http://archaia.yale.edu
Graduate Certificate in the Study of Ancient and Premodern Cultures and Societies

Graduate Coordinators

Sonam Kachru (Religious Studies)

Laura Nasrallah (Divinity; Religious Studies)

Program Director
Keith Geriak

Steering Committee Brent Bianchi (South and Southeast Asian Studies), Lisa Brody (Yale University Art Gallery), Malina Buturovic (Classics), Maria Doerfler (Religious Studies), Alexander Ekserdjian (Classics; History of Art), Milette Gaifman (Classics; History of Art), Felicity Harley-McGowan (Divinity), Michael Hunter (East Asian Languages and Literatures), Andrew Johnston (Classics), Denise Leidy (Yale University Art Gallery), Noel Lenski (Classics; History), Colin McCaffrey (Classics), James Patterson (Classics), Alexander Uskokov (Sanskrit; South Asian Studies) Kevin van Bladel (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), Jacqueline Vayntrub (Divinity), Molly Zahn (Divinity)

Graduate Certificate in the Study of Ancient and Premodern Cultures and Societies

Archaia is a collaborative forum bringing 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.

Archaia aims 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. It supplements the curriculum with seminars, conferences, and special lectures by scholars from Yale as well as visiting scholars and offers a graduate certificate. The certificate in Archaia is open to Yale Ph.D. students and to students at the Divinity School.

Students with an interest in Archaia should apply to one of the university’s degree-granting departments and should meet the entrance standards of the admitting department. Departments and schools currently participating in Archaia are Anthropology, Classics, East Asian Languages and Literatures, History, History of Art, Judaic Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Religious Studies, and the Divinity School; students from other relevant units should contact the Archaia graduate coordinators.

The certificate program provides enhanced training to graduate students with wide-ranging interests in the ancient and premodern world to extend their studies beyond departmental lines. Program students are expected to fulfill the requirements of the home department, but their course of study is individually modified to allow for interdisciplinary work through classes, examinations, and guidance by faculty in several departments.

Graduate students who are enrolled in and funded by participating departments will earn a certificate upon satisfactory completion of the requirements. Students should apply to the department that coincides best with their backgrounds and their prospective areas of specialization, and they should indicate an interest in the interdepartmental program at the time of their application to that department. Students in participating Ph.D. programs earn the certificate en route to the doctorate. 

A program of study for completion of the certificate must include the Core Seminar—or, in special cases, an approved alternative seminar—introducing students to issues in the study of the premodern world. In addition, a minimum of three other courses plus a capstone project is required, the courses to be selected in consultation from offerings of advanced language study and seminars related to the premodern world at the graduate level. The course of study must be approved by a graduate coordinator of Archaia and by the director of graduate studies (DGS) of the student’s home department, who, together with the student, will lay out a blueprint for completing the requirements, articulating a field of concentration and a direction for the capstone project, and identifying potential mentors.

Requirements for the Certificate

1. A team-taught Core Seminar—or, in special cases, an approved alternative seminar—introducing students to issues in the study of global antiquity, from a cross- and multidisciplinary perspective. Initiative students normally take the Core Seminar in the first year of study. Offered each year in the spring, the seminar is normally a team-taught class sponsored by two or more of the cooperating departments. There will be supplementary sessions in the Yale collections (e.g., the Yale Art Gallery or the Beinecke) and a required monthly colloquium component. Specific topics vary, but each seminar has significant interdisciplinary and comparative dimensions emphasizing the methodologies and techniques of the fields involved.
2. A minimum of three courses, of which at least two must be seminar or seminar-type courses, chosen in consultation with the DGS of the student’s home department from courses offered across the university. These will in most cases be courses that also fill requirements for the student’s home department and must be at a level that would normally be accepted for graduate study in that department.
3. A capstone project that demonstrates the student’s capacity to pursue independent, interdisciplinary research (the equivalent of 1 or 2 course units, depending on the scope), to be approved in consultation with the Archaia coordinators and the DGS of the student’s home department (e.g., an exhibition, documentary, research paper, conservation project). The capstone project may take the form of a research paper (approximately 10,000 words), an exhibition, a documentary, an annotated syllabus, or something else of the student’s choosing. The project may evolve from work accomplished in a related seminar. The project should demonstrate the student’s ability to conduct research on antiquity from an interregional, global, and/or interdisciplinary perspective. The committee welcomes explicit reflection, in the project’s introduction and in the project itself, of how a project that is interdisciplinary and/or interregional may challenge scholarly consensus or notions entrenched in institutionally separate fields or departments.
4. Regular participation in events hosted by Archaia throughout the academic year, especially the monthly meetings of the Ancient Societies Workshop.

Students who fulfill these requirements will receive a letter from the Archaia coordinators indicating that they have completed the work for the certificate.

Core Seminar

The 2024–2025 Core Seminar, “Law and Society in China and Rome: 200 B.C.E.–750 C.E.,” will be taught by Valerie Hansen (History) and Noel Lenski (Classics). Please check the Archaia website for details.