Teaching Paradigms: Classical Archaeology Courses at German-Speaking Universities in the 21st Century

Teaching is a powerful indicator of the state of an academic discipline. It preserves what is considered a core of knowledge and intellectual traditions, it is sensitive to current trends and experiments, and it shapes future researchers, practitioners, and aficionados outside academia. In cooperation with the ACDH-CH (Vienna) and the “Arbeitsstelle Kleine Fächer” (Mainz), the project analyses courses in Classical Archaeology and related disciplines taught at German, Austrian and German-speaking Swiss universities since the turn of the millennium. Based on a dataset of more than 16,000 courses from three case-study periods, the project examines the landscape of academic teaching in German-speaking Classical Archaeology and its changes and continuities with a data-driven empirical approach. It analyses which sub-disciplines and fields are dominant in teaching and which are subsidiary or absent; which types and formats of courses are offered and in what proportions; which topics, materials and approaches are being taught and which are lacking; and how cooperation or convergence within Classics or with other archaeological disciplines in joint BA/MA programmes has affected teaching. More generally, the project explores how German-speaking Classical Archaeology has negotiated its disciplinary identity within Classics or archaeology more broadly, between the humanities and the sciences, and between long-standing research traditions of the discipline, such as its art-historical pedigree, and new visions of it, e.g., as part of Material Culture Studies or Mediterranean Archaeology.

Univ.-Ass. Mag. Mag. Dr. Matthias Hoernes
T:++43 1 4277 40605
E: Matthias.Hoernes@univie.ac.at
Room A1.17