Art & Archaeology of Mediterranean World (AAMW)
AAMW 5020 Mesopotamia 2200-1600 BCE
This seminar style class will focus on two canonical periods of Mesopotamian history from 2100-1600 BCE. It is structured to examine fundamental institutions of kingship, religion, economy, law and literature. Practices well established in Sumer by the end of the third millennium evolved during the first half of the second millennium BCE when Amorite speaking peoples assume central roles in Mesopotamian institutions. The class will be structured around case studies engaging key monuments of art, architecture and literature. It will be team-taught by Prof. Pittman, focusing on material remains and visual arts and by Prof. Steve Tinney who brings expertise to the rich cuneiform textual traditions.
Also Offered As: ANTH 5024, ARTH 5240, MELC 5020, NELC 5020
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5120 Petrography of Cultural Materials
Introduction to thin-section petrography of stone and ceramic archaeological materials. Using polarized light microscopy, the first half of this course will cover the basics of mineralogy and the petrography of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. The second half will focus on the petrographic description of ceramic materials, mainly pottery, with emphasis on the interpretation of provenance and technology. As part of this course, students will characterize and analyze archaeological samples from various collections. Prior knowledge of geology is not required.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 5211, CLST 7311
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5190 Ancient Greek Colonies
This seminar examines the archaeology of Greek colonization from the Late Bronze Age to ca. 500 B.C. These colonies were highly diverse in their motivations, physical settings, and political and social structures, as well as in their relationships with mother cities and the new worlds they inhabited. Emphasis is placed on the colonial experience as a cross-cultural and negotiated process; several streams of the changing theoretical and conceptual approaches to Greek colonization are explored. In addition to archaeological and epigraphic evidence, literary and historical traditions are examined. Colonies from the southern Balkan peninsula, Black Sea, Ionia, northern Africa, and Magna Graecia will be the focus of reading and reports. Seminar meetings will consist of oral reports and discussion of these reports and other topics. Depending on the number of participants, each person will be responsible for two or three reports of approximately 30-45 minutes length. Accompanying the oral report will be a PowerPoint document (in most cases), a synopsis/summary of one to two pages, and a bibliography. These will all be posted on the course Canvas site. No later than one week before an oral presentation, the presenter will identify one or two key readings for all to read, in consultation with the instructor. These will be posted, in PDF format, on the Canvas site. One or more visits to the Penn Museum may be built into the course.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 7310, CLST 7310
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5200 Aegean Bronze Age Art Seminar
In this class, we will explore the art and cultures of the Aegean Bronze Age in Greece, a period from roughly 3,300-1,100 BCE. From this time, we have the first evidence of complex society in Greece with three geographically and materialistically distinct groups of people located on the Greek Mainland, the Cycladic islands, and the island of Crete. Topics will vary from semester to semester, but may include and not be limited to the examination of the architecture, pottery, wall paintings, stone carvings, jewelry, seals, weapons and other metalwork, and the iconography of these prehistoric arts. We will also delve into issues of the organization of society and the distribution of power, the role of women and men, trade and the unique position of the (rather small) Aegean world as it existed between two huge powerhouses of the ancient Mediterranean: the Ancient Near East and Egypt.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5200
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5220 Ancient Iranian Art Seminar
This seminar will focus on the environmental, archaeological and textual record for settlement in the Persian/Arabian Gulf region from the Neolithic to the pre-Islamic Late Antique. Emphasis will be on the settlement history and material culture. Special attention will be paid to the close interaction of the local communities on the Arabian side of the Gulf with those on the Iranian/Indus valley side. The patterns of sea faring trade and interaction from Mesopotamia, Iran, Indus Valley and beyond will be considered. It is possible that this class will take a site trip to the UAE during the spring break, if the logistics can be arranged.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5220, MELC 5050, NELC 5050
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5230 Narrative in Ancient Art
Art history, and its cousins in religious, social, political and literary studies, have long been fascinated with the question of narrative: how do images engage time, tell stories? These are fundamental questions for ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian and Mediterranean art history and archaeology, whose rich corpus of narrative images is rarely considered in the context of "Western" art. Relations between words and things, texts and images, were as fundamental to the ancient cultures we examine as they are to modern studies. As we weigh classic modern descriptions of narrative and narratology, we will bring to bear recent debates about how (ancient) images, things, monuments, and designed spaces engage with time, space, and event, and interact with cultural memory. We will ask "who is the story for, and why?" for public and private narratives ranging from political histories to mythological encounters. Our case studies will be drawn from the instructors' expertise in Mesopotamian visual culture, and in the visual cultures of the larger Mediterranean world from early Greek antiquity to the Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique periods. One central and comparative question, for instance, is the nature of recording history in pictures and texts in the imperial projects of Assyria, Achaemenid Persia, the Hellenistic kingdoms, and Rome.
Also Offered As: ARTH 5230, CLST 5412
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5231 Archaeological Field Methods
This seminar will prepare students for participation in the excavations at the site of ancient Lagash, modern Tell al-Hiba, in southern Iraq that are scheduled to take place in the fall semester. The topics to be considered are introduction to the recording methods, use of equipment, review of the ceramic sequence, methods of recording, drawing, photography. Permission of the instructor required for participation in the class.
Also Offered As: ARTH 5231
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5239 Surface Archaeology
Non-invasive and non-destructive methods make up an ever-greater proportion of archaeological investigations, for both intellectual and practical reasons. These methods comprise collection of data from the surface (pedestrian surface survey, geophysical prospection, geoarchaeology) and from above-ground platforms (drones, aircraft, balloons, kites, satellites), using a variety of sensors from human perception to multispectral scanning devices. The data acquired from these methods complement the contextual information drawn from traditional excavation, but also allow the archaeologist to address diverse research questions at a scale much greater than the excavated site. Aspiring archaeologists should have a good working knowledge of surface archaeological methods. In this course, we will delve deeply into these methods, and read and analyze case studies to expose strengths and weaknesses and to identify best practices. Students will have the opportunity for hands-on training in the Philadelphia area or elsewhere.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 5231, CLST 5321
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5241 Courtly Life in Mesopotamia, Persia, and the Mediterranean
Who could approach and speak with the Sumerian Queen? What rules governed a banquet with the Persian king? What was the most elegant way to drink wine? Where were the women in the Assyrian court? With hundreds of people crammed into a palace, was hygiene important? How were court guests treated? What games were played at court? Is the stereotypical image of the “Oriental” court characterized by lust, backstairs intrigue, flatteries, and secrets sustainable in the light of new evidence and theoretical approaches? The court at the same time is considered as a large amorphous body in a physical location or an institution, or a group of people, or even to particular events. This seminar style course considers Middle Eastern courts from the Sumerians through the Assyrian and Persian empires articulating shared and diverse features. Textual, visual, material and archaeological sources are considered through sociological and anthropological theories and core concepts such as groups, individuals, ultrasociality, proxemics, sociopetal, sociofrugal and purity to name a few. Comparisons with later courts in the Middle East are welcome.
Also Offered As: ARTH 5241, MELC 5054, NELC 5054
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5250 Borderlines: Art and Artifact in the Roman Empire
What made art and artifacts `Roman', or not, in a Roman world? `Roman provincial art` is an active scholarly category. This seminar reframes it, to test productive models to understand visual culture outside the empire’s Italian heartland from the Late Republic into Late Antiquity, in the Roman polity’s interactions with many peoples in situations of diaspora, colonization, hegemony, conflict, economic exchange, and religious interaction. As `Rome’ expanded, cultural relations across many borderlines – social, ethnic, territorial - potentially became cultural politics. A traditional topic for that has been Roman interaction with Greek culture. This seminar extends that range, while tackling `Hellenization’, as we reflect on models of `Romanization’, globalism and identity formation within the imperium’s boundaries in its provinces and client kingdoms, and also at its frontier zones. Various disciplines apply: art history, archaeology, history, and more. Case studies, evolved with students, may range from Britain to Iran, northern Africa to the Black Sea in space and, in time, from interactions with the Hellenistic East and West and with Iron Age Europe, to the age of Germanic, Sasanian and Ummayad conquests of Roman terrain, ca 3rd c. BCE-7th c. CE. The market in art and artifact, the nature and status of makers, and conditions of patronage and viewing are key considerations. Private and public objects, images, architecture and urbanism, and landscapes can all concern us, as we try out disciplinary approaches that take in eg cultural appropriation, translation and hybrity, creolization, discrepant experience, object agency, and communities of taste and style. `Ethnicity’ is a loaded concept in ancient Mediterranean studies, as is `race;’ our course must engage those, and the ways in which things and styles have been made to serve those terms. And who owns, is heir to, the cultural legacies we look at, and how to name them, are problems that tangle with current national identity formation, and academic and museum practice. Our own Museum's holdings can make topics. Students are welcome to bring in interests in language and text cultures, in disciplines outside art history and archaeology, and in other world cultures and epochs.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANCH 7403, ARTH 5250, CLST 7403
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5251 Roman Political Art Seminar
This seminar looks at how Roman things, images and the designed environment so often spoke to political and sociological realities. The material world was not just a document of history: it was history. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5251, CLST 7404
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5252 Late Antique Art and Artifact Seminar
What is 'Late Antiquity'? In 312 when Roman emperor Constantine inaugurated a Christian empire, 'Roman' culture was centuries old. The period ca. 200-650 CE saw profound transformations that launched Medieval, Byzantine and Islamic traditions. In this epoch of upheaval destruction was frequent but partial: Rome long survived, Constantine's 'new Rome,' Constantinople flourished, and around the Empire both proto-global visual culture and local forms prospered. Roman cultural models authorized both innovation and passion for tradition: we critique art-historical models for Late Antique 'decline', analyse habits of material reuse and curation, and look at new Christian and Jewish roles for Roman things as well as polytheist visual survival. Foreign allies and enemies interacted with Greco-Roman Late Antiquity; we visit them too, as in the early Islamic palaces. Media discussed include not just 'monumental' painting, mosaic, sculpture, but also silver, ceramic, ivory, figural textile, glass, painted books, jewelry, coins and more. We look too at Late Antique texts on art, objects, space and viewership. This seminar is open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5252, CLST 7405
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5253 Violence in Ancient Mediterranean Art Seminar
Violence, physical and emotional, pervades the images of the ancient Mediterranean. This seminar asks why, how and to what end that occurred; in these and any cultures, why do people look at such images? Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5253, CLST 7406
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5254 Myth Through Time and in Time Seminar
The textual and physical remains of Greek and Roman culture and belief as 'myth' entranced the post-antique European world and its neighbors. Makers, patrons and viewers manipulated those survivals to challenge and speak to a contemporary world. This course focuses on how and why artists and their patrons engaged the mythic and examines the various areas of political and religious life that sought animation through an evocation of narratives from the past. Readings and case studies will examine very late antique through medieval and early modern art. This seminar is open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5254, CLST 7407, ITAL 5254
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5260 Material & Methods in Mediterranean Archaeology
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.
Fall
Also Offered As: ANTH 5026, CLST 6300
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5280 Hellenistic Cities Seminar
A new form of city and of urban life developed and spread during the Hellenistic period. The new political social and economic conditions resulting from the victories of Alexander the Great and the emergence of the Macedonian kingdoms deeply affected civic life and form. Hellenistic cities were not independent poleis but subject to absolute monarchs and were open to all residents regardless of their geographical origins. Civic life assumed a cosmopolitan character and the urban setting became an arena for the propaganda of the Hellenistic rulers. This course will examine the architectural and urban developments of the Hellenistic period together with central political institutions and religious and social practices that were associated with them. In studying a diversity of visual, material and textual evidence—such as urban form, architectural and sculptural monuments, as well as literary sources and epigraphic evidence—the course will address both the structure of the urban fabric and the socio-political situation of the Hellenistic polis. The purpose of the course will be to shed light on the principles of urban planning as well as the realities of civic life in the Hellenistic period.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5280
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5290 The Roman Idea of Landscape
Landscape was one of the most prominent themes in ancient Roman culture. The Roman visual and literary representations of natural scenery were adopted and expanded upon many Hellenistic themes. In the Roman period, however, for the first time in Western culture landscape was singled out as a theme in its own right; it was accurately described, its qualities were praised in the pastoral poetry of Virgil, and its idealized and symbolic representations permeated the public and private spheres: the garden paintings from the underground dining room of the Villa of the Livia at Prima Porta and the Odyssey Landscapes from the Esquiline are but two of many examples. This Roman sensitivity of landscape, attested in contemporary literary and visual sources, found an architectural expression in Roman luxury villas. In the realm of villa designs, gardens and landscapes could be represented in wall painting and realized in design at the same time. The villas provided literally a drawing board for Roman lovers of landscape. Late Republican and early Imperial poems, letters, and agricultural treatises read like exposés of architectural design exercises, vis-à-vis natural, cultivated and designed landscape, and how they delineated blueprints of villas – villa rustica, urbana, suburbana and the like. This course will examine literary and visual representations of natural scenery in the Greek and Roman cultures as well as Roman luxury villa architecture in order to address the ways in which Greek and Roman ideas and idealization of landscape contributed to the creation of a novel language of architecture and landscape architecture. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5290
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5291 Greek and Roman Wall Painting
Painting and pictorial realism, as we know them, were invented in the fourth century BCE. Their effects have survived in the Hellenistic tomb paintings at Vergina, and elsewhere in Macedonia and Thrace, and their ideas have been described by ancient authors. This course examines the surviving Greek and Roman paintings together with ancient sources in order to shed light on the deployment of the pictorial repertoire of classical antiquity.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5291
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5292 Delos in Context
Delos was an important cult centre since the archaic period whose activity was inextricably linked to its economic role. Due to its advantageous geographical position in the centre of the Aegean world, Delos commanded a huge cult network that intertwined religious with economic and political activities from the archaic period onwards. Communities competing for political power and leadership exploited the cult network of Delos over time; Ionians, Athenians, the successors of Alexander and finally Romans. This course will focus on three key moments of the island’s history – the first Athenian dominion, the period of independence and the second Athenian dominion – in order to highlight the ways in which the competing powers used art and architecture in order to establish their presence on the sacred island. By studying the presence of the Athenians in the sanctuary of Apollo since the sixth century BCE, which culminated in their administration of the sanctuary during the fifth and fourth centuries (the first Athenian dominion), the course will tackle the cultural mannerisms of the period. By examining the architectural development of the sanctuary and the city of Delos during the period of the independence (314-167 BCE) the course will address the monumentalization of the sanctuary and the extension of the city through the euergetism of the successors of Alexander and the emergence of a new form of urban life in the Hellenistic period. The course will finally examine Delos during the period of the second Athenian dominion (167-69 BCE), when the Roman senate decided to make it a “duty free” port under Athenian suzerainty. By addressing the economic and urban developments of the late Hellenistic Delos the course will look at the contemporary trends in art and architecture, which in effect shaped those of the emerging Roman Empire. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5292
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5293 Topos, Myth, and the Contemporary: Art Pracitices in Archaeological Sites and Mythological Places
The seminar will map the intellectual agenda of contemporary art practices that engage with archaeological sites and important mythological places in Italy and Greece. Over the past two decades there has been an increasing interest of artists in archaeology and the classical past in Italy and Greece resulting in in situ art installations and performances, as well as reflective presentations of their interactions with the sites in a gallery space. These projects / installations /performances present a range of approaches: from investigations of cultural traditions, national norms and stereotypes that seek to tackle learned preconceptions and received histories of the classical, to the use of the archaeological site, mythologically poignant topos and myth as a backdrop for the contemporary – the Documenta 14 in Athens in 2017 may serve as a representative example of this range. The course will assess the intellectual and cultural landscapes of as well as the political strategies behind these contemporary art practices. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5293
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5305 Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome
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.
Also Offered As: ARTH 5305, CLST 5305
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 3305
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5320 The Icon
This seminar explores the Byzantine icon and its legacy. Spanning nearly two millennia, from the emergence of Christian sacred portraiture to the reception of icon painting by the early twentieth-century Russian avant-garde, the seminar will introduce you to the history, historiography, and theories of the icon. While our focus will be on Byzantium and the wider world of Orthodox Christianity, especially in the Slavic Balkans and Eastern Europe, the seminar will also engage with fundamental questions concerning the nature, status, and agency of images across cultures. Topics to be addressed include iconoclasm and the problem of idolatry; the social and ritual lives of icons; authorship, originality, and replication; viewer response and the cultural construction of vision; the frontier between art and the sacred image; and the afterlife of the icon in modernity. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5320, RELS 5022
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5321 Art and Text in Byzantine Culture
In Byzantine culture, images and material objects, on one hand, and texts—whether read, spoken, remembered, or inscribed—on the other, were closely intertwined on multiple levels. Debates concerning the role of images in religious devotion during the period known as Iconoclasm generated a huge body of theological writings about art. Descriptions of works of art, either independent or inserted into larger literary compositions, proliferated. In manuscripts, pictures were variously mobilized to complement, illustrate, interpret, or comment on the verbal message. Icons of sacred personages were commonly inscribed not only with identifying labels, but also with special epithets. Moreover, from monumental architecture to personal seals and pieces of jewelry, a vast array of objects bore inscriptions, often in the form of poetic texts, or epigrams. Script, sometimes illegible and nonsensical, also featured as ornament and visual sign. The written word was a source of power and authority as much as a means of communication. The aim of this seminar is to interrogate the interface between art and text in Byzantium. No knowledge of Medieval Greek is required for the course. All the inscriptions and primary sources to be discussed will be available in translation. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5321
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5322 On the Wall: Mosaics and Frescoes
This seminar examines the economy, technology, and aesthetics of monumental paintings and mosaics decorating church spaces in Byzantium and the larger Mediterranean world of the Middle Ages. We will explore these site-specific, wall-bound images in the context of their making and reception by attending to the issues of artistic labor and patronage, materiality and pictorial medium, visual communication and ideological programming, and viewership and ritual action. Special consideration will be given to methodology. We will critically assess the traditional and current approaches to the study of monumental pictorial art and, more importantly, seek to formulate new perspectives and methods. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5322
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5323 The Chora Monastery and the World of Late Byzantium
This seminar is envisioned as a wide-ranging exploration of the art and culture of the Late Byzantine period (thirteenth through fifteenth century), with focus upon a key monument, the church of the former Chora monastery (Kariye Camii) in Istanbul. With its superb and highly original architecture, this church preserves an outstanding ensemble of monumental mosaics, frescoes, stone carvings, funerary monuments, colored marbles and glass, and inscriptions. Additionally, we possess a substantial body of texts illuminating various aspects of the monastery’s history and, in particular, its restoration in the early fourteenth century by the statesman and scholar Theodore Metochites. The seminar will take this rich material and textual record as a point of entry into the world of Late Byzantium. Topics to be addressed include patronage and politics; artistic practice, visual aesthetics, and materiality; monasticism; death, time, and history; the interplay between art and literary culture; and Byzantium’s interactions with the wider Mediterranean world, especially Muslim-ruled Anatolia, the Slavic Balkans, and Italy. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5323
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5360 Archaeology of Anatolia
This class is devoted to the archaeology and history of Anatolia (ancient Turkey) from the beginning of the Bronze Age (3000 BC) to the end of the Byzantine period (1453 AD). Emphasis will be placed on the great empires in Anatolia (Hittite, Phrygian, Lydian, Urartian, Persian, Roman, and Byzantine), and on the great cities (Troy, Sardis, Ephesus, Constantinople). The course is intended to complement the major exhibit on Gordion, the Phrygians, and Anatolian archaeology that will open at the Penn Museum in February of 2016 and run for 10 months.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5390 Archaeobotany Seminar
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.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 5230, CLST 7313, MELC 6930, NELC 6930
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5400 Medieval Art Seminar
Topic varies from semester to semester. For the Spring 2022 semester, the topic will be: Facing Fragments. So many traces of the medieval past come to us in fragmentary form, either literally broken, partial and incomplete, or figuratively, having been ripped from its program or findsite and shipped across the world. This course focuses on the strategies art historians and curators adopt to confront the realities of decontextualized museum collections - of how to face fragments. Considering approaches that range from research methodologies, conservation, installation, and preservation, we will also touch upon questions of restitution and ethics. Co-taught between Penn and the PMA, this course will constitute much hands-on learning.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 5400
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5420 Seafaring in the Ancient Greek World
This course explores ships, seafaring, and seafarers of the ancient Greek world from the Bronze Age (Minoans and Mycenaeans) to the Age of Alexander (Hellenistic period). Sources include shipwrecks and related artifacts, artistic representations, and ancient literature. The emphasis is not so much on the technical aspects of shipbuilding and navigation as on the ways that seafaring shaped Greek history and connected the Greeks to a wider world through trade, warfare, colonization, and adventure.
Not Offered Every Year
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5460 Museum Internship
The Museum Internship in the spring consists of a research project with Penn Museum collections based on a proposal designed and approved during the fall AAMW Proseminar. It is offered to, and is a requirement for, first-year AAMW graduate students only.
Spring
Prerequisite: CLST 6300
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5500 Archaeologies of Subalternity
This course addresses the various areas and approaches to "otherness" in ancient Mediterranean archaeology, and the power dynamics of oppression. We'll not only examine disempowerment around cultural identity, class, gender and sexuality, and race/ethnicity, but we'll spend equal time pondering how those subjects have been studied - or ignored - by classical archaeologists. The power relationships both inherent in the subjugation of various kinds of people in the ancient world, and in the academic discourses around them, are the themes of the course. While this course will be focused on the Bronze Age through late antique Mediterranean, those with other period/interests are most welcome. Students will be asked to bring their own interests to the course, which help shape the course. Upper-level courses in archaeology, anthropology, or ancient history are recommended prior to enrollment.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: CLST 5317
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5570 Archaeology of Landscapes
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.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ANTH 5570, LALS 5570
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5590 Myth Through Time and In Time
The textual and physical remains of Greek and Roman culture and belief as 'myth' entranced the post-antique European world and its neighbors. Makers, patrons and viewers manipulated those survivals to challenge and speak to a contemporary world. This course focuses on how and why artists and their patrons engaged the mythic and examines the various areas of political and religious life that sought animation through an evocation of narratives from the past. Readings and case studies will engage with very late antique, medieval, and early modern art, turning to the modern and contemporary as well. Moving to the modern lets us examine, among other things, how artists address the exclusionary histories of the past, to enable critiques of myths of supremacy by one gender, race, or culture over others.
Also Offered As: ARTH 5590, CLST 7400, COML 5590, GRMN 5590
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5620 Intro to Digital Archaeology
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.
Also Offered As: ANTH 5220, CLST 5620
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 3307
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5630 Penn Museum Curatorial Seminar: Reconfiguring the Classical World Galleries
The Greek galleries in the Penn Museum were opened in 1994, and the Etruscan and Roman galleries in 2003. The world was very different them, and many of the themes used to frame the artifacts in the galleries are not especially relevant to contemporary students, scholars, and visitors. In this course we will completely reorganize and reinstall the galleries digitally, creating a series of websites that will highlight the new layout and themes. We will work extensively with the Greek Etruscan, and Roman artifacts themselves to reconfigure the galleries, which will highlight the connections between antiquity and the contemporary world, focusing on themes such as armed conflict, trauma, migration, xenophobia, and wealth and poverty.
Also Offered As: CLST 5311
1 Course Unit
AAMW 5720 Geophysical Prospection for Archaeology
Near-surface geophysical prospection methods are now widely used in archaeology as they allow archaeologists to rapidly map broad areas, minimize or avoid destructive excavation, and perceive physical dimensions of archaeological features that are outside of the range of human perception. This course will cover the theory of geophysical sensors commonly used in archaeological investigations and the methods for collecting, processing, and interpreting geophysical data from archaeological contexts. We will review the physical properties of common archaeological and paleoenvironmental targets, the processes that led to their deposition and formation, and how human activity is reflected in anomalies recorded through geophysical survey through lectures, readings, and discussion. Students will gain experience collecting data in the field with various sensors at archaeological sites in the region. A large proportion of the course will be computer-based as students work with data from geophysical sensors, focusing on the fundamentals of data processing, data fusion, and interpretation. Some familiarity with GIS is recommended.
Spring, even numbered years only
Also Offered As: ANTH 5720, CLST 7315, MELC 5925, NELC 5925
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6130 Landscapes and Seascapes of the Ancient Mediterranean
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.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: CLST 5318
Mutually Exclusive: CLST 3318
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6141 Tutankhamun’s Tomb: Its Treasures and Significance
This course examines the short life of the young boy king and what the discovery of his tomb and its contents mean in terms of Egypt’s long history and accomplishments.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: AFRC 6140, MELC 6140
Mutually Exclusive: MELC 2140
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6180 Art and Architecture in Ancient Egypt
This course will be an introduction to the art, architecture and minor arts that were produced during the three thousand years of ancient Egyptian history. This material will be presented in its cultural and historical contexts through illustrated lectures and will include visits to the collection of the University Museum.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6180, MELC 6105
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6190 Digital Exploration of the Past: Archives, Databases, Maps, and Museums
This course exposes students to digital methods for investigating past environments and societies, including digitization of analog records, the construction and querying of databases, and the creation of digital maps. The ultimate goal of the course will be to carry out a final project that benefits the Penn Museum and the public. In fall 2018, our exploration of digital methods will center around the archaeological site of Ur (Tell el-Muqayyar), located in southern Iraq. Ur was one of the earliest cities in the world, and, thanks to campaigns partly funded by Penn in the 1920s and 1930s, is one of the best-excavated sites in southern Mesopotamia. Here at Penn, we have unparalleled access to archival documentation and artifacts from the site. We will draw upon this access to contribute to an on-going digital humanities project in the Penn Museum (the public "Ur Online" database). In the process, students will re-assess data that has the potential to change anthropological ideas about issues such as the environmental setting of the earliest cities and archaeological ideas about demographic and urban structure within the city of Ur itself. There are no prerequisites, but students must bring an interest in Mesopotamian archaeology and/or the origins of urbanism and be motivated to carry out individual and group research guided by the instructor & classmates.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: MELC 6910
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6220 Art of Ancient Iran
This lecture course offers a survey of ancient Iranian art and culture from the painted pottery cultures of the Neolithic era to the monuments of the Persian Empire.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6220, MELC 6050, NELC 6050
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6221 The Early Bronze Age
This lecture course offers a survey of ancient Iranian art and culture from the painted pottery cultures of the Neolithic era to the monuments of the Persian Empire. Particular emphasis is placed on the Early Bronze Age.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6221
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6240 Art of Mesopotamia
Visual expression was first developed in Mesopotamia in the same environment as the invention of writing. This lecture class will introduce the arts of the major periods of Mesopotamian History ending with the "cinematic" effects achieved by the Assyrian artists on the walls of the royal palaces. The strong connection between verbal and visual expression will be traced over the three millennia course of Mesopotamian civilization from the earliest periods through the imperial art of the Assyrians and Babylonians of the first millennium BCE. The class and the assignments will regularly engage with objects in the collections and on display in the galleries of the Penn Museum.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6240, MELC 6060, NELC 6060
Mutually Exclusive: ARTH 2240
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6250 Greek Art and Artifact
This lecture course surveys Greek art and artifacts from Sicily to the Black Sea from the 10th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE, including the age of Alexander and the Hellenistic Kingdoms. Public sculpture and painting on and around grand buildings and gardens, domestic luxury arts of jewelry, cups and vases, mosaic floors, and cult artefacts are discussed. Also considered are the ways in which heroic epic, religious and political themes are used to engaged viewers' emotions and served both domestic and the public aims. We discuss the relationships of images and things to space and structure, along with ideas of invention and progress, and the role of monuments, makers and patrons in Greek society.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6250, CLST 5401
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6260 Hellenistic and Roman Art and Artifact
This lecture course surveys the political, religious and domestic arts, patronage and display in Rome's Mediterranean, from the 2nd c. BCE to Constantine's 4th-c. Christianized empire. Our subjects are images and decorated objects in their cultural, political and socio-economic contexts (painting, mosaic, sculpture, luxury and mass-produced arts in many media). We start with the Hellenistic cosmopolitan culture of the Greek kingdoms and their neighbors, and late Etruscan and Republican Italy; next we map Imperial Roman art as developed around the capital city Rome, as well as in the provinces of the vast empire.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6260, CLST 5402
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6269 Classical Myth and the Image
The peoples of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds shared a vast body of stories about human and not-human beings set in a legendary deep past or supernatural present - "Classical myth." Even their neighbor cultures took up those stories (or, sometimes, gave them). The stories as spoken, read, or performed turn up in surviving ancient literature. But from the very point when Greek myth began to be written down, those stories were told with images also. Many arts of the Mediterranean world explored myth at temples and sanctuaries, in civic spaces, theaters, parks, houses and palaces, for tombs and trophies - and even on the body upon weapons, clothes and jewelry. Love and desire and hate, hope and fear and consolation, war and peace, pleasure and excitement, power and salvation, the nature of this world and the cosmos, justice and duty and heroism, fate and free will, suffering and crime: mythological images probed the many domains of being human in order to move the emotions and minds of people (and of gods). Our class samples this story art to ask about its makers and viewers and contexts. What, also, were relations between images and texts and language? What about religious belief vs invention, truth vs fiction? What might it mean to look at this ancient art today, and to represent the old stories in post-ancient cultures? The class introduces ways of thinking about what images and things do; we will read in some relevant literature (drama, epic, novels, etc); and our Penn Museum will be a resource. No prerequisites--no prior knowledge of art history, archaeology, myth or Mediterranean antiquity is assumed.
Also Offered As: ARTH 6269, CLST 5416
Mutually Exclusive: ARTH 2269, CLST 3416
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6280 Greek Architecture and Urbanism
As the locus of classical architecture and urbanism, the Greek world occupies
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6280
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6290 Roman Architecture and Urbanism
Architecture is the most striking legacy of Rome and the well-preserved
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6290
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6300 Etruscan Art & Archaeology in the Penn Museum
The Etruscans, who spoke a language unlike any others known, were cast by their Greek and Roman rivals as outsiders and enemies: pirates, lovers of luxury, loose women. Today we must rely on the archaeological evidence of painted tombs, decorated Tuscan temples and massive engineering works to correct the picture. The course will survey a millennium (1st millennium BCE) of Etruscan culture through archaeological sites, works of art and everyday material culture, especially illustrated with objects in the collection of the Penn Museum. An additional insight into Italic culture comes from tomb groups excavated for the Museum at the Faliscan settlement of Narce. Students will gain familiarity with the societies of pre-Roman Italy through close study of their vases, jewels, arms, armor, textiles and tools, and even their very bones, and discover a surprising amount of Etruscan heritage surviving today.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: CLST 5105
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6320 Byzantine Art and Architecture
This lecture course offers a wide-ranging introduction to the art, architecture, and material culture of Byzantium—a Christian, predominantly Greek-speaking civilization that flourished in the Eastern Mediterranean for over a thousand years. Positioned between the Muslim East and the Latin West, Antiquity and the Early Modern era, Byzantium nurtured a vibrant and highly sophisticated artistic culture. With emphasis placed upon paradigmatic objects and monuments, we will examine an array of artistic media, from mosaic and panel painting to metalwork, ivory carving, book illumination, and embroidery. We will consider the making, consumption, and reception of Byzantine art in a variety of contexts—political, devotional, ritual, and domestic. Topics include the idea of empire and its visual articulation; court culture; the veneration of images and relics; patronage, piety, and self-representation; authorship and artistic agency; materiality and the sensory experience of art; the reception of the “pagan” Greco-Roman past; and the changing nature of Byzantium’s interactions with neighboring cultures.
Fall or Spring
Also Offered As: ARTH 6320
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6330 Eastern Medieval Art and Architecture
This lecture course examines art and architecture in the Mediterranean, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and the Christian Near East between the seventh and the fifteenth century. The focus is upon the Byzantine Empire and neighboring polities, including Bulgaria, Serbia, early Russia, Armenia, Georgia, and the Crusader states. The course introduces students to this immensely rich and multifaceted world through an exploration of key artworks and monuments, addressing in particular issues related to cross-cultural exchange, conflict, and appropriation.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6330
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6350 Introduction to Visual Culture of the Islamic World
A one-semester survey of Islamic art and architecture which examines visual culture as it functions within the larger sphere of Islamic culture in general. Particular attention will be given to relationships between visual culture and literature, using specific case studies, sites or objects which may be related to various branches of Islamic literature, including historical, didactic, philosophical writings, poetry and religious texts. All primary sources are available in English translation.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6350
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6400 Medieval Art
An introductory survey, this lecture course investigates architecture, painting, sculpture, and the "minor arts" of the Middle Ages. Students become familiar with selected major monuments of the Romanesque and Gothic periods, primarily in Western Europe as well as relevant sites around the Mediterranean. Analysis of works emphasizes the cultural context, the thematic content, and the function of objects and monuments. Discussions focus especially on several key themes: the role of luxury in the medieval west; the theological role of images; the revival of classical models and visual modes; social rituals such as pilgrimage and crusading; the cult of the Virgin and the status of women in art; and, more generally, the ideology of visual culture across the political and urban landscapes.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6400
Mutually Exclusive: ARTH 2400
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6425 Late Antique Arts
What is 'Late Antiquity'? In 312 when Roman emperor Constantine inaugurated a Christian empire, 'Roman' culture was centuries old. The period ca. 200-650 CE saw profound transformations that launched Medieval, Byzantine and Islamic traditions. In this epoch of upheaval destruction was frequent but partial: Rome long survived, Constantine's 'new Rome,' Constantinople flourished, and around the Empire both proto-global visual culture and local forms prospered. Roman cultural models authorized both innovation and passion for tradition: we critique art-historical models for Late Antique 'decline', analyse habits of material reuse and curation, and look at new Christian and Jewish roles for Roman things as well as polytheist visual survival. Foreign allies and enemies interacted with Greco-Roman Late Antiquity; we visit them too, as in the early Islamic palaces. Media discussed include not just 'monumental' painting, mosaic, sculpture, but also silver, ceramic, ivory, figural textile, glass, painted books, jewelry, coins and more. We look too at Late Antique texts on art, objects, space and viewership. This is an advanced undergraduate lecture course.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6425, CLST 5406
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6426 Narrative in Ancient Art
Cultures of the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean world were fascinated to make images and things tell stories and engage with time. Sometimes that implied a text - and sometimes, not. With case studies from the deep past, this interdisciplinary advanced undergraduate lecture course explores the capacity of visual language to narrate.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6426, CLST 7408
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6427 Roman Sculpture
Survey of the Republican origins and Imperial development of Roman sculpture - free-standing, relief, and architectural - from ca. 150 BC to 350 AD. We concentrate on sculpture in the capital city and on court and state arts, emphasizing commemorative public sculpture and Roman habits of decorative display; genres examined include relief, portraits, sarcophagi, luxury and minor arts(gems, metalwork, coinage). We evaluate the choice and evolution of styles with reference to the functions of sculptural representation in Roman culture and society.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6427, CLST 5405
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6428 Hellenistic Art and Spectacle
Hellenistic usually names art in the age of Mediterranean culture from the 4th century BCE and the rise of Alexander the Great's Macedon, and the Greco-Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire, to Cleopatra of Egypt's defeat by Rome at the end of the Republic. Our course looks also at the age of Augustus and his successors, 1st century CE. While Greek and Macedonian practice in city-states and kingdoms is our launching point, this course also looks at international culture and cultural interaction among peoples from North Africa and Etrusco-Roman Italy, Egypt, Anatolia, the Mideast and Central Asia. We probe art, artifacts, and visual display from a range of settings, from sanctuary to house, palace and parade, and in all media, from marble monuments to pottery and jewelry. Our archaeology of Hellenistic visual culture also looks at the rich body of Hellenistic and Roman texts of art history, art criticism, and the description of objects and image, to better understand the Hellenistic maker, patron, and viewer. No prerequisites.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 6428, CLST 5413
1 Course Unit
AAMW 6460 GIS for the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences
This course introduces students to theory and methodology of the geospatial humanities and social sciences, understood broadly as the application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis techniques to the study of social and cultural patterns in the past and present. By engaging with spatial theory, spatial analysis case studies, and technical methodologies, students will develop an understanding of the questions driving, and tools available for, humanistic and social science research projects that explore change over space and time. We will use ESRI's ArcGIS software to visualize, analyze, and integrate historical, anthropological, and environmental data. Techniques will be introduced through the discussion of case studies and through demonstration of software skills. During supervised laboratory sessions, the various techniques and analyses covered will be applied to sample data and also to data from a region/topic chosen by the student.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: MELC 6900
Mutually Exclusive: MELC 1905
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7050 Ethnoarchaeology Greece
Ethnoarchaeology involves distinctive theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of living societies for the explicit purpose of shedding light on archaeological questions. In this seminar, we will review the intellectual history of ethnoarchaeology in North America and Europe, and explore case studies from Greece, the wider Mediterranean, and beyond. Among the topics will be analogy, cross-cultural comparison, experimental archaeology, oral history research, and archaeologically oriented ethnographic fieldwork. Students will create a proposal for ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in their area of interest in NSF or Wenner-Gren format, to be critiqued by the instructor and their peers.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: CLST 7307
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7200 Aegean Bronze Age Seminar
This graduate seminar will focus on the art and archaeology of the Aegean Bronze Age, circa 3,300-1,100 BCE. Topics vary from semester to semester and may include: issues of trade, manufacture, and iconography including the development of iconography and pictorial motifs, the nature of Minoan and Mycenaean society, the structure of Aegean Society, and how our interpretation of the Aegean Bronze Age has changed since the early work in the field in the late 1800s and 1900s by prominent scholars.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7200
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7220 Art of Ancient Iran Seminar
This graduate seminar will address various topics in the visual and architectural arts of ancient Iran from the Early Bronze through the Sasanians. Topics may include: Elamite Art and Architecture, Hasanlu and its neighbors, and The Bronze Age of Exchange. This course is only open to graduate students
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7220
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7230 Topics in the Art of the Ancient Near East
Topic varies. Fall 2019: During the short period of the Neo Sumerian Empire at the end of the third millennium BCE, Mesopotamian concepts of kingship were crystallized through images, buildings, and textual creations. This seminar will examine this central institution from many points of view that invite cross historical and cross-cultural consideration.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7230
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7240 Ancient Art of Mesopotamia Seminar
This graduate seminar will address various topics in the visual and architectural arts of ancient Mesopotamia. Topics include: Assyrian Reliefs, Art and Archteicture of the Old Akkadian period, Early Dynastic art and architecture, and The Rise of first cities in Mesopotamia and Iran. This course is only open to graduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7240, MELC 7060, NELC 7060
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7259 Troy and Homer
An interdisciplinary seminar focusing on the city of Troy both as an archaeological site and as the setting of the legendary Trojan War. We will consider Homer's Iliad (with selected sections read in Greek) together with the topography and archaeology of the site of Troy in order to address a series of interrelated questions: What are the points of continuity and discontinuity between the stories told by the literary tradition and the material record? How do both types of evidence contribute to our understanding of political relations and cultural interactions between Greece and Anatolia in the Bronze Age? How do Hittite sources bear on our reconstruction of the events behind the Troy legend? How have the site and the poem contributed to each other's interpretation in the context of scholarly discovery and debate? We will give some attention to modern receptions of the Troy legend that deliberately combine material and textual elements, such as Cy Twombly's "Fifty Days at Iliam" and Alice Oswald's "Memorial: An Excavation of Homer's Iliad." The seminar will include a visit to the site of Troy during the Spring Break.
Also Offered As: GREK 7201
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7260 The Archaeology of Greece and Asia Minor in the Archaic and Classical Periods
An examination of new discoveries and conflicting interpretations in the archaeology of Greece and Asia Minor between the seventh and fourth centuries B.C.E. Both sides of the Aegean will receive equal attention, and emphasis will be placed on sanctuaries, settlements, and cemeteries.
Also Offered As: CLST 7304
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7320 Medieval Art History and Theories of the Object
The recent turn to the object across the humanities and social sciences has brought to the fore concerns with the nature of material things, their operation in the world, and their entanglement with humans. This seminar will introduce you to some of the key theoretical writings on the object and material culture and will ask you to interrogate their relevance for the discipline of art history. Our focus will be on the Mediterranean and Western European Middle Ages, but depending on the specific interests of the seminar’s participants, we may venture into other historical periods and cultural domains. Topics to be addressed include the social life of things; agency; materiality; the relic; the gift; the miniature; and the question of the human/nonhuman divide. This course is only open to graduate students.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7320
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7350 Islamic Art Seminar
This course focuses on art of the Islamic world. Open to graduate students only.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7350, MELC 7560, NELC 7560
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7370 Islamic Architecture Seminar
This seminar will address the problems of studying architecture in the Islamic world. Considered will be issues of architectural design, regional and trans-regional constructional traditions, structural know-how and innovation, patronage and use. The examples discussed will be mainly religious and social service complexes. Attention will be paid to the manner of transmission of architectural design knowledge and constructional skill. Open to graduate students only.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7370, MELC 7561, NELC 7561
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7400 Medieval Art Seminar
Alternating specific topic from year to year, this advanced graduate seminar surveys methodological issues concerning the art of the European Middle Ages, broadly conceived. Seminars take advantage of the rich resources of the Philadelphia area. This course is open to graduate students only.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7400
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7401 Medieval Art Now Seminar
Where is the study of medieval art today? This advanced graduate seminar surveys the questions and issues relevant to the study of artistic production, both East and West, from 300 to 1500. New methodologies will be placed in their historiographic contexts, and students will read deeply into the problems with which medieval art historians are wrestling with today. The seminar will take advantage of excellent local collections to animate discussions, and focus research papers.
Not Offered Every Year
Also Offered As: ARTH 7401
1 Course Unit
AAMW 7510 Participation in Archaeological Excavations
Opportunities for qualified students to join in current expeditions. Credit allowed will depend on the length of time spent in the field.
Summer Term
1 Course Unit
AAMW 8000 Pedagogy
Pedagogy
1 Course Unit
AAMW 9999 Independent Study
Independent Study
Fall or Spring
1 Course Unit