Doctoral Program in the Ancient World

We are now accepting applications for the 2010-2011 academic year. All applications must be submitted through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences online admissions system.

Summary

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World is now receiving applications for its program in the Ancient World. This new doctoral program is distinctive in its flexibility and breadth, embracing the disciplines relevant to a comprehensive understanding of the entire Old World in antiquity. ISAW seeks students with sufficient preparation in at least one discipline or domain to allow them to work beyond its limits and who are committed to scholarly inquiries that cross boundaries of time, place, and discipline. Inaugurated in 2009/10, ISAW’s doctoral program offers rich opportunities for collegial learning and exposure to new perspectives within a research community.

Program Philosophy

This doctoral program offers study of the ancient world on a broad chronological definition (roughly 3000 BCE to 800 CE) and spanning the Old World from the Atlantic to the Pacific—that is, encompassing not only the Greek and Roman world but also the Near East, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and various adjoining areas. Students will be encouraged not only to develop expertise in more than one area but to focus on research that connects areas of the ancient world.

A second distinctive aspect of the program is that it relies more on individual tutorial work and directed research than on classroom coursework. The core of students’ courses of study is an individually developed program of reading and research closely supervised by ISAW’s faculty and other scholars forming an extended network around the Institute. These are described further below. The Institute also hosts research seminars for the presentation of current work, in which faculty, visiting research scholars, and graduate students all participate. Students are also able to take advantage of the rich faculty and coursework resources available in departments at NYU and at other universities in the metropolitan area through existing exchange programs.

A third feature of the program is the individualized structure of students’ programs. There is only the most general set of degree requirements to be applied to all students. Because of the wide range of geographical areas, periods, disciplines, and languages potentially involved in this doctoral program, a three-person faculty committee will be appointed for each student at entrance. This committee will determine, in discussions with the student, what combination of language study, coursework, reading, seminars, and fieldwork is needed for the student’s doctoral program. This set of requirements will be recorded in a written “contract”, which may be revised by mutual agreement of the committee and the student as the student’s work develops.

Facilities

ISAW’s doctoral program is based in ISAW’s building, at 15 East 84th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, a historic townhouse fully renovated for academic use. This building provides space for the library and a study carrel for each graduate student in residence, as well as a common room, seminar room, and lecture hall. The Institute’s building is located a short walk from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts (IFA).

NYU’s libraries, to all of which students in the doctoral program have access, include the principal humanities and history book collection in Bobst Library and the specialized art history and archaeology library of the Institute of Fine Arts, which contains more than 100,000 volumes and is located just six blocks from ISAW. Physical and electronic document delivery services will soon link Bobst, IFA, and ISAW. In addition, the rich library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is located just two blocks from ISAW. ISAW’s own library is currently under development. So far ISAW has acquired (by purchase or gift) scholarly libraries in Egyptology; Asian Art; Indo-Iranian studies; Greek and Roman art, archaeology, literature, and history; Near Eastern archaeology; and Assyriology. For a full description of the library, see the ISAW library page. The building will eventually hold about 40,000 volumes in compact shelving; volumes beyond that number will be kept off-site for rapid retrieval in a facility that NYU is in the process of developing. In addition, ISAW will invest substantially in digitization of books to enhance the range of generally-available works concerning antiquity and in the creation of catalog records for existing digital books not currently reported in library catalogs

Faculty

ISAW is intended to have an initial faculty of eight members. The ongoing faculty search aims to find the best and widest-ranging possible scholars in a variety of fields. ISAW does not, however, anticipate that its faculty will ever represent more than a fraction of the possible subject areas included in its remit. NYU has an array of programs dealing with the ancient world in departments in the Graduate School of Arts and Science, including the Institute of Fine Arts and the departments of Anthropology, Classics, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, History, and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Students in ISAW’s program are able to draw on the strengths of the faculty in these and other departments and to take appropriate courses with them. These faculty members may also take part in examination and dissertation committees.

In order to enrich scholarly dialogue and its students’ opportunities, the Institute is also developing a network of Senior Fellows drawn from around the world. The Senior Fellows, whether resident in New York City or elsewhere, will advise ISAW students, take part in ISAW seminars, visit the Institute from time to time, and in some cases organize or co-organize conferences held at the Institute.

Curriculum

Each student will be assigned a principal faculty adviser, who will chair a committee of three faculty members chosen to supervise the student’s graduate work. This committee will be primary location of advising and counseling up to the completion of the doctoral comprehensive examinations. At that time, a dissertation committee will be appointed.

The core of the curriculum will be supervised independent study, in which individual students (or, where interest warrants, small groups of students with common needs) will meet each week with a faculty adviser. This tutorial process will center on a program of independent reading, investigation, and learning of technical disciplines, set by the faculty adviser, and discussion of the reading and other work in the weekly meetings. The material of these tutorials will be extremely varied; it might, for example, involve research in a museum collection or an archive. Such resources are exceptionally abundant in the Boston to Washington corridor centered on New York. Faculty members will determine what writing requirements to set for students working with them.

Students will also, as indicated below, participate in research seminars. These seminars will be led by one or (usually) more faculty members, be centered around a theme, and normally last for a semester, although year-long seminars will be possible and shorter modules may be used where appropriate to accommodate fieldwork. The seminars will involve faculty, graduate students, visiting research scholars, and faculty (and sometimes graduate students) at other universities in the metropolitan area. Each active member will present research in progress to the seminar during the course of the term.

The formal requirements for the Ph.D. will be constituted by the following:

72 required credits beyond the B.A. degree. These points will include research seminars (see below), supervised independent study, supervised fieldwork, and courses taken in NYU departments or other universities. (Graduate credits transferred from M.A. programs elsewhere may be counted toward this requirement. A maximum of 30 credits may be transferred from another institution.)
No specific courses required of all students, but each student will be required to participate in one research seminar (4 points each) each semester during the first three years, for a total of 24 points. After the third year, such participation will be strongly encouraged whenever the student is in residence in New York.
30 credits in each of the first two years and 12 in the third year will be the normal distribution of the 72 credits, but the student’s supervising committee will have the authority to vary this distribution. Apart from the research seminars, these credits will come from the supervised independent study described above plus graduate courses or seminars. Only graduate-level language classes will be counted toward this point total.
4 appropriate foreign research languages will be the minimum degree requirement; it is expected that most students will learn more, and additional languages will be specified in the “contract” for individual students. The supervising committee for a student may where appropriate (for example, in the case of a student working mainly on pre-literate societies) permit the substitution of a comparably demanding scholarly technical skill for one of the languages. Satisfaction of the language requirement will be demonstrated by examination.
Comprehensive doctoral examinations, to be taken during the third year of study; these will consist of an initial written component, followed by an oral examination; the examinations will cover three subject areas to be discussed between the student and his or her committee and specified in the “contract” for the individual student.
A dissertation.
Fieldwork as required by the dissertation. It is expected that most dissertations will require either archaeological fieldwork or research in archives and museums abroad.
Teaching experience: a minimum of two semesters, of which it is expected that one will be, by agreement, a course taught by a disciplinary department and the other a team-taught interdisciplinary course, usually an undergraduate seminar. As far as possible, these courses will be team-taught with a faculty member. The team-teaching will be implemented with ISAW faculty and faculty in other Schools and Institutes at NYU.

The minimum time to degree will be three years, of which a minimum of two years must be spent in residence at ISAW; one year of previous advanced study (with minimum of 18 credit hours and maximum of 30) may be credited toward this minimum. The total length of the course of study will depend on individual factors like needed fieldwork; the normal length is anticipated to be six years. The M.Phil. degree will be awarded at the completion of all requirements for the doctorate except the dissertation.

Admissions and Financial Aid

ISAW plans to admit approximately four doctoral students each year. Applicants should already have acquired a solid preparation sufficient for research in at least one of the disciplines or geographical areas represented in the Institute. This may be a Master’s or its equivalent in a relevant subject, but students with sufficiently strong preparation will be admitted directly from the B.A. Prospective students should also have mastered at least two foreign languages relevant to the student’s program.

The application process uses the standard NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science on-line admissions system.

All students admitted will be offered fellowships covering tuition, fees, and a twelve-month stipend, which in 2010-11 is about $33,000. Fellowship packages will be for five years, with the possibility of a sixth year of funding where warranted. Where time to degree extends past the period that the Institute can fund, or for extended fieldwork, students will need to seek outside funding.