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.
Fall 2024: Seminar on the Interconnected Ancient World
Pioneers and Pathfinders: Early Giants of Archaeology from Inner Asia to the British Isles
Daniel Potts
dtp2@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3030-001
Tuesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
This seminar will examine a series of scholars whose research opened up new domains of knowledge production in the study of ancient Eurasia. Whether through fieldwork, or armchair, methodological and theoretical innovation, the contributors to the fields in which we now work established new empirical foundations that remain relevant in the 21st century. Bio-bibliographical research by seminar participants will focus on one individual who made a seminal contribution to their field. Examples may include, but are not limited to, V. Gordon Childe, O.G.S. Crawford, Dorothy Garrod, Ernst Herzfeld, A.H. Layard, Albert von Le Coq, Sir John Marshall, Antoine Poidebard, Raphael Pumpelly, Heinrich Schliemann, Sir Marc Aurel Stein, C.J. Thomsen and Sir Mortimer Wheeler.
Prerequisites: none, but reading knowledge of French and/or German will be useful.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Fall 2024: Research Seminars
Roman Medicine
Claire Bubb
cc148@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3012-001
Tuesdays, 9am-12pm
This course will provide a deep survey of medicine as it was practiced in the Roman world in the first two centuries of the imperial period. We will spend considerable time with Galen, reading a variety of his treatises on both the theory and the application of medical treatment. We will also spend a significant amount of time looking at the wider world of medicine beyond Galen. Beginning with a survey of Italian medical traditions and the cultural tensions inherent in Greek medicine inhabiting a Roman world, we will also study the sectarian landscape of academic medicine, with particular attention to the Empiricists and the Methodists. Further topics to round out the picture will include pharmacology, the epigraphic and papyrological evidence for medicine and doctors, and the practices of religious healing and medical tourism.
Knowledge of Greek and Latin is recommended; permission of the instructor is required.
Art and Archaeology of the First Emperor: A Global Perspective
Lillian Tseng
lillian.tseng@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3012-002
Mondays, 2:00-5:00pm
Permission of the instructor is required.
Palace to Polis: An Archaeology of Early Greece
Antonis Kotsonas
ak7509@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3013-001
Wednesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
The seminar examines a range of discourses on political, social and economic history and material culture in the Aegean from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Early Iron Age (14th to 7th centuries BCE). Although these two key periods of Aegean archaeology are typically treated separately, we will adopt an integrated approach to compare and contrast the textual and material culture of the palace-centered polities of the Late Bronze Age with the culture of the communities of the Early Iron Age, many of which became Archaic Greek poleis. Inspired by discussions over continuity and change, and over internal development and external influence, we will study: socio-political complexity, including its collapse and re-emergence; economy and trade; migration, colonization and the interaction of Aegean populations with communities in the Eastern and the Central Mediterranean; religion and cult practice; death, burial and the role of the past; script, literacy and the Homeric epic. Emphasis will be placed on the meaning of temporal and spatial variation in material culture and patterns of deposition, which is important for the seminar's aim of enriching and deconstructing the linear narrative embedded in the traditional concept of "Palace to Polis".
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Modern Reception of Greek and Roman Sculpture
Hallie Franks
hmf2@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3013-002
Mondays, 9:00am-12:00pm
In this class, we ask how modern narratives of ancient art history have been constructed, and how they have shaped both scholarly and popular ideas about ancient art. We focus on Greek and Roman sculpture, which has had a privileged place in the modern imagination of antiquity, and in art historical historiography. Our semester will be organized around particular moments of tension or debate, which may include: Johann Winckelmann's readings of ancient sculpture and reception of his work; the establishment of chronology and periodizations; how to understand ancient use of color and tinting in sculpture; claims to classicism in nationalist narratives; the creation, use, and dissemination of casts; the relationship of Greek sculpture to modern ideas of bodily and artistic beauty. Our study of these histories of interpretation and instrumentalization of ancient sculpture will lay groundwork for close study and productive rethinking of the ancient material.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Wealth, Inequality, Diversity: Political Archaeology of Ugarit
Lorenzo d'Alfonso
lda5@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3013-003
Wednesdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
Ugarit, modern site of Ras Shamra in coastal Syria, was for the entire Late Bronze Age (1500-1200 BCE) the most important harbor and emporium of the entire Mediterranean.
Excavations run by French archaeologists from 1929, and by a Syrian-French mission for the last 20 years, have brought to light written and archaeological evidence of the wealth and fine arts and literature of this center. Its strong local identity, underscored by the creation of a cuneiform alphabetic writing for the local idiom, blossomed in a strongly multi-cultural context supported by a long-distance network and the in-house residency of trade agents and high officials from the four corners of southwest Asia and the Mediterranean. This wealthy, sophisticated urban center was the capital of a geographically small and politically minor kingdom, controlling a territory of ca 1500 Km2. The hinterland agriculture was rich, with high productivity of the chief Mediterranean products such as grapes, olives and bread wheat. Leaving conditions outside the urban center and its main harbors are unknown, but textual sources have been studied to set up models of social inequality and revolts that have been very influential in understanding complex societies in the preclassical Mediterranean.
After introducing basic theoretical works on the investigation of wealth, inequality, and diversity in the study of the ancient world, the course aims at introducing the site and moving from the literature exploring these themes from the analysis of the written sources, to associated them with the unique archaeological evidence from this unique LBA site.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Interactive and Physical Computing
Sebastian Heath
sh1933@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3023-001
Thursdays, 2:00-5:00pm
This course will bring together recent developments in 3D modeling, virtual environments such as game engines, machine learning, and generative artificial intelligence (gAI) in combination with inexpensive microcontrollers and sensors to allow students to create interactive environments that explore the concept of physical experience as it relates to the ancient world. Among the themes we explore will be the extent to which combinations of these tools and methods can evoke the lived experience of ancient people - in any culture - and allow for consideration of how ancient bodies interacted with spaces, objects, and environments (and with other bodies). Among the projects we will undertake will be creating apps that use machine learning to recognize pose and gesture and so consider how those were aspects of embodiment that were incorporated into ancient societies. This will likely segue into building online environments evoking interior and exterior spaces as well as landscapes using open-source game engines. We will find opportunities to integrate output from sensors and controllers - including ones we assemble ourselves using low-cost microcontrollers - into the virtual environments and other tools we create. Throughout the course we will look to take advantage of recent developments in generative AI, both as a means to add functionality to - and as an aid in developing - digital resources. The scope of this course will feel expansive at times, but students will have the opportunity throughout the term to focus on working results and then will be able to turn to a final project that builds on their growing level of technical skill. There are no technical prerequisites beyond a willingness to engage in active learning of new computational principles and methods and then to apply those to their own chosen field of study. Our work throughout the semester will be informed by readings that explore the relationship between digital approaches and the study of the ancient world from practical perspectives, theoretical perspectives, and from various disciplinary perspectives.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Fall 2024: Other Courses
Advanced Ancient Egyptian I
Marc LeBlanc
ml4878@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 1002-001
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.
Arabic and Islam in Central Asia
Robert Hoyland
rgh2@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3003-001
Wednesdays, 9am-12pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
Four credits. Permission of the instructor and intermediate-level knowledge of Arabic are required.
Urartian Language II
Annarita Bonfanti
ab11866@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3003-002
Fridays, 2:30-5:30pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
This course will be dedicated to a comprehensive analysis (philological and contextual/archaeological) of the most problematic Urartian epigraphs, together with a textual examination of the main grammatical and syntactical phenomena studied in the Introductory course. Aim of these classes would be the completion of the projects begun during the Introductory course, together with a new understanding of the problems, and possible solutions, that still affect Urartian philological studies.
Prerequisite: "Brief Introduction to Urartian Language" course (Spring 2024)
Advanced Hittite
Lorenzo d'Alfonso
lda5@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3003-004
Meeting time and location, TBD
The course aims at introducing students to all typologies of texts written in Hittite and preserved in the royal archives of Hattusa and other peripheral centers of the Hittite empire. Students will be assigned ca 20 ll. of cuneiform text for each class to transcribe and translate. Each passage is taken from a genre, on which a piece of informative literature is equally assigned. In class we will discuss transcription and translation, and some basic concepts on the genre. Goal of the course is to achieve a sufficient control of Hittite cuneiform, and a view over the different text genres attested in the Hittite archives.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Spring 2025: Seminar on the Interconnected Ancient World
The Interconnected Ancient World: 1-500 CE
Lillian Tseng and Sebastian Heath
lillian.tseng@nyu.edu; sebastian.heath@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3031-001
Tuesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
Permission of the instructors is required.
Spring 2025: Research Seminars
The Animal Across Disciplines in the Roman Mediterranean
Claire Bubb
cc148@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3012-001
Mondays, 2:00-5:00pm
Animals were integrated into many aspects of life in antiquity and have left their mark in the textual, material, and archaeological records. This class will focus on human interactions with animals in the Roman Mediterranean, offering a synthetic view of the different types of evidence available. With this goal in mind, the course will begin with sessions devoted to cattle, flock animals, and equids, respectively, each taking a holistic look at the animals in the historical record, including literary appearances, artistic representations, ancient technical writing, and zooarchaeological remains. Subsequent weeks will consider the more diverse groups of species (real and imagined) that fall under the heading of pets, exotic animals, and (quasi-)mythical animals, including the role that fossils may have played in the ancient zoological imaginary. The second half of the class will turn more directly to the study of human-animal interactions, covering the topics of the religious role of animals, hunting, diet, the scientific study of animals in antiquity, and literary and artistic deployments of animals.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Early Iron Age Complex Societies in Ancient Western Asia and the Emergence of the Scytho-Siberian Phenomenon
Sören Stark and Annarita Bonfanti
soeren.stark@nyu.edu; ab11866@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3012-002
Thursdays, 2:00-5:00pm
Permission of the instructors is required.
Antiquarians and Curators: Ancient Art Collecting and Displaying Practices
Roberta Casagrande-Kim and Maya Muratov
rck3@nyu.edu; mbm224@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3012-003
Thursdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
This course explores major issues pertinent to the collection, display, and curation of ancient art by offering a historical and contemporary perspective. Central topics will include history of collecting from Antiquity onwards and early history of museums, historical and contemporary issues of acquisition, development of cross-cultural thematic exhibitions, use of design and technology in contemporary modes of display, as well as audience development and engagement.
The seminar will alternate between lectures from both professors and meetings in ISAW's galleries and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Permission of the instructors is required.
Ancient Worlds and World Systems: Interaction, Interconnection and Comparison
Roderick Campbell
rbc2@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3013-001
Fridays, 2:00-5:00pm
The terms "interaction" and "interconnection" are much invoked in academic discourse (indeed are considered to be foundational to the mission of this Institute), but what do they actually mean? How have these terms been used in ancient studies and its multiple overlapping disciplines? What concepts do they entail and how do they relate to one another? How do they map across different disciplines and what sorts of historical subjects do they imagine? Is interconnection, for instance, in opposition to comparison or its complement? Should it be ancient "world", "worlds" or "world systems" and how does this conceptualization relate to the sort of relationality one chooses to embrace or the historical subject one chooses to imagine?
This course will engage diverse theories concerning interaction, interconnection and comparison in the past, exploring their theoretical assumptions, the modes of relationality they invoke and the various engagements with the past they imply. Readings will range across a number of disciplines and from foundational figures of historiography and social theory to recent developments. This seminar will be reading intensive.
Permission of the instructor is required.
Borderlands and Peripheries: Political Archaeology of the Liminal Regions of the Assyrian Empire (9th-7th cc. BCE)
Beate Pongratz-Leisten and Lorenzo d'Alfonso
lda5@nyu.edu; bpl2@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3018-001
Tuesdays, 9:00am-12:00pm
With its overwhelming military force, and an ideological and material apparatus the Assyrian empire features in the Old Testament, in the indigenous political narrative, and in the archaeological record as the most effective, powerful and visible political machine of ancient western Asia. Exactly because it has been so widely investigated, the Assyrian empire offers a unique case study for investigating processes of cultural interaction in non-core and border regions.
The seminar will first introduce theoretical literature on the theme of borders, group identity formation and cultural contact, with attention to the specific case of unbalanced political circumstances. It will then consider the study of the different non-core and border zones of the empire with their different histories and traditions (Babylon, Elam, the Zagros, Urartu, the post-Hittite canton states, Muški, the Syro-Hittite world, the Canaanite city-states, Israel and Judah) using the epigraphic and OT textual materials, but moving particularly from the evidence emerging from the archaeological record.
Permission of the instructors is required.
The Political Ecology of Urban Structures in Greater Mesopotamia: Theory, Evidence and Problems
Reed Goodman
rg4826@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3018-003
Wednesdays, 2:00-5:00pm
This seminar will explore the ecological underpinnings of urban institutions in Mesopotamia from the 4th through the 2nd millennia BCE. Despite the region's comparatively early transition from villages and towns to cities and city-states, Mesopotamia's urban record is often presented as a unified portrait of cultural continuity across vast scales of space and time, a palimpsest of archaeological, historical and ethnohistorical data. As a result, transformations in both material and symbolic processes are glossed over, lost to an urban gestalt that misses the dynamism of ancient Near Eastern cityscapes. To move beyond reductive concepts of urban form and organization, we will center our conversations around elements of process and change across case-studies, emphasizing shifts in subsistence-related artifactual assemblages, along with evolving expressions in text and image of scarcity and abundance, water and land. Theoretical readings will allow us to broaden the perspective from which we view urban institutions to better understand Mesopotamian cities as social and technical processes structured in and through landscapes. Ultimately, we will reflect on urban political power as "structural power," a term that the anthropologist Eric R. Wolf associated with the ability of institutions to redirect resource flows by manipulating the built environment. This approach will allow us to characterize the cultural and political ecology of a vast and heterogeneous geography stretching from southern Iraq and southwestern Iran to Syria and Turkey.
Permission of the instructor and reading knowledge of French and German are required.
Spring 2025: Other Courses
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.
Statistical Programming for Ancient World Study
Patrick Burns
pjb311@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3003-001
Mondays, 5:15-6:45pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
This two-credit course introduces students to statistical programming in R with a focus on working with archaeological data, historical-language philological data, and other types of ancient-world data. The course uses Thulin's Modern Statistics with R: From wrangling and exploring data to inference and predictive modelling book, supplementing the examples used here with datasets directly relevant to ancient world study. Topics covered include data collection and transformation, exploratory data analysis and visualization, and basic introductions to regression models and predictive models, though the primary focus of the course will be instructing students on best practices for working with R for quantitative research. Weekly readings will supplement coding assignments with special topics related to the role of statistics in archaeology and philology. For the course's final project, students can either reproduce a quantitative analysis from their area of ancient world research or develop one of their own. There are no prerequisites for this course.
Permission of the instructor is required.
The Culture of Production in the Administrative and Literary Texts in Ancient Mesopotamia
Beate Pongratz-Leisten
bpl2@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3018-002
Thursdays, 10:00am-1:00pm
Large Conference Room, 6th Floor
Permission of the instructor is required.
Race and Roman Art
John Hopkins
jnh1@nyu.edu
ISAW-GA 3003-002
Mondays, 2:00-4:45pm
Location, TBD (Downtown, NYU)
4 credits. Roman art history is tinged with race. It is epitomized in canonical artforms that have been made to seem appropriate (so, appropriated) for Europeans/Whites but not others. It is clouded by the racialization of peoples and by a history of racism and supremacist thought that appropriated a diverse population for one region's dominance. At the same time, from the first moments of modern critical study of art in the fifteenth century and through Enlightenment study of the ancient Mediterranean, Roman culture has held a place at the center of the Humanities, the field of Art History, and the idea of what it means to be intellectual. This course examines the racialization of ancient peoples, their use in the supremacist creation and maintenance of a "Western" canon and the ways that Romans, people living under Roman occupation, and their art has been appropriated and assimilated for European intellectual and historical hegemony. Just as importantly, this course looks to antiquity itself to assess how the diverse and entangled peoples of the whole Mediterranean came under Roman occupation, all the while composing a world of art that was only Roman in part. For many apologists and intellectual champions of "Classical" art, the diversity of the Empire and the powers that elites (even a few emperors) who hailed from multiple backgrounds wielded has seemed a means to champion an open culture. Two important correctives to this are 1) how assimilationist tendencies often cleansed the empire of its diversity or tokenized othered people, and 2) that scholarship still focuses on the role of a select canon of art and an elite ancient community who pushed a predatory imperialist agenda that often fueled epistemicide and the cleansing of heritage. With this in mind, we will close the semester by considering how the field might "re-member, re-claim and re-empower" ancient Mediterranean peoples.
Permission of the instructor is required.