Program Seminar
Program students usually take the Program Seminar in the first year of study. Offered each year, the seminar is normally a team-taught class sponsored by two of the cooperating departments. Specific topics vary, but each Program Seminar has significant interdisciplinary and comparative dimensions emphasizing the methodologies and techniques of the fields involved. Students must also take two additional seminars outside their home departments and are strongly encouraged to continue seminar work after completing their general examinations.
Field Trip
Every year, the Program Seminar, or PAW Seminar, includes a one-week field trip that takes place during the Fall Break, after the first six weeks of the fall term. The trip targets an area in the Mediterranean that is of special relevance to the Seminar of that year. Areas visited include the Peloponnese, Sicily, Israel, Egypt, and Spain. The faculty members who direct the seminar are in charge of organizing and leading the field trip, usually relying on specialists of the several areas to lead the group in the field. The fall 2025 class traveled to Egypt, visiting Cairo, Alexandria, and the Fayoum Oasis.
2026-27 Seminar and Field Trip
CLA 547/PAW 503/EAS 547/HIS 557
Problems in Ancient History: The Han West and the Roman East
With travel to Armenia over fall break
Description:
This seminar examines the historiography of the Roman and Han empires, moving from their imperial centres to their peripheries, frontiers, and beyond. How did these empires conceive of and organize imperial spaces? What were the different institutional forms that coexisted within these imperial domains? What documents did these various institutions produce? Through a careful reading of field-defining work in the fields of Roman and Han history and selections of primary sources (with English translation), the seminar excavates the assumptions that constitute the fields of Roman and Han history.
Sample Reading List:
- Michael Loewe, The Men who Governed Han China (2004)
- Fergus Millar, Roman Near East, 31 B.C. to A.D. 337 (1993)
- Tamara Chin, Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, an
- Jeremy Simmons, Sea of Treasures: A Cultural History of Ancient Indian Ocean
- Nicole Giannella, The Mind of the Slave: The Limits of Ownership in Roman Law
