Department of Classical StudiesGraduate Program in Ancient History
The Graduate Group in Ancient History is an interdisciplinary, cross-departmental program that encompasses the study of the ancient history of the Near East and the Mediterranean Basin, from the origins of civilization in the fertile river basins of the Tigris and the Euphrates to the rise of Islam and the emergence of the so-called barbarian successor kingdoms. Ancient History is a discipline that draws on literary, documentary, visual, archaeological, and environmental evidence, and employs a range of methodologies in combining these evidentiary categories to answer questions about the structures, processes, and thought-worlds of ancient societies.
Administratively, the Graduate Program in Ancient History is housed in the Department of Classical Studies. The department possesses its own colloquium series, which members of the group customarily attend. Faculty members of the Graduate Group in Ancient History come together from a range of Departments: Anthropology, Classical Studies, History of Art, Religious Studies, and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
The expertise and interests of members of the group are diverse and heterogeneous. What unites us is the enterprise of building historical narratives from the fragmentary and diffuse textual and material evidence available to us.
Students admitted to the Graduate Group in Ancient History will receive training in the political, intellectual, cultural, socio-economic, and religious history of at least two discrete ancient societies as part of their preparation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
For more information on the Graduate Program in Ancient History, see here:
https://anch.sas.upenn.edu