Spring 2008
GSEM 653: Fractured
Foundations: Empire's Ends and Modernism's Beginnings: The Case of
Vienna 1900 (syllabus)
C. Hertel (History of Art) & I. Meyer (German)
TH 2:00-4:30 pm
Carpenter 17
The interests
of this interdisciplinary seminar are situated at the
juncture of gender, race, nation, and history in narratives of
modernity. Gender and race are deeply embedded in these narratives,
and yet they remain blind spots in the story Western modernity tells
about itself. Gender and race can function as foundational categories
in modern notions of nation precisely because their working mechanisms
remain concealed in the tales and art works modernity fashions to make
sense of itself. The seeming universality of modernist master narratives
is bought at the expense of repressing the particularities upon which
the narratives hinge. We are interested in the points at which this
repression breaks down and where modernity’s story loses its
cohesion. When the smooth façade of grand narratives—presented
in the form of literature, art works, or philosophical or scientific
discourse—begins to crack, the structures used to prop it up
are revealed. Thus, our seminar will focus on Viennese Modernism, a
culture that emerges against the backdrop of a weakened empire whose
fractured state is mirrored in both this culture’s forms and
its contents.
Fall 2007
GSEM 679: Rome and Its Representation (syllabus)
D. Kinney (History of Art) & R. Scott (Classics)
M 4:00-6:00
Carpenter15
An introduction to the topography and monuments of the ancient City, their medieval disappearance or transformation, and their archaeological rediscovery beginning in the 15th century. Discussion of the many modes of representing the (lost or mythical) City in literature, maps, and material and virtual reconstruction. The renowned poet Richard Wilbur (http://slate.com/id/2110115/) will visit with the class in October. Prof. Bernard Frischer (http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2005/05/frischer.html) will also visit the seminar to discuss the "virtual Rome" of which he is a principal author.
Spring
2007
GSEM 652
History & Memory (syllabus)
L. Saltzman (History of Art) and M. Kale (History)
The seminar will begin by establishing the categories
of history and memory, as they have been constituted across the humanistic
disciplines, defining and refining the epistemological and ontological distinctions
between the two. Readings will be drawn first from the writings of Nietzsche
and Freud and then move to the work of Barthes, Caruth, Connerton, Foucault,
Guha, Gundaker, La Capra, Margolit, Nora, Sebald, Todorov, and Yerushalmi.
Once a grounding context is established, the second half of the seminar will
be organized around a set of categories, ranging from the material to the theoretical,
through which we will continue our explorations in history and memory, among
them, the following: trauma, witness, archive, document, evidence, monument,
memorial, relic, trace. It is here that we would each draw specifically on
our own disciplinary formations and call upon students to do the same. The
seminar would, of course, be open to all students in the Graduate Group.
Fall 2006
GSEM 651 Public
Space (syllabus)
J. Wright (Archaeology) and C. Hein (Cities)
Political, economic, religious and cultural forces govern cities. These powers
and their desires translate into the form and function of public spaces.
This interdisciplinary graduate seminar first examines public space from
a theoretical perspective. It will then investigate case studies throughout
history and across the world. Finally, it will concentrate in depth on specific
Greek and modern cities. Students will be develop their special area of interest
in their research projects.
Spring 2006
GSEM 677 Iconography (syllabus)
(R. Hamilton (Classics), Ataç (Archaeology) and D. Kinney (History
of Art)
This seminar explored the post-Panofsky universe of iconography
and semiotics through concentrated case studies in different cultures
and disciplines. Participants will do one or more projects that
test the utility of these methods in their own fields. Professor
Oleg Grabar (Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study) will visit
the seminar twice as respondent to these projects.
Fall 2005
GSEM 679 The Reception
of Classical Literature and Art: A seminar on transmission, reuse,
imitation, translation, and appropriation (syllabus)
J. Gaisser (Classics), D.Cast (History of Art)
Topics considered include: reception theory, imitation theory,
rediscovery of classical art, architecture, and texts, textual
transmission, reuse of ancient works and materials, literary
and artistic imitation of ancient works, and translation of
ancient works into later languages and settings.
Spring 2005
GSEM
678 Birth and Becoming (syllabus)
C. Conybeare (Classics) and H. King (History of Art)
The Western imaginary is preoccupied with death.  According
to dominant philosophical, political, and theological ways
of thinking, death is the endpoint that gives life meaning,
structure, and value. Recent feminist scholarship, however,
has shown that this view of life has its source in long-held
masculinist presuppositions. These scholars have suggested
that we turn instead to birth. How might birth serve as a new
structuring metaphor for living, thinking, and creating? What
is lost, when meaning is seen to originate with endings rather
than beginnings? What changes would arise, were we to privilege "becoming" and
transformation over "being" and identity? What might
an ethics of natality, as opposed to a Heideggerian ethics
of being-towards-death, look like - and what effects might
such an ethic have upon current socio-political thought and
global policy? This course addresses these questions from an
interdisciplinary perspective, drawing upon a wide range of
materials: canonical texts of Western philosophy (Plato), landmark
essays in feminist philosophy and theory (Arendt, Irigaray),
films of the Hollywood Renaissance (Altman), and contemporary
scholarship (Jantzen). No previous classics or film training
required.
Spring 2004
GSEM
650 Delos from the Archaic to the Roman Period
R. Hamilton (Classics) and S. Miller-Collet (Archaeology)
The course will begin with a brief
overview of the island's history and then spend the first half of the
seminar considering the epigraphical and archaeological record of the
site, including student reports on the main areas on the island. The
second half of the seminar will focus on the implications this record
has for our understanding of a variety of topics such as the power of
Apollo, cult practice, religion and politics, public and domestic architecture,
and artifacts of all sorts. We plan to have several guest lecturers,
including William J. Slater (McMaster).
GSEM
679 Gendering the Past (syllabus)
C. Conybeare (Classics), P. Magee (Archaeology)
A theory-driven seminar, this begins with a survey of some
major critical inquiries prompted by attention to questions
of gender, focussing especially on the issues raised in the
1970s across academic disciplines by the question, "What about women?" It
then explores the possibilities of contemporary critical pluralism
in a series of case studies, drawn from the faculty's research.
The seminar is truly cross-disciplinary: each session is led by faculty
from radically different areas of expertise (ancient Near Eastern archaeology
and early Christian literary culture respectively), aiming to test whether
a shared theoretical matrix can bring such disciplines into conversation
with each other. Students participating in the seminar will be expected
to engage in such conversation as well, and to work at applying the questions
raised generally to their own areas of interest.
Spring 2003
GSEM
Rome: Ruin and Recovery (syllabus)
D.Cast (History of Art), D. Kinney (History of Art), R.
Scott (Classics)
This seminar brought together 15 students (including one guest from Temple
University) and three faculty members around Rome as a perduring place
and as a leitmotif in Western thought. Every week brought a lively and
fertile interchange as specialists in different aspects of this long
history shared their expertise. Students devised their research projects
in consultation with the faculty, some selecting topics in the areas
of their future dissertations, others striking out in directions they
had not explored before.
Spring 2002
GSEM 679 Graduate
Group Interdepartmental Seminar in Theory (syllabus)
D. Chamberlain (Classics), S. Levine (History of Art),
J. Wright (Archaeology)
This seminar
explored theory in three
areas representative of the three departments in the graduate group:
texts, material things in context, and images. Each was studied
in four week units.
Participants each led two discussions
on assigned readings, with no more than one in the student's field
of study. Three papers exploring ideas or readings will were
required, two of which were outside the student's discipline.
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