Draw connections between archaeology, history, languages, literature, and religions of ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Rome in the Bachelor of Arts in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies (AMNE).
In the BA major, minor, and honours in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, you get to tailor your program based on your unique interests and goals.
Interested in literature? With a BA in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, formerly known as Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies (CNERS), you can study biblical, Greek, Roman and Near Eastern literature all at once, increasing the breadth and depth of your knowledge of textual and literary analysis. Or, if you’re more interested in material culture and have your sights on a career in archaeology, you can take a range of courses in the art and architecture of the entire ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. Perhaps your interests cover language, art, history, and religion: you have the opportunity to design a program that combines all of these and more.
Program learning outcomes
Students who complete our program will acquire:
Knowledgeable about the diverse peoples, cultures, literature, societies, and religions in the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East.
You will be prepared to pursue graduate degrees in a range of fields (including law, classics, history, education, archaeology, museum studies, and religious studies) or to enter careers that privilege analysis from multiple perspectives (e.g., consulting, policy analysis, business analytics, program development, project management, politics, public relations, journalism, marketing, human resources, investigation, entrepreneurship). You will be able to:
- Appreciate, combine, and synthesize different perspectives and forms of data (literary, epigraphic, visual, archaeological) to reach nuanced conclusions about historical and social problems
- Explain how literature, sacred texts, images, objects, and architecture can shape society and its ideals
- Recognize gaps in evidence, apply various models/approaches to fitting fragmentary evidence together, and extrapolate from incomplete datasets
- Articulate the value and limitations of different methods and perspectives (literary, historical, archaeological) to create new knowledge and understanding from ancient materials
- Recognize and better define problems by posing questions shaped by this diversity of approaches, and then creatively solve those problems by applying appropriately chosen analytical tools
Skilled intercultural communicators who build on their language training and experience working across diverse but intertwined traditions, able to:
- Recognize the ways that contexts can weigh communicative media with changing meanings, enabling intercultural dialogue
- Compose, write, and speak persuasive analysis in forms accessible to a variety of audiences
- Articulate and evaluate the continued relevance of the ancient world to modernity
- Recognize and challenge how ancient material has been continuously re-appropriated and re-deployed in post-ancient contexts for a range of political, social, and artistic ends
