The workshop theme for 2017–18 was “Slavery, Dependency and Genocide in the Ancient and Premodern World.” The associated Core Seminar was co-taught by Ben Kiernan (History) and Noel Lenski (Classics and History).
The course covers the subject of class and ethnic repression from the third millennium B.C.E. to the mid-second millennium C.E. It analyzes textual, epigraphic, and iconographic sources for slavery, dependency, and genocide in Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Han, Germanic, Angkorian, Vietnamese, Burmese, Malay, Mayan, and Aztec cultures. Questions discussed will include the terminology of slavery and genocide across cultures, the extent and intensity of these strategies over time and place, their role in shaping and even constituting social and economic relations, and the similarities and differences between societies in the uses to which they put mass repression.
