians, from their homeland in modern-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was once renowned as an international agent of transcultural exchange across the Eurasian ‘Silk Road’. However, the source material from the Sogdians that survives is highly fragmentary and the limited textual evidence is usually written from outsiders’ perspectives.
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11/14/2023 06:30 PM NYU Silver Center for Arts and Science, Room 300
Movie poster featuring a black and white photograph of a man looking to the side and holding an old camera with the words "Iraq's Invisible Beauty" overlaid ontop of the image along

Exhibition Event: Screening of Iraq's Invisible Beauty at NYU's Silver Center

Jurgen Buedts

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. To celebrate the opening of the Institute of the Study of the Ancient World’s new exhibition Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq, join us for a screening of Iraq’s Invisible Beauty (2022), a documentary exploring the work and life of the father of Iraqi photography, Latif Al Ani.
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11/28/2023 05:30 PM Online
Event banner with text on green background; combined image of Egyptian sarcophagus and dissected human figure

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop

Greece, Egypt, and the Body: Dissection and Mummification in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. The Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Egyptians held different beliefs about the workings of the body and about the handling of corpses.
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