Courses of Study 2011-2012 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
Courses of Study 2011-2012 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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ARTH 4233 - Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology

(crosslisted)
(also CLASS 4746 ) # (HA-AS)
Fall, spring. 4 credits.

Co-meets with ARTH 6233 , CLASS 7746 )

A. Alexandridis.

Topic for fall 2011 Greek and Roman Portraiture
Greek culture is often credited with investing the individual, while the origins of “veristic portraiture” are traditionally situated within Roman art. But what does it mean to represent an individual? Are portraiture and individuality related? How far do both rely on notions of naturalism, realism or verism? Can these categories help to understand the (self-) representation of a person? This seminar will look at different Greek and Roman ideas about a “likeness” and how they depend on respective concepts to the body. We will discuss portraits in relation to physiognomic discourses of their time, to social and political status, gender, age and ethnicity; in addition, we will focus on various aspects of the materiality of likeness, i.e what they were made of, how they were made and disseminated and in which contexts they were displayed.
Topic for Spring 2012: City of Images”: Problems in the Interpretation of Greek Vase Painting
Greek vase painting is one of our main sources of evidence for ancient Greek culture. Over 25 years after the publication of “La cité des images “, a path braking volume on imagery of Greek, mostly Athenian, vase painting, this seminar seeks a re-assessment of the issues at stake. Scholars are still deeply divided when it comes to determine the images’ documentary value. How close is their relationship to ancient lived reality? Are they pure fantasies? How far is an image’s content tied to the function of the vessel it adorns? How far, if at all, is it geared towards a specific group of customers defined by gender or ethnicity? How far has the modern idea of “ancient Greece” on the one hand, and the art market on the other shaped scholarship?
We will discuss different methodological approaches from so-called “art historical” (e.g. stylistic analysis, iconography and iconology, structuralism) to so-called “scientific” (e.g. statistics, clay analysis) ones and see how they simultaneously assume and determine certain parameters of scholarly investigation. Specific emphasis will be on highly debated themes such as narrative strategies and literacy; myth vs. ritual; “daily life”; sexuality, nudity and the body; the banquet; theater; “panhellenic” vs. local imagery (esp. in South Italy); Athenian vases outside Attica (Etruria, Black Sea); oriental imagery on Greek vases.



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