Core Curriculum

EAA Annual Meeting, Glasgow 2-5 September 2015. "Communicating Archaeology" session co-organized with Kathleen Sheppard and Julia Roberts

ORIGINAL CALL FOR PAPERS: Throughout the discipline’s history, archaeologists have shared knowledge with their scholarly communities through various forms of interaction like publications, conferences, seminars, lectures, and exhibitions. These public events and the responses they provoke constitute an open scientific dialogue indispensable for the community’s accumulation and revision of collective knowledge. A key role in the processes of knowledge production preceding such public events is played by informal clusters or networks of scholars: dynamic systems of exchange loosely constituted by individuals and groups who generate and communicate knowledge and ideas both within the system and with external actors and communities.This session problematizes knowledge production and mediation in archaeology over the last 150 years, and critically examines how various informal modes of exchange between individuals and groups affect the trajectories of their public ideas about material culture and past civilizations. The papers focus on how archaeologists who have created and continue to create knowledge within their respective fields both influence and are inspired by the networks in which they operate through the more informal and private but significant exchanges that take place when they meet and talk to each other, in person or through correspondence. As a unit, the papers argue that the informal character of these gatherings inspired the generation of scientific ideas and thus affected the dynamic process of knowledge production in other but equally significant ways than knowledge produced within more formally restrained contexts. The presenters’ varying viewpoints will allow for a more holistic exploration of the instrumentality of informal clusters of actors in the production and mediation of data.

To combat high dropout rates and low motivation for online courses, and thanks to a generous eFellows grant from Missouri S&T, we have developed a self-paced, gamified course using an online educational program called 3dgamelab. Our goal for the Fall 2014 semester was to move a well-liked history of science course at Missouri S&T from a face-to-face lecture and discussion to an online format, for the purposes of long-distance teaching and learning.  According to online education experts Joey Lee and Jessica Hammer, “gamification...attempts to harness the motivational power of games and apply it to real-world problems,” such as the motivational and engagement problems encountered by online courses (Lee and Hammer 2011, 1).  In order to deal with the problems of expectations between students and instructors in motivation for online courses, Lee and Hammer propose adding options such as level completion badges, leader boards, activity experience points (XP), and more as game components.  We proposed a similar model.  Within 3dgamelab, we allowed students a “choose-your-own-adventure” format. Each student worked their way through a number of different topic options for the course, earning experience points and “leveling-up” on their way to various thresholds tied to traditional letter grades. Clear tasks and immediate rewards further contributed to a transparent motivational system as compared to traditional grading (Ibid., 3).

The history of archaeology constitutes an important and steadily growing field of study. Classical archaeology or the study of the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean has a long tradition to build on, but it is only in recent decades that this long history has been the subject of more systematic critical investigation and contextual assessment that reach beyond the conventional stories of great men and their discoveries. Significant aspects and implications of the discipline are often neglected or overlooked because they are beyond the scope of these traditional histories, many of which are of course fine pieces of scholarship that have managed to reach an extraordinarily wide popular audience. This two-day conference will address various problems relating to early 20th-century Mediterranean archaeology, with special focus on the study of Greek, Etruscan and Roman cultures from the Archaic to the late Roman period and including Asia Minor, Egypt, the Near East and other regions that were once part of the Hellenistic world and/or a province of the later Roman empire. We welcome contributions that will contribute to a more balanced or holistic picture of the discipline and its various practices in the first half of the last century, including the postwar years. Proposals are invited for individual papers that deal with any aspects of the discipline (in the broadest sense) covering the period c. 1900-1950. We also welcome proposals for full sessions of 4 related papers. Topics can include, but are not limited to:  the history of excavation and publication projects  histories of individual actors, groups and/or institutions  the problem of so-called " instrumental actors " versus " common " practitioners  histories of collecting and collections  cultural heritage legislation and management  archaeological societies, congresses and exhibitions  political aspects  archaeological theory and practices  interactions between centre and periphery  wartime archaeology  popular reception To Propose a Paper: Please send a word document, with your name, institution affiliation (or note that you are an independent scholar), contact information, a paper title, and an abstract with 250 words or less. Full session proposals should contain a session abstract (max. 300 words). For proposals for full sessions, please include the titles, abstracts, authors and contact information for all 4 papers. Each paper should be no more than 20 minutes long, with 10 minutes for questions (a total of 30 minutes) Proposals should be sent as word attachments to HARNgroup@googlemail.com before Friday, 22 April 2016. Please make the subject of the email " HARN conference proposal " .

To combat high dropout rates and low motivation for online courses, we gamified a history of science course. To do so, we used an online educational program called 3DGameLab to convert what had been a well-liked face-to-face lecture and discussion course to an online format, for the purposes of long-distance teaching and learning. Within 3DGameLab, we prepared approximately three times as much content as would be taught in a face-to-face class. Clear tasks and immediate rewards in the form of experience points (XP) contributed to a transparent motivational system as compared to traditional grading. In this course, students completed their assignments asynchronously. Sustaining engagement is challenging in this format due to student self-management, but, with the game mode, students could repeat their attempts to pass a quest (a lesson) until they succeed (submit a passable response). The feedback cycle was short, and we found that students tend to persevere in the face of failure wh...

Patrícia Martins Marcos is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. She works at the intersections of histories of medicine, science, race, and religion in the Luso-AfroBrazilian Atlantic. She is an Associate Editor at the History of Anthropology Review, and her work has been supported by, among others, the Huntington Library, the American Philosophical Society, and UCSD’s Black Studies Project. Sarah E. Naramore is an assistant professor at Northwest Missouri State University. Her current research focuses on the development of the American medical profession at the turn of the nineteenth century. She served as co-chair of the Graduate and Early Career Caucus from 2018 to 2020. Myrna Perez Sheldon is Assistant Professor of Gender and American Religion at Ohio University, jointly appointed in two departments: Classics and World Religions and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard in 2014; her dissertation was focused on the public career of the Harvard evolutionary biologist and public intellectual Stephen Jay Gould. Sarah Pickman is a Ph.D. candidate in history of science and medicine at Yale University and a current co-chair (2019–2021) of the HSS Graduate and Early Career Caucus. Her dissertation research examines the material culture of expeditions in the long nineteenth century, with a focus on gear carried by explorers and field scientists. She has a professional background in museum administration. Sarah A. Qidwai is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, where she is working on a dissertation on the history of science and Islam in British India. Her dissertation focuses on the IndianMuslim polymath Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) and situates him within the existing historiography of nineteenthcentury history of science. Kathleen Sheppard is an associate professor at Missouri S&T. Her work centers on the history of Egyptology and women in the professions. She is on the Editorial Board of Lady Science, is the current social media manager of HSS Twitter, and chairs the Technology and Communications Committee. Acknowledgments. The authors would like to acknowledge the organizing committee behind the Futures sessions. The idea to bridge these conversations arose in a meeting between Alexandra Hui, Don Opitz, Sarah Qidwai, and Karen Rader. From there, the chairs of the Graduate and Early Career Caucus and the Women’s Caucus organized Futures II; this included Alix Cooper, Jaipreet Virdi, Sarah Naramore, and Sarah Pickman. We would also like to thank all of the committee organizers and the roundtable discussants. For Futures I: Alexandra Hui, Suman Seth, Projit Mukharji, Emily Rose Merchant, Terrence Keel, Elise Burton, and Sebastian Gil-Riano. For Futures II: Elaine Leong, Matt Shindell, Patricía Martins Marcos, Ayah Nuriddin, and Hui. For Futures III: Qidwai, Kathleen Sheppard, Rader, Gwen Kay, Ahmed Ragab, Joanna Radin, Pablo Gomez, and Opitz. We thank all the contributors who provided feedback on earlier versions of this report.