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.

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.

By focusing on the scientific analysis of inorganic archaeological materials, this course will explore processes of creation in the past. Class will take place in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will be team taught in three modules: analysis of lithics, analysis of ceramics and analysis of metals. Each module will combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will examine how the transformation of materials into objects provides key information about past human behaviors and the socio-economic contexts of production, distribution, exchange and use. Discussion topics will include invention and adoption of new technologies, change and innovation, use of fire, and craft specialization.

This class investigates the form and function of various monstrous figures in the imagination of the Graeco-Roman world. Through a series of test cases (gorgons, sirens, centaurs, satyrs and others) students will examine the role of monsters and uncanny creatures in establishing norms of body type, gender, behaviour, epistemology and social order in Greece and Rome. Areas of investigation will focus on the dissemination of images in poetry and visual media, the persistent connection of the monstrous with aberrant female sexuality and behaviour, the use of the monstrous in defining normative male behaviour, and, somewhat paradoxically, the role of the monstrous in ludic and anarchic settings, particularly in relation to Dionysiac and transgressive performance. The potential of the monstrous to instantiate anomaly and the social significance of the threat of disorder will be explored ina. variety of settings and genre.

Most modern people first encounter the ancient world, not in the classroom, but in early pleasure reading and other forms of play, whether in myth collections like D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths or fantasies like the Percy Jackson series or video games like Apotheon. This seminar will examine the presence of classical myth and ancient history in young people's culture from the nineteenth century, when classical myth was turned into children's literature by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Kingsley, to the present day, both in traditional literary forms and in newer media such as cartoons, video games, and fan fiction. Topics to be considered include: how stories not originally intended for children have been made suitable for child audiences; the construction of ancient counterparts for modern children; what kinds of children - in terms of class, race, and gender - adult authors envision as the natural audience for classical material and what they hope those children will get out of it; the ways in which young people have claimed that same material and made it their own; and the role of mythical figures in the development of modern identities. Along with the material that we read and discuss together, each student will have the opportunity to present and write about a classically-inspired work for children or young adults that is of particular interest to them.

How do we think 'the world' as such? Globalizing economic paradigms encourage one model that, while it connects distant regions with the ease of a finger-tap, also homogenizes the world, manufacturing patterns of sameness behind simulations of diversity. Our current world-political situation encourages another model, in which fundamental differences are held to warrant the consolidation of borders between Us and Them, "our world" and "theirs." This course begins with the proposal that there are other ways to encounter the world, that are politically compelling, ethically important, and personally enriching--and that the study of literature can help tease out these new paths. Through the idea of World Literature, this course introduces students to the appreciation and critical analysis of literary texts, with the aim of navigating calls for universality or particularity (and perhaps both) in fiction and film. "World literature" here refers not merely to the usual definition of "books written in places other than the US and Europe, "but any form of cultural production that explores and pushes at the limits of a particular world, that steps between and beyond worlds, or that heralds the coming of new worlds still within us, waiting to be born. And though, as we read and discuss our texts, we will glide about in space and time from the inner landscape of a private mind to the reaches of the farthest galaxies, knowledge of languages other than English will not be required, and neither will any prior familiary with the literary humanities. In the company of drunken kings, botanical witches, ambisexual alien lifeforms, and storytellers who've lost their voice, we will reflect on, and collectively navigate, our encounters with the faraway and the familiar--and thus train to think through the challenges of concepts such as translation, narrative, and ideology. Texts include Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula K. LeGuin, Salman Rushdie, Werner Herzog, Jamaica Kincaid, Russell Hoban, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Arundhathi Roy, and Abbas Kiarostami.

This course will introduce students to some of the greatest works of dramatic literature in the western canon. We will consider the social, political, religious and artistic functions of drama in ancient Greece and Rome, and discuss both differences and similarities between ancient drama and modern art forms. The course will also pursue some broader goals: to improve students skills as readers and scholarly critics of literature, both ancient and modern; to observe the implications of form for meaning, in considering, especially, the differences between dramatic and non-dramatic kinds of cultural production: to help students understand the relationship of ancient Greek and Roman culture to the modern world; and to encourage thought about some big issues, in life as well as in literature: death, heroism, society, action and meaning.

All books, even those regarded by some as "classics", are potentially dangerous. This course will survey a selection of ancient books that got their authors in trouble, were censored, inspired rebellion, or enabled social (and antisocial) movements, down to the present moment. Most of the books read will come from ancient Greece or Rome, but some will come from other ancient cultures, such as Egypt, the Near East, and China. Issues involved will include atheism, race and ethnicity, sex and gender, nationalism, magic, and mysticism. The course will make use of brief lectures and presentations but leave as much time as possible for seminar-style discussion.

This course aims to provide a broad survey of some of the most influential political thinkers and ideas from classical antiquity. Among the central figures to be examined are: Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Jesus, and Augustine. Major themes include: ancient theories of justice (with special attention to the relation between the just state and the just person), the emergence of political philosophy as a distinct pursuit, the Athenian polis, the Roman republic and its demise, and the rise of Christianity.

This course aims to provide a broad survey of some of the most influential political thinkers and ideas from classical antiquity. Among the central figures to be examined are: Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Jesus, and Augustine. Major themes include: ancient theories of justice (with special attention to the relation between the just state and the just person), the emergence of political philosophy as a distinct pursuit, the Athenian polis, the Roman republic and its demise, and the rise of Christianity.