COMING FALL 2026:
“Archaia Seminar: Art, Architecture, and Climate Change in the Premodern World”
This seminar explores artistic, architectural, and material responses to environmental transformations, such as floods, droughts, volcanic events, and periods of exceptional abundance, across the premodern world. Foregrounding the indivisibility of natural worlds and human creativity, we examine how ancient peoples conceived of, and responded to, the disruptions and affordances of their environment. Through a comparative framework that puts cultures across the ancient world into conversation—from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica and beyond—we trace the entanglements of art, politics, and climate, asking: how, if at all, did environmental change materialize in the things people made?
This course serves as an Archaia Core Seminar. It is connected with Archaia’s Ancient Societies Workshop (ASW), which runs a series of events throughout the academic year related to the theme of the seminar. Students enrolled in the seminar must attend all ASW events during the semester in which the seminar is offered.
Organizer: Avary Taylor