Program in Early Cultures
Relevant Courses (2024 - 2025)
The following courses have been suggested by Early Cultures faculty as especially relevant to interested students. Courses marked with an asterisk have also received PEC funding for additional programming. Many of our Affiliated Departments also include course listings for the current year, as well as past or future years, on their websites. To view all courses being offered at Brown University in the current academic year, visit the university's online listings, Courses@Brown.
ANTH1201: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems and Spatial Analysis
This course offers an introduction to the concepts and techniques of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Through weekly lab assignments and work on independent projects, students develop skills in cartography and coordinate systems, spatial database design, image processing, basic spatial analysis, hydrological modeling, and three-dimensional modeling. Discussions and case material draw primarily from the application of GIS in archaeology, anthropology, and cultural geography, including the study of archival materials and the ethics of geographic representation. Provides foundation for upper division coursework in spatial analysis. Software focuses on ESRI products (ArcMap, ArcScene, ArcCatalog, ArcGIS Pro).
Parker VanValkenburgh
parker_vanvalkenburgh@brown.edu
ANTH1201 / ARCH1881: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems and Spatial Analysis
This course offers an introduction to the concepts and techniques of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Through weekly lab assignments and work on independent projects, students develop skills in cartography and coordinate systems, spatial database design, image processing, basic spatial analysis, hydrological modeling, and three-dimensional modeling. Discussions and case material draw primarily from the application of GIS in archaeology, anthropology, and cultural geography, including the study of archival materials and the ethics of geographic representation. Provides foundation for upper division coursework in spatial analysis. Software focuses on ESRI products (ArcMap, ArcScene, ArcCatalog, ArcGIS Pro).
Parker VanValkenburgh
parker_vanvalkenburgh@brown.edu
ANTH1720 / ARCH1772: The Human Skeleton
More than simply a tissue within our bodies, the human skeleton is a gateway into narratives of the past--from the evolution of our species to the biography of individual past lives. Through lecture and hands-on laboratory, students will learn the complete anatomy of the human skeleton, with an emphasis on the human skeleton in functional and evolutionary perspective. We'll also explore forensic and bioarchaeological approaches to the skeleton. By the course conclusion, students will be able to conduct basic skeletal analysis and will be prepared for more advanced studies of the skeleton from medical, forensic, archaeological, and evolutionary perspectives.
Andrew Scherer
ANTH1740 / ARCH1864: Paleoethnobotany: Ancient Agriculture to Criminal Investigations
How can we use botanical evidence to understand the past, from cold cases to VERY cold cases? Which roles did plants play in ancient communities? What happens to plant remains after they become incorporated into the archaeological record, and what are the methods used to study these "ecofacts"? How do paleoethnobotanical interpretations contribute to our understanding of history and structure our public policy? How is botanical forensic evidence used in law enforcement investigations? This course trains students in laboratory methods and interpretations of botanical evidence through hands-on practice. We explore the major classes of plant remains likely to be encountered in forensic cases and archaeological sites; identify botanical residues and organize the data to make interpretable results; and address major issues within the discipline.
Shanti Morell-Hart
Kathleen Forste
ANTH2501: Principles of Archaeology
Examines theoretical and methodological issues in anthropological archaeology. Attention is given to past concerns, current debates, and future directions of archaeology in the social sciences.
Shanti Morell-Hart
ARCH1128 / HIST1205: The Long Fall of the Roman Empire
The collapse of the Roman Empire was the crucible in which the cultures of the medieval West, Byzantium, and Islam were forged. This class examines the tensions and transformations within Mediterranean society between 250 and 1100 CE and how these tribulations gave birth to new identities, boundaries, economies, and religious beliefs. We will explore too the points of contact between the emerging Latin, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds and how people living in the late ancient and early medieval Mediterranean sought to devise solutions to the challenges that confronted them as their worlds collapsed, expanded, and changed. Class meetings will interweave narrative and thematic lectures with student analysis of primary sources in translation. Topics include early Christianity, the body, gender, barbarian invasions and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, Charlemagne, and the Vikings.
Jonathan Conant
ARCH1242 / HIST1360: Amazonia from the Prehuman to the Present
This course merging lecture and discussion will examine the fascinating and contested history of the largest rainforest on the planet and one of the world’s most complex fluvial ecosystems: Amazonia, in equatorial South America, from its pre-human history to the present day. The course will include readings and discussions on the region’s ecological origins; the social history of its diverse Indigenous populations, immigrant groups, and African-descended populations; exploration myths and European colonial projects; and more recent efforts to exploit and protect Amazonia’s extraordinary natural and human resources. The course will use tools and resources from archaeology, anthropology, biology, and social and cultural history, and will also examine popular representations of the Amazon through novels, newspapers, podcasts, and film.
Neil Safier
ARCH1282 / CLAS1210: Mediterranean Culture Wars: Archaic Greek History, c. 1200 to 479 BC
From the end of the Bronze Age to the end of the Persian Wars is a period of considerable change in the Mediterranean and beyond. The Greek polis challenges the powers of the ancient Near East. Over seven centuries we meet Greek writing, Homeric epic, and the first historian (Herodotus). But the Greek world lay on the edges of the Ancient Near East and this course tries to offer a more balanced approach than the typically Hellenocentric perspective of the standard textbooks. CLAS 1210 addresses cultural, political, social, and economic histories. Literary, epigraphical and archaeological cultures provide the evidence. There are no written exams for this course. No previous knowledge of the ancient world is required.
Graham Oliver
ARCH1544 / URBN1871: Heritage in the Metropolis: Remembering and Preserving the Urban Past
Urban heritage – from archaeological sites and historic architecture to longstanding cultural practices – is increasingly threatened by the exponential growth of cities around the globe. Most critically, the complex histories and lived experiences of the diverse communities who have inhabited and shaped cities are often in danger of being erased and forgotten today. This course examines how we might remember and preserve this urban past – and the tangible sites and artifacts that attest to it – ¬in light of the social and political dynamics of cities in the present.
Lauren Yapp
ARCH 1642: Queering Ancient Egypt
Queering history is a means of challenging heteronormative narratives of the past. In this course, we will critically examine the archaeological evidence for concepts such as gender, sexuality, and the body in ancient Egypt. The goal of this class is to discover what archaeology can reveal about identity formation in the past, but also to explore how modern conceptions of identity impact our writing of history. Thus, this course will address both the marginalization of gendered identities in historical research about ancient Egypt, as well as the reception of ancient identities in contemporary society.
Robyn Price
ARCH1830: Fake! History of the Inauthentic
What is a fake? Who gets to decide what is authentic? Greek statues, Chinese bronzes, Maya glyphs. Have fraudulent objects always existed? Galileo’s signature, a centaur’s skeleton, Buddhas bearing swastikas. Are all fakes the same? If not, how are they different? Why do people make forgeries? This course revolves around the history of the inauthentic through a diachronic exploration of objects.
Felipe Rojas Silva
ARCH2184: Material Culture and the Bodily Senses: Past and Present
How do the senses shape our experience? How many senses are there? How do ancient and modern art and material culture relate to bodily senses? What is material and sensorial memory, and how does it structure time and temporality? Using media and objects, including archaeological and ethnographic collections at Brown and beyond, this course will study how a sensorial perspective on materiality can reshape and reinvigorate research dealing with past and present material culture. Furthermore, we will explore how sensoriality and affectivity can decenter the dominant western modernist canon of the autonomous individual.
Yannis Hamilakis
ARCH2245: Rural Landscapes and Peasant Communities in the Mediterranean
The aim of this course is to explore rural settlement and agrarian production in the Mediterranean, both in the ancient and the recent past. The archaeological starting-point is provided by the numerous scatters of surface remains that archaeological surveys across the Mediterranean have collected and that are usually interpreted as 'farmsteads' broadly datable to Classical Antiquity. We will look beyond these scatters to examine the social and economic significance of rural settlement through comparison with ethnographic and historical rural studies from across the Mediterranean and to explore household and community organisation and agrarian production in Classical Antiquity.
Peter Van Dommelen
ASYR1000 Introduction to Akkadian
An intensive introduction to the cuneiform writing system and the basic grammar and vocabulary of Akkadian, a language first attested over four thousand years ago in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). The earliest known member of the Semitic family of languages (like Arabic and Hebrew), Akkadian was in use for over two thousand years across a wide expanse of the ancient Near East. Students will learn the classical Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian (ca. 1800 BCE) and read Mesopotamian texts in the original, including selections from the Laws of Hammurabi, as well as excerpts from myths, hymns, prayers, historical documents, and letters.
Matthew Rutz
Marc Chapuis
ASYR: 1050: Brotherhood of Kings: A History of the Ancient Middle East’s First International Age, 2000-1200 BCE
What did international politics look like in the Middle East c. 2000-1200 BCE, long before the succession of empires and states of the ancient, medieval, and modern periods? Well over a thousand years before the Persian Empire, Hammurabi of Babylon engaged in a project of statecraft that reshaped the political landscape of ancient Iraq, and the fall of Babylon a few generations later presaged an expansive international age that reached from north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean across Iraq and into Iran. Using evidence from archaeology as well as texts in translation (letters, treaties, royal propaganda, chronicles), we will explore both what happened in the ancient Middle East and how modern scholars piece together histories of the forgotten past. Topics include: statecraft and territory; diplomacy; war and peace; ancient ethnicities; modes of communication; state and society.
Matthew Rutz
ASYR2920: Hittite Historical Texts
This course offers focused study of the most significant Hittite historical texts from the second millennium BCE. Readings will come for the major genres of Hittite history-writing, and students will hone their translation skills, query modes of historical thinking in Anatolia, and work to contextualize the ancient texts. Knowledge of Hittite cuneiform required.
Felipe Rojas Silva
CLAS1120G / MDVL1120G: The Idea of Self
Literature gestures us toward a certain kind of knowledge not quite psychological, not quite philosophical. We read widely in the classical and medieval traditions in order to gauge the peculiar nature of what this knowledge tells us about experience and the ways in which expressions of selfhood abide or are changed over time. Authors include but are not limited to Sappho, Pindar, Catullus, Horace, Augustine, and Fortunatus.
Joseph Pucci
CLAS1121C / HMAN1976X: Cicero in New Spain
This course will explore the reception in colonial Mexico of Cicero's oration 'Pro Archia poeta' ("In defense of Archia the Poet"), with particular emphasis on its use in the colonial schools. Some of the related topics which will be tackled are: the role of education in building society, linguistic and national identity, the purpose and power of literature, the possible existence of an intrinsic value of poetry. Class activity will involve reading the 'Pro Archia poeta' in its entirety and in its original Latin, and will be accompanied by examination of handwritten primary sources from early modern times, for which a basic training in Latin palaeography will be offered to the students.
Ambra Marzocchi
CLAS1320 / HIST1930S: Roman History II: The Roman Empire and Its Impact
The social and political history of the Roman Empire (14-565 CE). Focuses on expansion, administration, and Romanization of the empire; crisis of the 3rd century; militarization of society and monarchy; the struggle between paganism and Christianity; the end of the Empire in the West. Special attention given to the role of women, slaves, law, and historiography. Ancient sources in translation.
John Bodel
CLAS2011: Critical Approaches to Classical Texts
These seminars will examine categories fundamental to the study of ancient literature and historiography, highlighting the relevance of ancient philosophy, rhetoric and poetics to modern critical/theoretical approaches. Topics can include: text, author, context, literature, genre, representation, emulation, narrative, historiography, commentary, reception. Contradictions in the idea of ‘classics’ can also be considered, in connection with questions of diversity and ethical approaches to Greco-Roman texts. The course aims to draw on participants’ needs and experiences to offer firm and constructive guidelines for professional academic writing, eliminating common errors and misconceptions (intentional and biographical fallacies, confusion between allusion and intertextuality, ‘topoi and ‘tropes’.)
Andrew Laird
EGYT1310: Introduction to Classical Hieroglyphic Egyptian Writing and Language (Middle Egyptian I)
Learn how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs! The classical language of ancient Egypt, Middle Egyptian was spoken ca. 2000–1600 BCE and remained an important written language for the rest of ancient Egyptian history. Students will learn the hieroglyphic writing system, vocabulary, and grammar of one of the oldest known languages and read excerpts from stories, royal monuments, tomb inscriptions, and amulets. By the end of this course, students will be able to decipher textual portions of many monuments and objects in museums.
Christelle Alvarez
EGYT1435: At the Crossroads of Three Continents: Ancient Egypt’s History from the Collapse to Cleopatra
The year is c. 1170 BCE: Egypt is already ancient, but gone are the days of building pyramids, and for hundreds of years, the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom had managed an empire stretching from Syria to Egypt following the Nile south into Sudan. Starting with the ‘Bronze Age Collapse’ and continuing through the equally seismic shifts that followed, this course examines the latter half of ancient Egyptian history. Students will learn how this ancient state constantly reinvented itself, through the rule of an elite class of priests, Kushite Pharaohs and Assyrian invaders, a Saite Renaissance and interactions with Greek colonists, Persian occupations and revolts, and the rise and fall of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Using archaeology and written sources in translation, we will explore this broad but captivating chapter of human history.
Jonathan Russell
EGYT2300: Readings in Ancient Egyptian
Advanced readings in ancient Egyptian texts in the original script and language. Readings will be selected from a particular genre, historical period, or site. This course is intended primarily for graduate students and may be repeated for credit. A reading knowledge of ancient Egyptian is required. A reading knowledge of both German and French is strongly recommended but not required.
Christelle Alvarez
GREK1150: Greek Prose Composition
Survey of Greek grammar and an opportunity to reflect on problems of translation. Main goals: to improve the students' command of prose syntax (both in reading and writing), and to develop a keen sensitivity towards issues of translation. A variety of texts written in Attic prose are read and analyzed in class. Students are expected to write two to three compositions a week in good Attic prose. Advanced knowledge of ancient Greek is a prerequisite for this course.
Johanna Hanink
GREK1810: Greek Literature Survey to 450 BCE
Surveys early Greek literature to 450 BCE. Works studied include the Iliad, Odyssey, the Hesiodic poems, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Aeschylus. Emphasis on literary interpretation, the poetics of oral poetry, and the early history of various literary genres. Extensive readings in the original.
P. Nieto Hernandez
pura_nieto_hernandez@brown.edu
GREK2110K: Aristotle’s Theology in Metaphysics Lambda
Metaphysics Lambda (Book XII) is a self-contained series of lectures presenting in its first five chapters an overview of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics (first philosophy) and culminating in its last five chapters in his tantalizing treatment of divine substance and its causal role in the cosmos. Among the questions to be asked: What is first philosophy and how does Lambda—finally developing Aristotle's theology—fit into that larger project? How does God govern the cosmos as an object of love? How should we understand the claims that God thinks himself and that “thinking is thinking of thinking”?
Mary-Louise Gill
HIAA2301: Finding the Viewer: The Reception of Ancient Art and Architecture
This graduate seminar will explore the role of viewers in the creation of meanings for ancient art and architecture. The perspectives of the makers of a work of art, patrons and artists, tend to get greater attention in art historical inquiries, in large part because those agents leave more visible traces in the literary and material records. Yet the agency of viewers, although less apparent, can be recovered through careful examination of diverse types of evidence—textual, archaeological, visual—and by relying on viewer-centered theoretical models such as phenomenology and reception theory.
Gretel Rodriguez
JUDS1630 / RELS1050I: The Talmud
Written from the first - seventh centuries CE, the Talmud (which runs to 20 volumes) contains law, lore, theological speculation, and complex argumentation. We will read a selection in depth and examine both traditional and modern critical (e.g. historical and literary) approaches to this fundamental text. No prerequisites; all texts in English translation. Enrollment limited to 20.
Michael Satlow
LATN1110J: Petronius
Close reading of Petronius's comic masterpiece, the Satyrica, with emphasis on questions of form, narrative technique, and literary intention.
John Bodel
LATN1110X: Selections from Latin Authors: Ovid, Ars Amatoria
This course will cover Ovid's Ars Amatoria, Book One, as well as other selections from Ovid. Our aim will be a detailed exploration of this poetry through close reading of the Latin text and discussion of linguistic, literary, and cultural questions. Quizzes, exams, and a 7 to 10-page term paper will be required.
Jeri Debrohun
LATN1120G / EMOW1120G: Reading Humanist Latin Texts
The course will explore in depth some important Renaissance or 'early modern' works of Latin literature, many of which have not been translated into English. As well as opening up a new field of Latin writing, the course will extend general knowledge of classical literature by involving some less commonly studied ancient sources. It will also introduce some early imprints, enabling you to consider texts directly in the original form in which they first appeared.
Andrew Laird
LATN2090I / COLT2830Q: Augustan Literature and Egypt
This seminar studies Hellenistic influence on Latin poetry and Roman ideology in the period of Rome’s slide from a dysfunctional oligarchy to an autocracy. We will focus on how such authors as Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid assimilate and transform the imperial literature of the Greek East in the time of Augustus’ conquest of Egypt, both accommodating a poetics of monarchy and opening up adversarial standpoints within the same discourse. We will also look at earlier and later Latin poetry and prose texts to place this poetry within literary and political history.
Joseph Reed
RELS0090A: Women and Gender in Ancient Religions
What was religion like for women in the ancient Mediterranean world? What experiences, emotions, and constraints characterized women’s religious lives? What was public and what was private? What were the family issues involved? How were religions gendered? Were there major differences between religions that included goddesses and priestesses, and those that did not? Were notions of gender fixed or fluid? Could they enable religious freedoms for women? We will explore these and other questions through a consideration of religions Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian between roughly 500 BCE and 500 CE, with a focus on the Roman Empire. Discussion
Susan Harvey
RELS2000B: Method and Theory in the Study of Religion: Interpreting Religion
This seminar examines diverse methodological and theoretical resources for studying religion. Readings may include influential recent theorists from across the humanities and social sciences, as well as contemporary scholars of religion who bring such theorizing to bear on religion.
Jae Han
RELS2380A: Chinese Buddhist Texts
Each week we will engage in close reading through translation of Buddhist texts in the original Chinese. Selections will draw from sutras, commentaries, prefaces, colophons, biographies, and Chan literature. The course introduces research methods, major sources, dictionaries, and digital tools, and culminates in a seminar paper demonstrating original research using the tools and methods practiced in class. Prerequisite: Reading competence in classical Chinese.
Jason Protass
Harold Roth