ARCHAIA — the Yale Program for the Study of Global Antiquity
Archaia Certificate Capstone:
The Syllabus
The Syllabus is one capstone option for the Archaia Certificate. It asks you to create an
undergraduate course syllabus in your area of expertise. In the global spirit of Archaia, the course
should include cross-cultural and interdisciplinary aspects. The Syllabus combines pedagogical
design, reflective writing, and actual teaching material, covering both the conceptual and
practical dimensions of teaching.
The completed capstone has four components, described in detail below.
Component One: The Preface (1–2 pages)
The preface is addressed to your capstone readers (the Archaia postdoctoral associate and a
faculty mentor), not to students. It is your opportunity to contextualize the course and reflect on
the choices you made in designing it. It is distinct from the course description that will appear on
the syllabus itself, which is addressed to students. Your preface should include the following:
Course overview. Briefly describe the course: its topic, level, and scope. Give your readers a
clear sense of what the course is and what students will encounter in it.
Course arc. Explain the intellectual and logical arc or narrative of the course: why the course is
structured the way it is, how the units or weeks build on one another, and what the through-line
is that carries students from the beginning of the course to its end.
Personal and scholarly rationale. Reflect on why you chose this course topic. How does it
connect to your own research? What drew you to it as a subject for undergraduate teaching, and
what do you hope students will take from engaging with it?
Alignment with Archaia. Explain how your course engages with Archaia’s commitment to
ancient studies as a globally oriented field. This might involve the geographic or cultural scope
of your course, the scholarly traditions and voices you have included in your reading list, or other
considerations relevant to your specific topic.
Component Two: The Syllabus
Design a complete syllabus for your course. This includes, at minimum, course title and
description, learning objectives, required materials, course policies, academic integrity statement,
accessibility statement, grading breakdown, and the course schedule with readings and
assignments. The Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning has resources on syllabus
A well-designed syllabus reflects your scholarly field and your ability to make that field
accessible and meaningful to undergraduate students who may be encountering it for the first
time. Your syllabus should reflect genuine intellectual care in the selection and sequencing of
topics and readings.
Component Three: Assignment Guidelines and Rubrics
For every graded assignment in your course, whether term papers, exams, presentations, debates,
short response papers, posters, or other formats, you must provide a full set of guidelines and a
grading rubric.
Guidelines should explain the assignment clearly enough that a student could understand exactly
what is expected: the task, the length, the format, the deadline, and any other relevant
parameters. Write these as you would if you were actually distributing them to students.
Rubrics should make your evaluative criteria explicit. There is no single required format for
rubrics, but they should be clear and specific. A strong rubric does not simply list categories like
“argument” or “writing quality.” It specifies what strong, adequate, and weak performance looks
like in each category, and it makes clear how categories are weighted.
Component Four: Three Full Lesson Plans
Select three class sessions from your syllabus and prepare each one fully. For each session, you
will provide:
Lesson Plan. These do not need to be a word-for-word script, but they should be a substantive
walkthrough of what you will cover in that class: the key points, the sequence of the lecture, the
questions you are organizing the session around, and any moments where you plan to pause for
discussion or student engagement. You should make clear how the readings assigned for that
class connect to and work with the lecture content. The capstone readers should be able to follow
the shape and content of the lecture from your notes.
A visual presentation. For many courses in ancient studies, particularly those involving material
culture or archaeology, a PowerPoint presentation will be an essential part of the lecture. If your
course is one where a presentation is appropriate, you are required to include it. If your course is
one where it is not (for instance, a course organized around close reading of literary texts), you
should briefly explain in the lecture notes why you have not included one.
A Note on Subfield Variation
The Syllabus Capstone Project is designed to be intentionally flexible to accommodate students
across Archaia’s range of participating departments. A course on Mesopotamian art history will
look different from a course on ancient Japanese literature. What is consistent across all subfields
is the expectation of scholarly rigor, genuine pedagogical thought, and clear alignment with
Archaia’s global and interdisciplinary commitments. If you have questions about how a
particular component applies to your specific course, consult with the Archaia postdoctoral
associate, co-chairs, or a faculty mentor.