On-campus class followed by three weeks in Italy
Director: Professor Rebecca Ammerman, Department of Classics
On-campus course: Spring 2010
Tentative travel dates: May 19 - June 6, 2010
Course credit: One credit
Prerequisites: See below
Private and public life in ancient Roman forms the focus of this course. Through study of the material culture of Rome and the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the course investigates what life was like for men, women, and children of every socio-economic class. From the grandiose villas and urban palaces of the emperors to the modest quarters of slaves, students explore at first hand the settings of the private lives of individuals.
Attention is also given to the public urban spaces not only of the capital city of the Empire but also of the agricultural and seaside towns covered by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The course will trace the history of the city of Rome, with all of its political, economic, social and religious institutions, from its origins in the 8th c. BC to the end of the Roman Empire in the 4th c. AD.
Emphasis will be placed on the Etruscanized city of the Archaic period, the Rome of Julius Caesar and Augustus in the 1st c. BC, and that of the high Empire in the 2nd c. AD. The course will also help students place such literary works as Virgil's Aeneid and the histories of Livy and Tacitus within their broader contexts. The on-site component of the course in May and June introduces students to the physical spaces where Roman urban life developed and made its fundamental contribution to western civilization.
The proposed extended study places the language and literature within its broader historical and cultural context. During the on-campus component of the course, students will read and discuss many of the ancient written sources that have a bearing on the subject of private and public lives of Romans. Readings will include selections from numerous ancient sources including Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, Juvenal, Petronius, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius. During the on-site component of the course, students will focus on the material culture as recovered by archaeologists primarily at Rome, but also at sites covered by the eruption of Vesuvius.
Students will become directly acquainted with several types of evidence:
(a) public physical spaces (i.e. the fora, or market places and
civic centers, sanctuaries, baths, theaters, and sporting arenas),
(b) public and private architectural monuments (i.e. the columns and arches
recording the military conquests of the emperors, honorific statues, and tombs),
(c) private homes and slave quarters (Imperial palaces and villas, middle
class homes and gardens, apartment blocks, brothels)
(d) objects (i.e. household furnishings, kitchenwares, tools, jewelry).
An additional component that is planned for the on-site portion of the course is to retrace the mythical footsteps of Aeneas along the Tyrrhenian coast from Lavinium (the city he founded in Latium) to Cumae (where he visited the Sibyl who was his guide to the underworld).
Course format
The course begins on-campus in the spring 2010 term with 14 weekly seminars of two-hour sessions each, followed after graduation by three weeks on-site in Rome and Pompeii. The on-campus seminars provide students with historical background on the development of the varied institutions of ancient Rome. Students will be examined on this material. Each student selects a specific topic having to do with a public monument or space to research and present individually as a seminar report on-site in Italy. They write a formal research paper on this topic.
In order to complete their research and prepare their final papers, students are encouraged to record visually through sketches or photographically the varied types of material culture (sites, monuments, and objects) that inform their understanding of their specific research project. With regard to the private lives of the Romans, special group projects on different types of households and their immediate neighborhoods are also conducted on site at Pompeii.
Prerequisites
The course is open only to students who have completed Latin 121 and 122 or a higher-level language course in Latin. It provides a much-needed, interdisciplinary balance to the education of students who, on-campus, tend to concentrate on mastering the intricacies of ancient Latin language and the literary styles of individual authors.
Cost estimate for Extended Study to Rome/Pompeii
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