Courses for ERASMUS students (course group defined by Faculty of History)

• Seminar - 10 hours

(in Polish) The course focuses on the role of religious imaginations and practices in ancient urbanism and such ‘urbanity’. How did religious rituals, festivals, and discourses make life bearable or enjoyable? How could people learn to deal with interpersonal relationships and the problems of subsistence or even affluence under such conditions? How did they experience the modes and frequency of encounters and make sense of it? Drawing on texts from the city of Rome, the course will try to reconstruct such experiences and strategies. By reading not just small particularly relevant passages but entire literary units, analysis will also address the questions of the role and position of the authors as observers and participants in urban discourse: How were these very texts engaged in the production of specific forms of urbanity and urban ethos? Whenever possible, the discussion will also allow to reflect on contemporary urban life in the light of ancient institutions and voices.

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Lecture - 30 hours

• Lecture - 30 hours

This lecture explores the Early Modern history of the Black Sea as a “historical meso-region,” following scholars like Braudel, Stoianovich, and Özveren. It examines how the Black Sea served as a crossroads of diplomacy, trade, and cultural exchange among major powers (Ottoman, Russian, Polish-Lithuanian, Swedish) and smaller entities (Circassians, Cossacks, Tatars, Moldavians, Wallachians). It highlights cross-border patronage networks that shaped regional policies and investigates social and ethnic relations—especially interactions between nobles, Jewish, Greek, and Armenian merchants, and serfs. Drawing on my ongoing archival research, the lecture reveals how political, social, and religious dynamics evolved from the 16th to the 18th century.

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

The present course focuses on various forms of ancient Greek democracies from the very beginning of the concept to its gradual evaporation in the high Hellenistic period. It does not omit the best known Athenian example of the Classical period. Still, the ambition of this class is to show alternative forms of democracy, and especially of democracies that possibly predated Cleisthenes’ reform at Athens. Towards the end of the semester, the particular focus of the course will be on the changing values (especially ones related to citizens’ rights) in the new enlarged and greatly entangled Greek world of the Hellenistic period. It will show how democracies evolved in the era of globalization and cosmopolitanism, and how finally they disappeared as self-conscious societies.

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

State-of-the art course on the most important aspects of imperial governance in the Persian Empire.

• Seminar - 15 hours

The course lasts 15 hours (7 in-person sessions, 90 minutes each).

Schedule: Tuesdays, 4:45 – 6:30 p.m.

Dates: March 17 – May 5, 2026.

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

This course offers a critical introduction to the ancient Mediterranean through the lens of cultural history. Covering Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, it examines how culture functioned as a framework for organising societies and expressing human experience. Students explore key aspects of ancient life—belief, politics, art, technology, and identity—while engaging with the principles of cultural studies and historiography.

Lectures and seminars combine historical, archaeological, and literary perspectives, providing the analytical tools to interpret classical sources within their social and cultural contexts. Topics include state formation, writing systems, philosophy, religion and death, political culture, and the materiality of ancient societies.

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Classes - 30 hours

• Classes - 30 hours

The Early Modern travel accounts are a treasure trove of information on both the traveler himself/herself and the place he/she visited. Through the study of this genre of sources we are able to comprehend the conditions under which people traveled in early modern Europe, the reasons why they left home, and how they were changed by the experience. Our course would hopefully bring us closer to understanding the relationships the travelers formed on their journeys and their encounters with local societies. At the heart of this course, we will analyze a wide variety of accounts of the individuals, who travelled to and from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Early Modern Period. The primary sources analyzed during this course dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

• Seminar - 30 hours

Introduction of historians to the methodics of work with archaeological sources