Antioch was unique among the great cities of the classical world for its position at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and Asia. Students in this course will get exclusive access to the archives and artifacts from Princeton's mostly unpublished Antioch excavations of the 1930s. The focus of the 2025 course will be the Atrium House, a building discovered at the end of the first year, which produced exceptional mosaics. We will also explore the history of the destruction and rebuilding of Antioch in the wake of its many earthquakes, the most recent being in 2023.

This interdisciplinary seminar examines self-representation through dress, footwear, hairdo, and jewelry in late antiquity. Special attention is reserved for questions regarding religion and ritual. We study a wide range of sources, including literary and documentary texts (papyri, inscriptions), iconographic representations (mosaics, frescoes, sculpture), and archaeological finds (shoes, clothes). Students conduct research with these sources and relate them to modern theoretical works about fashion, aesthetics, and self-representation.