The material may be ancient, but the teaching is anything but.
In the Tulane School of Arts Department of Classical Studies, considering the best ways in which today’s students engage with the fascinations of the ancient world is of the utmost importance.
“I am always aware of the ways students’ modes of learning change with time,” says Emilia Oddo, an associate professor of Greek Archeology, whose course offerings this semester included Greek Religion (CLAS 2320) and The Aegean Bronze Age (CLAS 3160). “Especially in the AI era, where critical thinking is suffering the most, the goal of my courses is not acquiring notions but rather reasoning through data.”
For Oddo, this recently meant moving beyond lectures and into something closer to lived experience. In her courses, students don’t memorize facts; they work like archaeologists, piecing together meaning from fragments.
Freshman Loren Smith (SLA ’29) found Oddo’s Greek Religion class to be anything but traditional. “Instead of memorizing dates or being quizzed about the names of Olympian gods, the whole course revolves around interpretation,” she remarks.
Oddo’s approach is part of a broader shift across higher education: as students look for more from in-person learning, the classroom is becoming a space for engagement rather than information delivery. In Classical Studies, that shift shows up as debate, creative interpretation, and hands-on inquiry — while strengthening connections between the ancient and modern worlds.
In Assistant Professor Sara Panteri’s Ancient Science course (CLAS 3260), students step outside to identify constellations — phone apps in hand — before tracing their myths back to Eratosthenes. The final project blends mythology, modern astrology, and creative interpretation. The aim is both intellectual and elemental: to reconnect students with the stars themselves. “We tend to take them for granted,” says Panteri.
In The Aegean Bronze Age, students scrutinize and sort photos of ancient pottery, determining aspects that reveal the age, use, and location of each piece. And in May, experiential learning goes global as Oddo leads students through southern Greece for a two-week course on architecture, art, and urban life — shaping knowledge through direct engagement with the country’s most important archaeological sites.
Allison Emmerson, an associate professor and Roman archeologist, includes her students directly in the cutting-edge research she conducts in the field. This summer, she will once again bring student excavators with her to Pompeii, part of an ongoing archeological investigation along the outskirts of the Roman city.
A Philosophy and Political Science major, Smith enrolled in Oddo’s Greek Religion course simply to explore her interests. “I saw it as an opportunity to learn something new just for the sake of learning,” she says.
“Professor Oddo made it clear from the start that we weren’t hunting for a single ‘correct’ answer,” she continues. “We were learning how to think with the fragments the ancient world of Greece left behind.”
That approach extends to the biggest questions. Why did ancient Athenians preserve remnants of the Persian Wars at the gates of the Acropolis in Athens? Smith and her classmates compared the act to modern memorials, considering whether the ruins functioned as sites of remembrance, much like the voids left at the former World Trade Center.
“What makes the class so exciting is the constant reminder that no one — classical historians included — actually knows for certain what happened in the ancient Grecian period,” says Smith. “But by identifying patterns that exist in both worlds and remembering that very little is done without purpose or intention, we can better understand the reasoning behind ancient decisions.”
The material itself is often incomplete, sometimes contradictory, and always open to interpretation. Smith recalls one debate around xenia — the sacred act of hospitality prevalent in The Odyssey. Was xenia a religious obligation, social expectation, or part of an individual moral code? Backed by evidence and reasoning, students debated the answer, ultimately landing on a more complicated conclusion: all of the above.
“This is the kind of complexity that we were often left to discuss in this course,” says Smith.
For Panteri, asking students to engage with constellations still studied today helps bridge ancient and modern ways of knowing. The thousands-year-old myths are just one narrative layer to the same constellations that continue to fascinate modern astronomers. Proof that even in the age of instant answers, mystery and wonder still abound — whether in the night sky, or the ruins of the past.