The ancient Greek and Roman novels include some of the most enjoyable and interesting literary works from antiquity. Ignored by ancient critics, they were until fairly recently dismissed by classical scholars as mere popular entertainment. But these narratives had an enormous influence on the later development of the novel, and their sophistication and playfulness, they often seem peculiarly modern--or even postmodern. They are also an important source for any understanding of ancient culture or society. In this course, we will discuss the social, religious and philosophical contexts for the ancient novel, and we will think about the relationship of the novel to other ancient genres, such as history and epic. Texts to be read will include Lucian's parodic science fiction story about a journey to the moon; Longus' touching pastoral romance about young love and sexual awakening; Heliodorus' gripping and exotic thriller about pirates and long-lost children; Apuleius' Golden Ass, which contains the story of Cupid and Psyche; and Petronius' Satyricon, a hilarious evocation of an orgiasic Roman banquet.

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.

Architecture is the most striking legacy of Rome and the well-preserved remains of Roman buildings dominate our vision of the empire. Although Roman architecture has been studied since the Renaissance, it is only since the middle of the 20th century that it has come to be appreciated for the developments in concrete construction, which led to a revolution in the treatment of interior space and landscape architecture. Indeed, Rome’s architectural revolution radically changed both cities and countryside. Romans developed a wide range of new architectural forms and technological innovations in order to meet the increasingly sophisticated and diverse needs of their society. The purpose of the course is to shed light on Roman architectural and urban projects within their social, political, religious, and physical contexts. Throughout, the emphasis will be on concepts of organizing space, issues of structure, materials, decoration and proportion, the role of architecture in Roman society, and on the varied ways that architecture was employed by individuals and communities to express and enhance their status.

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.

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.