Courses for Spring 2025
General Information About Courses
AAMW course numbers are crosslisted with departmentally based courses. Not all courses of relevance to AAMW students have AAMW numbers. Potentially relevant courses can be found in the rosters from the departments and programs in the History of Art, Ancient History, Anthropology, Classical Studies, History, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Religious Studies, Architecture and Historic Preservation. In addition courses may be taken for Penn credit at Bryn Mawr and Princeton. Advanced students may also request to take a specialist course at other universities in commuting range. If the professor teaching the course agrees, the AAMW Graduate Chair will give the class a Penn Independent Study number, and transcribe the grade received.
| Title | Instructors | Location | Time | Description | Cross listings | Fulfills | Registration notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAMW 5120-401 | Petrography of Cultural Materials | Marie-Claude Boileau | W 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | 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. | ANTH5211401, CLST7311401 | ||||||
| AAMW 5191-401 | Ancient Greek Colonies | Thomas F. Tartaron | W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | 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. | CLST3211401, CLST5211401 | ||||||
| AAMW 5200-401 | Aegean Bronze Age Art Seminar | Elizabeth Shank | W 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | 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. | ARTH5200401 | ||||||
| AAMW 5220-401 | Ancient Iranian Art Seminar | Holly Pittman | F 8:30 AM-11:29 AM | The seminar offered under this rubric addresses a variety of topics focusing on the Art and Archaeology of pre-Islamic Iran. They include focus on Bronze Age Iran, Achaemenid period Iran, Interactions on the Iranian plateau, Interactions between Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and the Iranian plateau. All focus on material excavated from sites in the region. | ARTH5220401, MELC5050401 | ||||||
| AAMW 6260-401 | Hellenistic and Roman Art and Artifact | Ann L Kuttner | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | 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. | ARTH2260401, ARTH6260401, CLST3402401, CLST5402401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202510&c=AAMW6260401 | |||||
| AAMW 6280-401 | Greek Architecture and Urbanism | Mantha Zarmakoupi | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | As the locus of classical architecture and urbanism, the Greek world occupies an important place in the history of architecture and urbanism. This lecture course explores the various periods and different moments of architectural creation during the first two millennia, from the palace complexes of Minoan Crete to the cities of the Hellenistic world (1600-100 BCE), and tackles major concepts, theories and practices of architectural and urban design. In studying a variety of sources - both ancient and modern - lectures examine concepts of organizing space, issues of structure, materials, decoration and proportion. The purpose of the course is to shed light on Greek architectural and urban projects within their social, political, religious, and physical contexts. | ARTH2280401, ARTH6280401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202510&c=AAMW6280401 | |||||
| AAMW 6320-401 | Byzantine Art and Architecture | Ivan Drpic | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | 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. | ARTH2320401, ARTH6320401 | ||||||
| AAMW 6460-401 | GIS for the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences | Emily L Hammer | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | 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. | ANTH1905401, MELC1905401, MELC6900401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202510&c=AAMW6460401 | |||||
| AAMW 6460-402 | GIS for the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences | Emily L Hammer | CANCELED | 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. | ANTH1905402, MELC1905402, MELC6900402 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202510&c=AAMW6460402 | |||||
| AAMW 7259-401 | Troy and Homer | Sheila H Murnaghan Charles Brian Rose |
T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | 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. | GREK7201401 | ||||||
| AAMW 7265-401 | Roman Art and Artifact: Age of Augustus | Ann L Kuttner | W 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | This seminar series explores many media and kinds of Roman private and public things, images and monuments (and, sometimes, ancient texts about them) in a range of physical and cultural settings, through an interdisciplinary lens. Special topics range between ca. 400 BCE and 800 CE, from the Hellenistic/ Republican age into the Empire and Late Antiquity, using multiple methodological and theoretical approaches to explore the global Mediterranean world, and its interaction with its neighbors in space and time. Modern archaeologies and the museum institution receive critique. The query "what is Roman about Roman art" continually recurs. | ANCH7409401, ARTH7260401, CLST7409401 |