This panel integrates innovative research methodologies and teaching practices to share pedagogical approaches to the teaching of ancient history. The purpose of this panel is to support a community of teachers at the secondary, college, and university levels in the teaching of ancient history. Each presentation advocates student engagement and development, source analysis and critical thinking, reading and writing literacies, and leadership and collaborative opportunities for students in the study of antiquity. This panel offers a more diverse and forward-thinking approach to lessons in the classroom. The presentations will demonstrate recent efforts to modernize the study of antiquity through flipped classroom, student driven learning initiatives and lessons. They will illustrate to teachers, who perhaps do not have a strong background in ancient history, how to challenge stale assumptions and develop strong argumentative principles that seek to meet students where they are in the classroom and help them achieve their intellectual and educational goals.

Each presentation focuses on broadening modern perspectives on the history of antiquity and works to challenge traditional arguments and understandings of the ancient world to underscore the need for more global perspectives in the teaching of antiquity. The panel will help others re-evaluate the cultural and geopolitical interactions of a diverse array of peoples in antiquity. It is increasingly worthwhile to demonstrate to students and other historians how to approach the evolving and diversifying pedagogy of antiquity. In the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration, the panel will include a medievalist to address these ideas about the study of antiquity from more global and medievalist perspectives. This will allow the panel also to discuss ancient and medieval boundaries and how to navigate such modern barriers in a way that encourages students to question received wisdoms (for example, antiquity good; medieval bad!) and periodization. Such a dialogue is made even more important, as antiquity is often leveraged by alt-right and antidemocratic advocates and groups in Europe and North America in clashes over cultural legitimacy and superiority and concepts of racism.

On this panel, four speakers will offer a brief in-class teaching exercise to treat different subjects and areas of ancient history and to create a discussion of pedagogical developments in the field. These exercises will be of value to specialists and non-specialists alike, reaching students and instructors. The panel promotes the further integration of these ideas into the broader historical discipline. The topics include challenging the dichotomy between the East and West; integrating Parthian coinage as a valuable internal source; highlighting agency and resistance in ancient enslavement; and exploring Roman and early medieval mobility. The presentations will make extensive use of archaeological materials and documentary sources, many of which are new or still poorly understood; other insights will come from more familiar passages in Greco-Roman literature that are reinterpreted from novel vantage points. Collectively, the speakers will offer new ways to approach the teaching of ancient history, challenging the notion that Greek and Roman norms must be the starting point for investigation of the topic.