Course Descriptions
©Kahn: Courtesy of NYU Photo Bureau
To enroll in an ISAW course, you must first obtain the permission of the instructor. You may then forward the permission email to isaw.academic.affairs@nyu.edu to get the registration access code. All classes will be held in the 2nd-floor Seminar Room at ISAW unless indicated otherwise.
Spring 2026: Seminar on the Interconnected Ancient World
Christianity from the Middle East to China in the First and Early Second Millennium CE
Sören Stark, Robert Hoyland, & Rong Huang
ss5951@nyu.edu, rgh2@nyu.edu, rh4210@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3030-001
Tuesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
During the second half of the first and the first third of the second millennium CE Christian communities, mostly organized in the 'Church of the East' with its Syriac liturgy, flourished in large parts of the Ancient World. In our class we will follow this extensive geographical spread from the Middle East and the shores of the Indian Ocean into Central Asia and China, while also investigating regional specifics and how Christian communities were exposed to and actively interacted with other major proselytizing religions such as Islam, Buddhism, and Manichaeism, as well as with numerous 'native' religious milieus. We will inquire into a fascinating variety of expressions in knowledge production (e.g. book culture) and in material culture (e.g. architecture and iconographies), as well as in specific forms of lifeways and community organization (e.g. asceticism, monasticism), which resulted in a remarkable intellectual and physical interconnectivity across the Ancient World.
Permission of the instructors is required.
Spring 2026: Research Seminars
Lived Religion between Polytheism and Monotheism
Beate Pongratz-Leisten & Greg Woolf
bpl2@nyu.edu; g.woolf@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3012-002
Tuesdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
Rather than looking at the religious systems of polytheism and monotheism from a theological point of view, this seminar approaches religion in terms of community, practice, institution, and theological discourse. The historical-geographical focus will be on the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East in order to trace the social-political conditions of the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman empires that promoted an increasing mobility and migrations which lead to profound changes in how the individual related to the divine. Religion in local and/or regional terms mediated through traditions, customs, institutions and social players moved from the context of the city-state towards religion as choice of different groups offering a diversity of religious doctrines and stories. Diasporic communities emerged as new additional social players undermining the traditional distinction between local and translocal cults. A focus on discrete social worlds or fields rather than thinking merely in ethnic or political-historical terms will allow for evaluating the agency of scribal/scholarly/monastic centers, the role of their networks, as well as the materiality of religion and craftmanship in defining the transition from knowledge-oriented religion to faith and belief dominating the interaction with the divine. Neither Judaism nor Christianity can be seen in isolation from the wider cultural and historical-political context from which they emerged nor does their diversity in practices allow for a monolithic view or single master-narrative.
Students may like to look in advance at: Albrecht et al. "Religion in the Making: The Lived Ancient Religion Approach." Religion 48, no. 4 (2018/10/02 2018): 568-93.
Permission of the instructors is required.
Scientific Methods in Archaeology
Federico Carò
Federico.Caro@metmuseum.org
ISAW-GA 3012-003
Thursdays, 2:00-5:00pm
This course explores the application of scientific methodologies to the investigation of archaeological objects and works of art, with a specific focus on inorganic materials. This introductory course aims at providing the students with the appropriate knowledge and tools to understand advantages and limitations of traditional and cutting-edge analytical techniques commonly available to archaeologists, and to implement them into successful interdisciplinary archaeological research. Students will be introduced to the science of most common archaeological materials and will examine how scientific analysis can help characterizing them, disclosing manufacturing processes and techniques, and reconstructing raw material procurement and trade.
The goal of this course is to give each student the knowledge necessary to understand, for each technique, its primary area of application, its strengths and weaknesses, and finally, how to couple complementary scientific techniques to tackle specific archaeological problems.
Upon completion of the course, students will have gained a basic knowledge of the techniques presented and will be able to discuss and design an analytical protocol around an archaeological question of their choice. Students will be involved in lectures, classroom discussions, hands-on exercises and analytical projects that will take advantage of the equipment and materials in the department of Scientific Research of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while certain portable analytical instruments will be made available at ISAW.
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Phoenicians and the Mediterranean
Antonis Kotsonas
ak7509@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3013-001
Wednesdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
This seminar will address questions of Phoenician archaeology, history and historiography, and it will explore the identity and culture of these people by investigating a wide range of textual and material evidence from the homeland of the Phoenicians and the areas of their overseas activities around the Mediterranean. The scholarship to be covered encompasses theoretical approaches to Phoenician identity, society and economy; models of interaction of these people with others in the Near East and the Mediterranean; art-historical accounts of Phoenician craftsmanship; and reports of archaeological fieldwork and important discoveries in the Levant, Cyprus, the Aegean, north Africa, the Italian peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia, and Iberia. Also, we will investigate the ways in which the history and archaeology of the Phoenicians has been communicated to the wider public through museum exhibitions, and we will reflect on the relevance of ancient Phoenician history and heritage to present-day communities.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Empire and Frontiers: Art and Archaeology in Han China
Lillian Tseng
lillian.tseng@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3013-002
Mondays, 2:00-5:00pm
This seminar examines the frontiers of the Han Empire through the lens of art, archaeology, and material culture. Organized thematically, the course emphasizes theory-driven approaches to empire, drawing on border theory, landscape archaeology, mobility studies, and materiality. We explore frontiers as zones of negotiation, hybridization, and cultural brokerage, analyzing how the Han empire both shaped—and was shaped by—its peripheral regions. Students will study objects from settlements, tombs, ritual installations, and items in motion—such as textiles, metals, glass, and horse gear—as evidence for imperial expansion, control, and cross-cultural interaction, as well as for understanding the dynamics of power, identity, and ideology in frontier contexts.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Early Chinese Time: Calendars and Hemerology in the Warring States, Qin, and Han Periods
Ethan Harkness
harkness@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3013-003
Thursdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
In this course, we will examine a range of early texts describing time and the calendar. These include myths about the beginning of time itself and early accounts of the most important units of time: days, months, seasons, and years. Paying close attention to technical detail, we will also engage with a variety of systems used to quantify, measure, and perhaps even gain some control over the passage of time. Finally, we will turn to the early Chinese tradition of hemerology - the art of distinguishing the auspicious or inauspicious qualities of time - to explore a perspective that interacts with and sometimes sheds light on that of the calendar makers. Our sources will include transmitted texts, but due to the many exciting manuscript discoveries that have become available in recent years, more emphasis will be placed on reading excavated texts. Classical Chinese reading skills are a prerequisite for formal enrollment.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Introduction to Digital Humanities for the Ancient World
Sebastian Heath, Tom Elliott, & Patrick Burns
sebastian.heath@nyu.edu; tom.elliott@nyu.edu; pjb311@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3024-001
Wednesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
Permission of the instructor is required.
Spring 2026: Other Courses
Intro to Ancient Egyptian II
ISAW-GA 1001-001
Niv Allon
Niv.Allon@metmuseum.org
Fridays, 9am-12pm
This course, the second in a two-semester sequence, will introduce students to the Middle Egyptian (Classical) dialect of the ancient Egyptian language. Students will become familiar with the hieroglyphic writing system, as well as key elements of the grammar and vocabulary of Middle Egyptian.
Prerequisite: ISAW-GA 1000-001, “Intro to Ancient Egyptian I” (or equivalent coursework).
Permission of the instructor is required.
Fall 2026: Seminar on the Interconnected Ancient World
Eurasian Interconnectivity
ISAW-GA 3030-001
Lillian Tseng and Sören Stark
lillian.tseng@nyu.edu; soeren.stark@nyu.edu
Tuesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
This seminar examines patterns of interconnectivity across large parts of Eurasia from the Iron Age to the early medieval period. It shifts the analytical focus away from major imperial centers and toward the corridors, frontiers, and intermediary communities that linked them. The course explores how interconnectivity developed within diverse socio-political and cultural contexts—such as nomadic elite networks, different types of urban centers, various contact zones, and diaspora communities—giving rise to forms of cultural entanglement and hybridity through processes of transmission and exchange. Students will engage critically with interdisciplinary scholarship and develop nuanced perspectives on cross-cultural interaction in the ancient world.
Permission of the instructors is required.
Fall 2026: Research Seminars
Problems in the Archaeology of Mesopotamia and Iran
ISAW-GA 3012-001
Daniel Potts
daniel.potts@nyu.edu
Mondays, 2:00-5:00pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
In this seminar we shall particularly focus on five episodes of entanglement, conflict and outright or attempted conquest. These include the mid- to late 4th millennium BC evidence for Uruk penetration in Susiana; Early Dynastic, Old Akkadian and Ur III attempts to conquer parts of southwestern Iran; Mari, Babylon and Elam in international relations; Kassite and post-Kassite relations with Middle Elamite élites; and Assyria's 'Eastern problem.' Both archaeological and cuneiform evidence will be examined to understand the motivations and potentialities of these interactions, and to evaluate the extent to which these did or did not change through time.
Reading knowledge of French and/or German and permission of the instructor are required.
Death, Burial, and Funerary Rituals in Bronze Age Western Asia
ISAW-GA 3012-002
Lorenzo d'Alfonso
lda5@nyu.edu
Wednesdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Environmental History of the Ancient Mediterranean World
ISAW-GA 3012-004
Greg Woolf
g.woolf@nyu.edu
Thursdays, 2:00-5:00pm
The nature of Mediterranean environments has assumed a growing importance in the study of ancient societies over the last twenty five years with growing attention to climate change and plagues in particular. This seminar will begin from longer-term patterns in the middle Holocene, looking at the kinds of man-animal-plant relations that had been established by the end of the Bronze Age, and at specific regimes of risk and specific patterns of exploitation. We will consider synergies between uplands and lowlands, forest and plain, land and sea and also look at unusual environments like wetlands and deserts before going on to explore various patterns of change in the last and first millennia. Topics to be considered are resilience, the impact of urbanism and demographic growth, the importance (or not) of interregional connectivity, endemic disease and epidemics and climate science. A knowledge of terms and concepts from the life sciences is not required, but a willingness to learn about this is.
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Sciences of the Stars in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Civilizations
ISAW-GA 3013-004
Alexander Jones
aj60@nyu.edu
Mondays, 2:00-5:00pm
In this course, we will explore central concerns and practices of astronomy and astrology in antiquity, using a reading of the astronomical treatise of Ptolemy (the Almagest or Mathematical Composition, c. 150 CE) as a springboard for excursions into earlier Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian traditions. Knowledge of ancient Greek or one of the other relevant ancient languages will be an asset though not a prerequisite.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Technology and Ancient Economic Growth: (or why we've never been ancient)
ISAW-GA 3013-005
Roderick Campbell
rbc2@nyu.edu
Fridays, 9:00am-12:00pm
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Rise of Islam in Late Antiquity
ISAW-GA 3013-006
Robert Hoyland
rgh2@nyu.edu
Wednesdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
Writing about the origins of Islam has become something of a boom industry. The key texts that started off recent debate are Crone and Cook's Hagarism (Cambridge 1977) and John Wansbrough's Qur'anic Studies (Oxford 1977). However, they were a sensation only within the field of Islamic studies/history. With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1990s and 2000s, and especially with the emergence of groups like al-Qa'ida and Islamic State, attention on Islam massively increased and this has included strong interest in its origins. On the down side, the debate over Islam's origins has become heavily politicized, but on the plus side the amount of scholarship published has sky-rocketed and theories have multiplied. This course will help you to understand the problems in writing about the origins of Islam and encourage you to come to your own conclusions about what directions might best allow the debate to go forward and progress to be made.
Prerequisite: intermediate Arabic.
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Greeks Overseas: Colonization, Postcolonialism, and Globalization
Course Number, TK (cross-listed at Institute of Fine Arts)
Antonis Kotsonas and Clemente Marconi
ak7509@nyu.edu; cm135@nyu.edu
Mondays, 9:30am-12:15pm
Seminar Room, Institute of Fine Arts (1 East 78th Street)
One of the most formative phenomena in the history of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the 1st millennium BCE is the overseas expansion of the Greeks, widely – but not uncontroversially – known as colonization. This seminar will discuss the social, economic, political and cultural processes that shaped this phenomenon in the context of broader and theoretical informed discussions of mobility, and of cross-cultural discourses on colonialism, postcolonialism and globalization.
Opting for integrated analysis of archaeological and historical data, we will be exploring a range of topics, including: what were the main reasons and processes for colonizing; which regions or cities spearheaded overseas expansion and which were the landscapes of colonization; how should one appreciate foundation stories; what were the modes of interaction between colonists and local populations and how they are reflected on the archaeological record. Emphasis will be placed on historiography and the ways in which modern agendas, and past and current terms and concepts, have shaped our understanding of the complexities of Greek colonization. The seminar will promote an understanding of the diverse sources available for the study of the subject, including their research potential and limitations, as well as of the ways in which archaeological and textual data are interwoven in scholarly interpretations.
Permission of the instructors is required.
Databases and Network Analysis for the Ancient World
ISAW-GA 3023-001
Sebastian Heath
sebastian.heath@nyu.edu
Wednesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
This course will explore the relationship between two overlapping approaches to working with data: Graph Databases and Network Analysis. Students will learn to apply these approaches to their own work within the broad scope of the Ancient World. A "Graph Database" is a collection of heterogeneous entities and the relationships between them. The software tools that allow querying of these collections start from the perspective of the individual entities and allow these entities to be selected, grouped, and counted. For the purposes of this course, a "Network" is a collection of nodes and the edges that connect them to other nodes in the same set. A focus of the tools for working with networks is the whole collection. Which nodes are highly connected? What is the nature of the paths that exist between all the nodes? What subgroups exist within a network and which nodes mediate between those subgroups? It is the case that 'nodes' are analogous to 'entities' and that 'edges' are analogous to 'relationships'. Starting with working examples, the course will explore these similarities as students learn how to implement these concepts within the context of their own work. How do these generic terms, methods, and questions relate to the past phenomena we study? Existing resources, including the Wikidata graph database and the networks that can be derived from it, will introduce students to specific tools such as the SPARQL query language and the Python programming language. Visualization of results will be one focus of our work. While there is no prior technical expertise required, an openness and commitment to learning new digital methods is essential. As the course progresses, students will increasingly work with their own data and this will lead to the development and implementation of a final project that uses the methods we learn in class. Weekly readings will explore working examples of both technologies and explore the impact they are having on scholarship and research in the Ancient World. The course may be particularly useful to archaeologists, historians, art historians, and philologists who want to explore how Graph Databases and Network Analysis can contribute to their own research.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Text Analysis for Historical Language Research
ISAW-GA 3023-002
Patrick J. Burns
pjb311@nyu.edu
Thursdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
This course introduces students to computational research methods helpful for producing data-driven scholarship involving large collections of historical-language text. Drawing on relevant topics in exploratory data science, corpus linguistics, and natural language processing, the course provides a forum for students to develop hands-on skills in computer programming (using Python), focused primarily on managing textual data, string manipulation, text mining and analysis, language modeling, and data visualization. Special attention will be given to the use of word embeddings, transformer models, and large language models and their applicability to historical-language text collections. Demonstrations throughout the course will draw primarily on English-language examples, but because of the philological range and diversity at ISAW, students are encouraged to work with digitized text collections in the languages most relevant to their research. There are no prerequisites, though students are expected to be open to reading, writing, and editing computer programs; students are required to bring laptops to class. Note that historical-language text for the purpose of this course covers texts or collections of texts written before the Early Modern period.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Fall 2026: Other Courses
Advanced Ancient Egyptian I
ISAW-GA 1002-001
Marc LeBlanc
marc.leblanc@nyu.edu
Fridays, 2:00-5:00pm
This course will focus on reading Middle Egyptian texts in a variety of genres. Special consideration will be given to the grammar of the texts, as well as the materiality and historical, cultural, and archaeological context.
Prerequisites: ISAW-GA 1000, "Intro to Ancient Egyptian I," and ISAW-GA 1001, "Intro to Ancient Egyptian II" (or equivalent coursework).
Permission of the instructor is required.
Spring 2027: Seminar on the Interconnected Ancient World
The Eurasian Bronze Age: Interconnectivity, Technology and Society
ISAW-GA 3031-001
Roderick Campbell and Lorenzo d'Alfonso
rbc2@nyu.edu; lda5@nyu.edu
Tuesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
Permission of the instructor is required.
Spring 2027: Research Seminars
As Below, So Above: Ritual Pits, Foundation Deposits, and Other Practices of Space and Place
ISAW-GA 3012-005
Beate Pongratz-Leisten and Amanda Cates Ball
bpl2@nyu.edu; acb9487@nyu.edu
Thursdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
Place is essential to individual and corporate identities; beyond architecture and landscape monuments the creation of place, i.e., the investment of human activity into space as an enactment and materialization of communal identity occurred in a variety of cultural contexts. These practices include the ritual deposition of artifacts, such as votives or cultic accessories, as well as the burial of detritus and human remains. Additionally, particular locales such as the foundations of temples or house/places dedicated to ancestor worship might be demarcated by foundation deposits and burials of human and/or animal remains. Implements used in cultic practice, due to their potency acquired through the association with the divine, could not easily be disposed of and thus may have required containment through burial in purpose-made pits. Moreover, purification of a person that occurred outside a building or the mouth-washing of a statue, the procession of a god and other cultic procedures required the temporary sacralization of space through either ritual means and/or visible demarcation of space. All of these cultural practices were meaningful to the communities regarding their definition of identity and group-belonging. In this course, we will take an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural approach to consider how the creation of place, and thus the creation or maintenance of identity, may be read into historical and archaeological evidence. Our case studies will range from texts describing the intention behind their deposition to trash pits that may have gained symbolic significance with the passage of time.
Requirements: Students will be expected to develop a research project from their chronological and geographical specialization, which they will present to the class and submit as a research paper. Grading will occur on the basis of participation in the discussion 50%; presentation 25% and written paper 25%.
Permission of the instructors is required.
Scientific Texts and Teaching in Later Antiquity
ISAW-GA 3012-006
Alexander Jones
aj60@nyu.edu
Fridays, 2:00-5:00pm
This course will explore aspects of the circulation, preservation, teaching, commenting, and editing of Greek scientific texts from the second century CE (the time of Ptolemy and Galen) through the ninth and tenth centuries (the time of the earlier minuscule manuscripts). Knowledge of ancient Greek at an intermediate level will be required.
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Transmission of Greek and Persian Science into Arabic
ISAW-GA 3013-004
Robert Hoyland
rgh2@nyu.edu
Wednesdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
In the course of the eighth-tenth centuries AD thousands of texts were translated from foreign tongues (especially Greek, Syriac and Persian) into Arabic. So extensive was this activity that modern Western scholars have labelled it a movement, "the translation movement". The epithet is well deserved in that the activity was not sporadic or haphazard, but to a substantial degree thorough and systematic. One of the key factors driving this movement were the demands for applied and theoretical scientific knowledge made by those engaged in running the vast Muslim empire, now stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan. Perhaps just as important, at least in the eyes of the Muslim rulers who patronized this activity, was the desire to emulate and outdo the Persian Emperors whom they had replaced, basing themselves in Baghdad, only a stone's throw away from the old Persian imperial capital of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.
One of the aims of this course will be to look at the debates about the nature of the "Translation Movement" that have arisen in the twenty years since Dimitri Gutas published his influential Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (Routledge, 1998), in particular the importance of non-Greek languages in this Movement.
Prerequisites: Intermediate ability in either Greek or Syriac or Arabic
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Archaeology of Africa: Introductions and Interconnections
ISAW-GA 3013-005
Jay Stephens
js15759@nyu.edu
Mondays, 2:00-5:00pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
Continental Africa – host to the evolution of the genus homo, the world's oldest examples of artistic expression, and to diverse cultures, environments, and resources – is often relegated to discussions of "periphery" when framed within a global lens or as the home to individuals who were forcibly displaced during the Atlantic slave trade. In the not-too-distant past, philosopher Georg Hegel wrote, "For [Africa has] no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit...", while former French President Nicolas Sarkozy remarked in 2007 that, "...[t]he tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history...". The intention of this course is not to force the continent and its communities onto the stage and into the spotlight, but rather to discuss how they were always part of an interconnected world and active participants in the historical process. Whether expressed through large-scale migrations, wide reaching trade networks, or more ephemeral transmissions of knowledge, communities within continental Africa created and maintained dynamic cultures, connections, and traditions that tied them to far-flung places outside and within the continent. In this course, we will survey the myriad evidence that places African communities within this wider lens and the cultures and states who called this continent home.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Transcultural Art History
ISAW-GA 3013-006
Lillian Tseng
lillian.tseng@nyu.edu
Mondays, 2:00-5:00pm
This seminar explores how art moves, transforms, and acquires new forms and meanings across cultural boundaries, emphasizing processes that transcend any single region or tradition. Students examine key concepts such as circulation, translation, appropriation, repurposing, syncretism, and hybridity to analyze objects, motifs, and techniques in diverse cultural contexts. The course highlights how artworks and material culture function as active participants in transcultural networks, revealing patterns of exchange, adaptation, and creative entanglement that shape visual expression and cultural meaning.
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Digital Humanities of the Human Body
ISAW-GA 3023-001
Sebastian Heath
sebastian.heath@nyu.edu
Wednesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
Permission of the instructor is required.
Spring 2027: Other Courses
Topics in Roman Provincial Archaeology
ISAW-GA 3003-001
Greg Woolf
g.woolf@nyu.edu
Thursdays, 2:00-5:00pm
In this course we will look at some of the most recent work conducted on a selection of Roman provinces. Key issues to consider will be the relationship of Roman-period economic and social forms to those of the pre-conquest period, the specific local forms taken by empire-wide phenomena such as urbanism and rural settlement, and the historiography of research in each region. Towards the end of the course there will be a change to discuss wider patterns, but we will begin from focusing on the experience and record from individual provinces.
Permission of the instructor is required.
This course is worth 4 credits. Please be sure to select the correct number of credits when registering.
Advanced Ancient Egyptian II
Niv Allon
Niv.Allon@metmuseum.org
ISAW-GA 1003-001
Fridays, 9:00am-12:00pm
This course will focus on reading Middle Egyptian texts in a variety of genres. Special consideration will be given to the grammar of the texts, as well as the materiality and historical, cultural, and archaeological context.
Prerequisites: ISAW-GA 1000, "Intro to Ancient Egyptian I"; ISAW-GA 1001, "Intro to Ancient Egyptian II"; and ISAW-GA 1002, "Advanced Ancient Egyptian I" (or equivalent coursework).
Permission of the instructor is required.