ARTH 2221 Architecture of Roman Private Life
SPRING 2019
(CLASS 2743/ ARKEO 2743)
A. Alexandridis
T/R 8:40 – 9:55
What was it like to live in the Roman world? What did that world look, taste and smell like? How did Romans raise their families, entertain themselves, understand death, and interact with their government? What were Roman values and how did they differ from our own? This course takes as its subject the everyday lives of individuals and explores those lives using the combined tools of archaeology, architecture and art, as well as some primary source readings. In doing so, it seeks to integrate those monuments into a world of real people, and to use archaeology to narrate a story about ancient lives and life habits. Some of the topics explored will include the Roman house, bathing and hygiene, gardens, agriculture and children.
This course will train your ‘visual literacy,’ manifested in an ability to identify, discuss and compare objects of material culture and to interpret them both as resulting from and actively shaping a broader historical context. You should also demonstrate the ability to conduct more sophisticated analysis of issues central to the course’s concerns – theories and methods of analyzing material and written sources; questioning common notions of status, gender, sexuality, race and slavery, public and private etc. – in essay form, using specific monuments and/or objects as a basis for discussion.
