CES News

By Clarence Dodge An environmental problem “threatens to tear Nigeria apart,” according to popular media outlets like the Telegraph (Blomfield: 2018). Local farmers in the Middle Belt region (a belt region stretching across Central Nigeria forming a transition zone between Northern and Southern Nigeria) have been engaging in armed conflict with pastoral herders migrating south from an expansive semi-arid area known as the Sahel.

By Parthiban Muniandy and Valeria Bonatti In 2019, Sarah Lawrence faculty Parthiban Muniandy led a group of undergraduate students from Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, and Bard colleges on an intensive field-research study abroad trip to Malaysia.

By Majdolene Dajani and Erhan Tamur The modern discipline of Ancient Western Asian art and archaeology began as a colonial enterprise in the mid-nineteenth century. The European, American, and Ottoman expeditions in modern-day Iraq and Syria brought to light the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria.

By Alain Duplouy The objective of this graduate seminar is to bring a historiographical dimension to the training of archaeology students, by providing them with the keys to various readings of ancient Greek societies and their material culture and the way these have been constantly renewed since the nineteenth century.

By Maria Dimitropoulos and Roberto C. Ferrari The initiative Parallel Heritages: Humanities in Action, led by professors Holger Klein (Columbia University in the City of New York) and Alain Duplouy (Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne), explores the history, development, and present state of University collections of classical antiquities at, respectively, Columbia University in New York and the Panthéon-Sorbonne 1 in Paris.

By Monica Bulger In the storerooms beneath Columbia University’s Avery and Fine Arts Library, some 650 Greek pottery fragments dating from the Early Bronze Age to the Classical Period are sorted into individually labeled bags in sturdy trays.

By Joseph Woldman An antefix discreetly rests face-down on a storage shelf in Columbia University’s Art Properties collection. The object is readily identifiable by its terminal imbrex, or cover-tile, which remains attached to the decorative roof tile.

Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros The drawback of European studies, but also politics and international relations, is that we teach a moving target. You may teach something one day and the next day it has completely changed.