Past Workshops
05/07/2025 05:30 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:
From Sheep to Sign: Inventing Writing in Ancient Mesopotamia
Abigail Hoskins
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. Writing is such an integral part of our everyday lives that it is difficult to imagine how we could live without it. But just like so many of the other technologies that have become essential to us, writing had to be invented. Scholars studying the ancient past have discovered that writing was invented independently in four different places: in Mesopotamia (in modern-day Iraq) around 3300-3200 BCE; in ancient Egypt around 3200 BCE; in ancient China around 1200 BCE; and in ancient Mesoamerica (in modern-day Mexico) around 1000 BCE. In this workshop, we will focus on the invention of writing in Mesopotamia.
RSVP
04/07/2025 05:30 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:
Exploring the Minoans and the Mycenaeans
Manolis Mavromatis
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. Before the Classical period, where Athens and Sparta dominate as central figures in Ancient Greek history, two earlier civilizations have sparked significant debate regarding their identity and acknowledgment. The first is the Minoan civilization, based on Crete and named by Sir Arthur Evans after the mythical King Minos. The second is the Mycenaean civilization, identified as the first recognized Greek civilization.
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02/25/2025 05:30 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop
Studying the Ancient World Through Ancient DNA
Tianrui Zhu
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. Almost all living beings have DNA. It is not only an instruction book for building the body of an organism, but also an archive for the history of the species. With modern technology, we are able to extract and analyze DNA from organisms long dead — humans, animals, plants, and even bacteria. In this workshop, we will learn how ancient DNA is used to reconstruct past kinship, migration, agriculture, and diseases.
RSVP
01/30/2025 05:30 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:
Understanding Spain in the Islamic World through "Madinat al-Zahra: The Radiant Capital of Islamic Spain"
Carl Walsh and Lylaah Bhalerao
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. This virtual workshop invites teachers to learn more about the place of the Iberian Peninsula in the Islamic world through the ISAW exhibition "Madinat al-Zahra: The Radiant Capital of Islamic Spain."
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12/17/2024 05:30 PM
Online
RESCHEDULED: Expanding the Ancient World Workshop
Navigating Early Indian Ocean Trade: A Resource for World History Teachers
Priya Barchi
This workshop has been rescheduled for Tuesday, December 17th, at 5:30pm. The 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.
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12/04/2024 08:00 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:
Perspectives on the Silk Roads: The Sogdians
Mariana Castro
This workshop is organized by the OER Project and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. It 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. This workshop will present texts and materials for discussing the interconnected and multicultural society of the Sogdians along the Silk Roads, with an emphasis on personal experiences at home and abroad.
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11/13/2024 05:30 PM
ISAW Gallery
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:
Discovering Life in al-Andalus through "Madinat al-Zahra: The Radiant Capital of Islamic Spain"
Carl Walsh
This workshop will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. Learn more about Islamic art and material culture during the early Medieval Period (711–1031 CE) through the ISAW exhibition "Madinat al-Zahra: The Radiant Capital of Islamic Spain."
RSVP
10/23/2024 05:30 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop
Teaching Ancient Nubia: Integrating Kush in the Classroom
Sydney A. Pickens
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. Ancient Nubia has a rich history that spans over 4,000 years. This ancient African civilization was home to the city-state of Kerma which lasted an astounding 1,000 years, the Napatan Kings who conquered and ruled Egypt as the 25th Dynasty, and the Warrior Queens of the Meroitic Period who repelled the Roman invasion of Meroe.
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10/15/2024 05:30 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:
Global Connections in the Late Antique and Early Medieval World
Erik Hermans
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. During the second half of the first millennium CE, societies across the globe were connected with each other through conquest, trade, intellectual exchange, and climatological phenomena. While some of these connections have reached world history textbooks under the umbrella term 'silk road networks', the actual impact, nuances, and the limits of global connectivity in Afro-Eurasia and outside of it are hard to grasp and even harder to teach.
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05/02/2024 04:30 PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:
Teaching Latin with AI
David Ratzan and Patrick Burns (ISAW)
This workshop will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. This workshop aims to explore techniques for integrating AI chatbots into the Latin language classroom. Chatbots (ChatGPT, but also Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and others) are having an obvious impact on classrooms around the world.
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05/01/2024 05:30 PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop
Ancient Environmental History: How Do You Build a Roman City in the Middle of Egypt’s Western Desert?
Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
This workshop will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. Ancient Trimithis was one of many medium-sized cities in the Roman Empire; but unlike most, it was located right in the middle of Egypt’s inhospitable Western Desert, hundreds of kilometers from the Nile Valley, one of the driest places on earth. In this workshop we will explore how people adapted to and thrived in this harsh and changing environment by studying the results from NYU’s Amheida Excavations in Egypt’s Dakhla Oasis.
RSVP
04/02/2024 05:30 PM
Online
Expanding the Ancient World Workshop
Globalization in the Ancient World
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. We tend to think of globalization as a modern phenomenon, where far-flung places impact one other through exchange of ideas, resources, commodities, technologies, and human mobility. How can we engage with the evidence regarding the early history of interconnectedness in the world?
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