Requirements

In accordance with its interdepartmental and interdisciplinary character, IPCAA both allows and encourages maximum flexibility in a student’s choice of courses. The faculty associated with the Program offer a broad and diverse range of courses which are designed to familiarize the student with the major areas, subfields, and methodologies within our discipline, as well as to provide a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

To nurture common and complementary intellectual interests within the broad field of ancient Mediterranean archaeology, and to introduce students to the resources of the University, including members of the faculty both within and outside IPCAA, we offer a Proseminar each Fall Term. This is a required course, for one credit-hour, for every incoming student (even those with a master's degree from another institution).

During their program career, students must take a minimum of five three-credit graduate courses in art and archaeology. In addition, students must enroll in Theoretical Approaches to the Art and Archaeology of the Ancient World offered by Classical Studies every two years. These courses will also assist students in preparing for their Qualifying Examinations, although considerable additional preparation will also be required.  Students must also take at least one graduate-level course in Ancient History, i.e., a 600-level course such as History 630. This is intended to introduce students to the methodologies of ancient historians and to acquaint them with the use of various types of historical sources. The IPCAA Director and individual student mentors (see below) will be available to advise students on their course selection.

Course requirements are normally completed during the first three years in the Program, the regular course load being four courses per term (or three in terms when a student is teaching). In consultation with the Director, it may be considered appropriate for an individual to take less than a full course load of four courses for full-time students and less than three for GSIs in a given term.Summers are reserved for independent study, archaeological fieldwork, museum internships, or other relevant professional experience.

What courses do we offer? We could simply list here the titles of courses “on the books” in the various departments that provide teaching in relevant areas (e.g. Classical Art & Archaeology); but not all of these are regularly offered. So it is far more instructive to see what courses current IPCAA students have actually taken — an astonishingly rich and diverse list of more than 175 courses! Please scroll down to view this list, which is organized by department.

AAPTIS (Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, and Islamic Studies)
101 Elementary Modern Standard Arabic, I
151 Elementary Turkish, I
152 Elementary Turkish, II

ACABS (Ancient Civilizations and Biblical Studies)
474 Archaeology of Nubia
513 Ancient Mesopotamia
521 Coptic, I
522 Coptic, II
587 Selected Topics in Ancient Egyptian History and Culture
681 Ancient Egyptian History
686 Seminar in Egyptian Archaeology

AnthrArch (Anthropological Archaeology)
480 Practica in Archaeological Research Techniques
482 Topics in Anthropological Archaeology
483 Near Eastern Prehistory
581 Archaeology I
582 Archaeology II
593 Archaeological Systematics
680 Old World Regional Archaeology
681 Material Culture
683 Topics in Archaeology
691 Settlement Systems in Pre-Industrial Societies
692 Studies in the Origin of the State
693 Archaeological Research Design
694 Analytic Methods in Archaeological Research

AnthrBio (Biological Anthropology)
570 Biological Anthropology: An Overview

AnthrCul (Sociocultural Anthropology)
526 Traditions of Ethnology I
527 Traditions of Ethnology II
545 Image-Based Ethnography
576 Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology

ClArch (Classical Archaeology)
422 Etruscan Art and Archaeology (= HistArt 422)
423 Roman Campania  (= HistArt 423)
424 Archaeology of the Roman Provinces  (= HistArt 424)
425 Hellenistic and Republican Roman Architecture
426 Roman Imperial Architecture
433 Greek Sculpture  (= HistArt 433)
435 The Art and Archaeology of Asia Minor  (= HistArt 435)
436 Hellenistic and Roman Architecture  (= HistArt 436)
439 Greek Vase Painting  (= HistArt 439)
440 Cities and Sanctuaries of Classical Greece  (= HistArt 440)
443 The Art and Archaeology of Greek Colonization  (= HistArt 443)
475 Archaeology, Identity, and Nationalism in the Balkans and Europe
481 Art of Ancient Iran  (= HistArt 481)
515 The Archaeology of the Roman Economy  (= HistArt 515)
520 Early Rome and Her Neighbors
534 Ancient Painting  (= HistArt 534)
536 Hellenistic and Roman Sculpture  (= HistArt 536)
600 Proseminar in Classical Archaeology
815 Hellenistic Cities of the Near East  (= HistArt 815)
820 Approaches to Archaeological Field Survey  (= HistArt 820)
828 Ceramic Analysis and Chronology
832 Archaeology of Ionia
841 Topography of Rome  (= HistArt 841)
842 Topography of Athens  (= HistArt 842)
843 Space and Place in the Graeco-Roman World (Archaeology of the Black Sea)
844 Theoretical Issues in Archaeology (= HistArt 844)
855 Problems in Roman Archaeology (Greek Cities of Roman Asia; Cities of Asia Minor in Late Antiquity) (= HistArt 855)
860 Conceptualizing Empire

ClCiv (Classical Civilization)
456 Egypt after the Pharaohs

ClLing (Classical Linguistics)
635 Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin

French
113 Accelerated Reading in French

German
111 First Special Reading Course
112 Second Special Reading Course

Greek
401 Greek Prose
402 Greek Drama
435 Fifth-Century Prose
471 Imperial Greek
473 Advanced Koine
501 Special Reading Course in Greek
506 Advanced Greek Composition
507 Second Year Greek I
508 Second Year Greek II
511 Hesiod and Hymns
515 Pindar and Bacchylides
560 Hellenistic Poetry
591 History of Greek Literature, Homer to Sophocles
592 History of Greek Literature, Euripides to the Romances
608 Greek Epigraphy
636 Palaeography & Textual Criticism
637 Introduction to the Language and Interpretation of Papyri
638 Paleography of Papyri
804 Early Historiography
810 Kallimachos and Theokritos
820 Ethnicity and Culture in Greco-Roman Egypt

History
400 Problems in Greek History I
600 Understanding Records and Archives
630 Introduction to Greek and Roman Studies
631 Greek Studies I
633 Studies in Roman History I
698 Topics in History
701 Seminar in Ancient History I
796 Topics in History

HistArt (History of Art; for courses crosslisted with Classical Archaeology, see see also ClArch)
613 Museum Research
615 First Year Graduate Seminar
617 Visual Valence
642 Problems in Byzantine Art
646 Problems in Medieval Art
689 Special Topics in History of Art
771 Problems in Modern Art
822 Problems in the Art of the Persian Empire
853 Problems in Etruscan Art and Archaeology

Italian
103 Accelerated Italian
205 Italian Conversation for Non-concentrators

Latin
401 Republican Prose
402 Imperial Prose
403 Elementary Latin Composition
409 Augustan Poetry
410 Poetry of the Republic or Later Empire
440 Vergil, Bucolics and Georgics
505 Intermediate Latin
506 Advanced Latin Composition
514 Tacitus, Annals
515 Sallust
591 History of Roman Literature, Beginnings to Cicero
592 History of Roman Literature, Vergil to Ausonius
606 Latin Inscriptions
642 Introduction to Roman Law
860 Ancient Religion
800 Plautus

ModGreek (Modern Greek)
501 Elementary Modern Greek

MSP (Museum Studies Program)
601 Museum Proseminar I
602 Museum Proseminar II
609 Museum Practicum

NRE (Natural Resources and the Environment)
531 Principles of Geographic Information Systems
538 Natural Resources Statistics

Stats (Statistics)
412 Introduction to Probability and Statistics

All University of Michigan students must register for each fall and winter semester from matriculation to degree completion, unless on an approved Leave of Absence or with Extramural Study status. Students who do not register will be presumed to have withdrawn and will be discontinued from the program. Once discontinued, students may reapply to the program by submitting the proper request and supporting documents to the IPCAA office no later than April 1st. Their reinstatement would begin the following Fall term.

More information is available in the IPCAA Handbook.

Students are required to demonstrate reading knowledge of two ancient languages (one of which must be ancient Greek or Latin) and two modern languages most relevant to their research (such as German, French, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, modern Greek, or other languages).

Competence in ancient Greek and Latin is determined by three-hour translation examinations in each language. Students will be tested only on passages drawn from the IPCAA ancient Greek and Latin reading lists. The use of dictionaries is permitted. Students may also opt to fulfill one or both ancient language requirement by coursework: by passing an upper level undergraduate or graduate ancient Greek or Latin reading course (higher than LAT 410 or GREEK 410) with a minimum grade of B or better. The intent of the ancient language requirement is that students reach a professional level of competence enabling them to read, with accuracy, untranslated texts for research purposes.

Competence in modern langauges is determined by two-hour translation examinations in each language. Students will be tested on passages drawn from the scholarly literature on Classical art and archaeology. The use of dictionaries is permitted. Both modern language requirements must be fulfilled by examination. The purpose of the modern language requirement is to ensure that students have full access to scholarship in the other major academic languages besides English.

Examples of recent examinations in all the languages may be requested from the IPCAA office.

Students are advised to take at least one language course or examination each semester until their language requirements are fulfilled. Students must fufil at least one ancient language requirement and pass a modern language examminaiton before they can be advanced to candidacy.  All remaining language requirements must be met before the end of a student's fifth year.

For full details of these examinations, including the works on the ancient Greek and Latin Reading lists, consult the IPCAA Handbook.

All IPCAA students are required to take an ancient history exam at the end of their first year. This exam covers both Greek and Roman history and is administered to all graduate students in both IPCAA and Classical Studies. The exam lasts 4 hours, and includes both identification and essay sections. All IPCAA students must pass the ancient history exam before taking their IPCAA Qualifying Exams at the end of their second year. The reading list and the lists of terms and names on which the identification section of the exam is based is available on the Classics Department website, under the rubric: Ancient History Exam.

The performance of each student who enters the Program is evaluated by the entire Program Committee after three semesters of full-time enrollment. No student may proceed further on work for the Ph.D. without a favorable evaluation. Before evaluation by the Committee takes place, each professor with whom a student has worked is asked to evaluate his or her academic performance and capabilities as a Ph.D. candidate in the professor's field. A grade average of B+ is regarded as a minimum.

More information is available in the IPCAA Handbook.

Knowledge of Classical Archaeology is tested in two rather different sets of examinations: the Qualifying Exams (normally taken towards the end of the second year) and the Preliminary exams (before the end of the third year). Students need to pass these exams in order to achieve Candidacy and move on to dissertation research.

The Qualifying Exams

The qualifying examinations are designed to test basic knowledge of the major sites, monuments, and scholarly trends in Aegean and Greek Art and Archaeology and Early Italian and Roman Art and Archaeology. The scope of these examinations is very broad, with the intention of guaranteeing that students attain a minimum level of information on which to base serious work at an early point in their graduate careers. Accordingly, students normally take the examinations at the end of their second year. To help prepare, students may enroll in graduate sections of the introductory surveys of Greek Art and Archaeology (CA 221) and Roman Art and Archaeology (CA 222).

The examinations will consist of two parts administered over two or three days: slide and term identification, and essay questions. The examinations are given at the end of the second year on days agreed between the Director and those students taking the exams.  The basic format of the exams is as follows:

Part 1: Slide and term identification (2 hours)

Slide Identification: (60 minutes) Students will be shown 10 slides in each of the three major fields (20 in total). All slides must be identified.

Term identification: (60 minutes) For each of the two major fields, students will be given 15 words or phrases, of which they will be required to identify and comment on 10. The words or phrases may include (but are not limited to) technical terminology and the names of objects, buildings, people, or places.

Part 2: Essay examinations (6 hours)

Part 2 consists of 3-hour exams in both major fields. Each field-exam will be divided into two sections.

Section 1: short essays (2 hours). Students will be asked to answer four essay questions out of a choice of six.

Section 2: long essay (1 hour). Students will be required to answer one question out of a choice of two.

Preparation for the Qualifying examinations:

Students will be provided with two reading lists, one for each of the major fields. These reading lists are meant as study-guides, reflecting to some degree the strengths of the IPCAA faculty and resources. They are limited to scholarship available in English. For each field, they combine general surveys and handbooks, seminal studies and works by leading scholars, and selected examples of current research. Where appropriate, the reading lists indicate which sections or chapters of longer works are considered most important. Although the reading lists include many major works and themes in the scholarship of the ancient Mediterranean, they are not exhaustive, and exam questions will not usually be based around summarizing any one particular book or article. Rather, the lists are meant to help students begin the process of recognizing gaps in their training so that they can more effectively increase their knowledge in those areas to attain a broad understanding of the field.

In addition, samples of examination questions and slide lists from recent Qualifying Exams are available for inspection on request from the IPCAA office.

The Preliminary Exams

The final set of exams in the Program consists of two Preliminary Examinations in Classical Art and Archaeology, taken only after all coursework and language requirements have been satisfied and the Qualifying Exams have been passed. The two 3-hour written exams, on topics chosen by the student, are intended to test ability in analyzing and synthesizing specific related bodies of archaeological material and in controlling relevant methodologies and bibliographies in depth.

An important function of these exams is to ease the often difficult transition from organized course work to independent dissertation research; indeed, preparation for them will normally constitute a major step in formulation of ideas for the Dissertation. Accordingly, students are urged to choose Preliminary exam topics in complementary areas and methodologies useful to their own research interests.

For these exams, the student must enlist a chair and form a Prelim committee by the beginning of the term following passage of the Qualifying Examinations.  After consulting with all the members of the committee, the student should then write two proposals  (one for each exam, usually 3-5 pages per proposal in length, not including bibliography) for submission to the committee by the end of the first month of the term (Sept. 30 for fall term, Jan. 31 for winter).  If the Prelim Committee accepts the proposals, they will then be forwarded it to the Executive Committee of IPCAA for final approval at its next scheduled meeting.  If the Prelim Committee thinks the proposals need revisions, the student should complete these in a timely manner and resubmit to the Prelim Committee.