Ancient History at Yale

Rooted firmly in the tradition of pioneering excellence, Yale’s Combined Degree in Classics and History remains on the cutting edge of an exciting and rapidly changing field. The combined degree challenges students to push the boundaries — intellectual and spatial — of a discipline that is growing and changing in the face of new methodologies and groundbreaking analytical techniques. Yale’s four ancient historians will help you explore questions spanning the Greek and Roman worlds from the Iberian Peninsula to the Ganges Delta and from the First Cataract of the Nile to the Baltic Sea, from Cicero to the Silk Road, and from the Archaic period through Late Antiquity.

For more information about the program, click here 

Summer Course 2018- Iceland and Greenland

On August 15th 2018, Anders Winroth, Johanna Friedricksdottir and myself ledan exciting Summer program based at Geocamp in Kevlavik, Iceland. Why would historians go there?

The course provided a basic introduction to Geophysical processes, to Paleoclimatology and to historical case studies and methods on the impact of climate change on human society. Based at Geocamp Iceland (http://www.geocamp.is), we also traveled through some of the historical landscape of Iceland, saw the well-known volcanoes and lava fields left by some of the largest eruptions in history, and experienced on-site lectures at a variety of locations throughout the island. We held a series of lectures by experts on Geology, Volcanology and Ancient and Medieval History as well as trips to local museums and historic sites. This trip showed the value of collaborative learning, and aimed to introduce students to the methods required to integrate human and natural archives to tell a richer story of the past. Most exciting of all (which is truly saying something!) was our flight over to the Greenland Climate Research Centre Pinngortitaleriffik * Grønlands Naturinstitut * Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Nuuk, which offered both expertise in Environmental Studies, Climatology and also a rich historical setting for examining the historical effects of climate change on human settlement patterns.

One of the enormous fissures created by the Laki eruption in 1783-1784

Dr Thomas Juul-Pedersen presenting to the Yale Archaia group at the Greenland Institute for Natural Resources, Nuuk.

Yale Ancient History students at the Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada, in a proseminar on Environmental Geochemistry.

The Yale Archaia Group

Archaia is a collaborative forum that brings together one of the largest groups of scholars in the world working on early civilizations. Scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences join with those working in the Yale Divinity School, the Yale Law School, the collections and the university libraries. While admiring and encouraging traditional modes of work and traditional fields of scholarship, we build a new inter- and multi-disciplinary framework that redefines old disciplinary boundaries.

Very few programs anywhere bring together around the table in sustained dialogue literary scholars and archaeologists, art historians and cuneiformists, legal historians and anthropologists, papyrologists and numismatists. Via description, analysis, and comparison the Archaia collaboration allows for broader exposure to new ideas and methods that will stimulate new research agendas across disciplines encompassing the whole of the premodern world. We aim to enhance an already world class graduate education by exposing students early in their careers to a wider intellectual world, and to understand in new ways the value of antiquity, from the Mediterranean to Japan, and its rich cultural heritage for our own world.

Check out our website HERE

The Annual Michael I. Rostovtzeff Lecture

Our Annual Rostovtzeff lecture and colloquium is a highlight each year. We are extremely pleased to welcome Cyprian Broodbank (Cambridge University) this year. His lecture "Is there a 'pre' to Mediterranean history?" will take place on November 8.

Professor Broodbank and someYale folks at the gravesite of Michael Rostovtzeff. Our traditional visit to the grave site before the lecture.

My Current and former PhD Students

Alissa Abrams (Yale History)
Niv Allon (Yale NELC, now Assistant Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Sara Cole (Yale History, now Assistant Curator at the Getty Museum)
Christelle Fischer-Bovet (Stanford Classics, now Associate Professor at USC)
François Gerardin (Yale History, now Visiting Assistant Professor of Ancient History, Yale, 2018-2019)
Maria Gutierrez (Yale NELC)
Andy Hogan (Yale History, now Post-doc, University of California-Berkeley, Center for the Tebtunis Papyri)
Andrew Monson (Stanford Classics, now Associate Professor at NYU)
Joe Morgan (Yale History & Classics)
Nazim Serbest (Yale History & Classics)
Jelle Stoop (Yale Classics, now Lecturer in Ancient History at U. Sydney)