A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Si... more A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Sicily contains the largest collection of mosaics in the Roman world. However, due to accessibility issues (e.g., remote location, weak online presence), the Villa remains nearly unknown in comparison to popular sites like Pompeii, despite its cultural importance. VILLAE, a collaboration between archaeologists, classicists, and game designers at the University of South Florida and the University of Arkansas, aims to build academic and public engagement with the Villa through a serious game played directly online using WebGL. Addressing the issues of accuracy in 3D reconstruction versus digital embodiment and meaningful game play, this paper outlines the project's pipeline for synthesizing the extensive 3D documentation of the site to create the digital prototype for an immersive narrative that unfolds the Villa's history against the development of modern archaeology in Italy and focuses the human story and professional life of a pioneering female archaeologist, Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli.
Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible s... more Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible space for a host of different activities essential to the urban economy and society. Keywords: economic history; social history; urban history
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of fixed-point retailing in the... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of fixed-point retailing in the city of ancient Rome between the 2 c BCE and the 2/3 c CE. Changes in the socio-economic environment during the 2 c BCE caused the structure of Rome’s urban retail system to shift from one chiefly reliant on temporary markets and fairs to one typified by permanent shops. As shops came to dominate the architectural experience of Rome’s streetscapes, shopkeepers took advantage of the increased visibility by focusing their marketing strategies on their shop designs. Through this process, the shopkeeper and his shop actively contributed to urban placemaking and the distribution of an urban identity at Rome. Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs an interdisciplinary approach in its analysis, combining textual, archaeological, and art historical materials with comparative history and modern marketing theory. Research limitation/implications – Retailing in ancient Rome remains a neglected area of study on account of the traditional view among economic historians that the retail trades of pre-industrial societies were primitive and unsophisticated. This paper challenges traditional models of marketing history by establishing the shop as both the dominant method of urban distribution and the chief means for advertising at Rome.
2019 International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition Workshops (ICDARW), 2019
"Pompei: pitture e mosaici" is a valuable set of volumes containing over 20,000 histori... more "Pompei: pitture e mosaici" is a valuable set of volumes containing over 20,000 historical annotated images of the archaeological site of Pompeii, Italy. Our project consists of extracting, archiving, analyzing and classifying all the image data from a digitized version of these books. In this paper, we describe a method that automatically locates and separates graphical elements such as maps, drawings, paintings and photographic images from text. We also introduce our ongoing work on the interpretation of the retrieved data.
The 26th International Conference on 3D Web Technology
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Si... more A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Sicily contains the largest collection of mosaics in the Roman world. However, due to accessibility issues (e.g., remote location, weak online presence), the Villa remains nearly unknown in comparison to popular sites like Pompeii, despite its cultural importance. VILLAE, a collaboration between archaeologists, classicists, and game designers at the University of South Florida and the University of Arkansas, aims to build academic and public engagement with the Villa through a serious game played directly online using WebGL. Addressing the issues of accuracy in 3D reconstruction versus digital embodiment and meaningful game play, this paper outlines the project's pipeline for synthesizing the extensive 3D documentation of the site to create the digital prototype for an immersive narrative that unfolds the Villa's history against the development of modern archaeology in Italy and focuses the human story and professional life of a pioneering female archaeologist, Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli.
As an Early Imperial rural site of approximately two hectares in the hinterland of southern Tusca... more As an Early Imperial rural site of approximately two hectares in the hinterland of southern Tuscany with evidence of crafting and dwelling, Marzuolo belongs to an expanding and diverse group of known Roman minor centers. Between 2017 and 2019, excavations at Marzuolo revealed a blacksmithing workshop that was in operation in the first half of the first century CE and was violently destroyed in a fire and abandoned thereafter. As a result, the Marzuolo smithy presents a unique opportunity to investigate a “living” workshop, complete with its ephemeral features, worked objects, and comprehensive tool set. After reconstructing the chaîne opératoire of blacksmithing in its spatial setting at Marzuolo, this article integrates the rare find of the in situ tool set to argue for both a greater geographical, social, and functional pervasiveness of metals in the Roman countryside than has hitherto been acknowledged and for the importance of minor centers in forging the ties that bound a dynam...
Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible s... more Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible space for a host of different activities essential to the urban economy and society. Keywords: economic history; social history; urban history
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Si... more A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Sicily contains the largest collection of mosaics in the Roman world. However, due to accessibility issues (e.g., remote location, weak online presence), the Villa remains nearly unknown in comparison to popular sites like Pompeii, despite its cultural importance. VILLAE, a collaboration between archaeologists, classicists, and game designers at the University of South Florida and the University of Arkansas, aims to build academic and public engagement with the Villa through a serious game played directly online using WebGL. Addressing the issues of accuracy in 3D reconstruction versus digital embodiment and meaningful game play, this paper outlines the project's pipeline for synthesizing the extensive 3D documentation of the site to create the digital prototype for an immersive narrative that unfolds the Villa's history against the development of modern archaeology in Italy and focuses the human story and professional life of a pioneering female archaeologist, Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli.
While space syntax analysis has been widely applied to archaeological sites (including Pompeii), ... more While space syntax analysis has been widely applied to archaeological sites (including Pompeii), it is fundamentally limited by its isolation within the social sciences and its omission of decoration from the analysis of human cognition and movement within structures. At the same time, phenomenology in archaeology has typically arisen from the physical experiences of a limited number of professional archaeologists in a landscape, with little interest in digital embodiment in virtual spaces. The Virtual Pompeii Project has produced an updated version of space syntax which combines network measures common in the social sciences with visibility graphs to produce predictive models of movement within a set of three ancient Roman houses in Pompeii. These predictive models are tested through the navigation of virtual models of the houses by human subjects, demonstrating the significance of decoration in shaping movement, and, through quantitative and qualitative data, the value of digitally embodied phenomenology. This points ahead to the use of crowd-sourced, web-based global testing, diversifying the subject pool far beyond the narrow bounds of professional classicists or archaeologists.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Si... more A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Sicily contains the largest collection of mosaics in the Roman world. However, due to accessibility issues (e.g., remote location, weak online presence), the Villa remains nearly unknown in comparison to popular sites like Pompeii, despite its cultural importance. VILLAE, a collaboration between archaeologists, classicists, and game designers at the University of South Florida and the University of Arkansas, aims to build academic and public engagement with the Villa through a serious game played directly online using WebGL. Addressing the issues of accuracy in 3D reconstruction versus digital embodiment and meaningful game play, this paper outlines the project's pipeline for synthesizing the extensive 3D documentation of the site to create the digital prototype for an immersive narrative that unfolds the Villa's history against the development of modern archaeology in Italy and focuses the human story and professional life of a pioneering female archaeologist, Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli.
Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible s... more Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible space for a host of different activities essential to the urban economy and society. Keywords: economic history; social history; urban history
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of fixed-point retailing in the... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of fixed-point retailing in the city of ancient Rome between the 2 c BCE and the 2/3 c CE. Changes in the socio-economic environment during the 2 c BCE caused the structure of Rome’s urban retail system to shift from one chiefly reliant on temporary markets and fairs to one typified by permanent shops. As shops came to dominate the architectural experience of Rome’s streetscapes, shopkeepers took advantage of the increased visibility by focusing their marketing strategies on their shop designs. Through this process, the shopkeeper and his shop actively contributed to urban placemaking and the distribution of an urban identity at Rome. Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs an interdisciplinary approach in its analysis, combining textual, archaeological, and art historical materials with comparative history and modern marketing theory. Research limitation/implications – Retailing in ancient Rome remains a neglected area of study on account of the traditional view among economic historians that the retail trades of pre-industrial societies were primitive and unsophisticated. This paper challenges traditional models of marketing history by establishing the shop as both the dominant method of urban distribution and the chief means for advertising at Rome.
2019 International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition Workshops (ICDARW), 2019
"Pompei: pitture e mosaici" is a valuable set of volumes containing over 20,000 histori... more "Pompei: pitture e mosaici" is a valuable set of volumes containing over 20,000 historical annotated images of the archaeological site of Pompeii, Italy. Our project consists of extracting, archiving, analyzing and classifying all the image data from a digitized version of these books. In this paper, we describe a method that automatically locates and separates graphical elements such as maps, drawings, paintings and photographic images from text. We also introduce our ongoing work on the interpretation of the retrieved data.
The 26th International Conference on 3D Web Technology
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Si... more A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Sicily contains the largest collection of mosaics in the Roman world. However, due to accessibility issues (e.g., remote location, weak online presence), the Villa remains nearly unknown in comparison to popular sites like Pompeii, despite its cultural importance. VILLAE, a collaboration between archaeologists, classicists, and game designers at the University of South Florida and the University of Arkansas, aims to build academic and public engagement with the Villa through a serious game played directly online using WebGL. Addressing the issues of accuracy in 3D reconstruction versus digital embodiment and meaningful game play, this paper outlines the project's pipeline for synthesizing the extensive 3D documentation of the site to create the digital prototype for an immersive narrative that unfolds the Villa's history against the development of modern archaeology in Italy and focuses the human story and professional life of a pioneering female archaeologist, Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli.
As an Early Imperial rural site of approximately two hectares in the hinterland of southern Tusca... more As an Early Imperial rural site of approximately two hectares in the hinterland of southern Tuscany with evidence of crafting and dwelling, Marzuolo belongs to an expanding and diverse group of known Roman minor centers. Between 2017 and 2019, excavations at Marzuolo revealed a blacksmithing workshop that was in operation in the first half of the first century CE and was violently destroyed in a fire and abandoned thereafter. As a result, the Marzuolo smithy presents a unique opportunity to investigate a “living” workshop, complete with its ephemeral features, worked objects, and comprehensive tool set. After reconstructing the chaîne opératoire of blacksmithing in its spatial setting at Marzuolo, this article integrates the rare find of the in situ tool set to argue for both a greater geographical, social, and functional pervasiveness of metals in the Roman countryside than has hitherto been acknowledged and for the importance of minor centers in forging the ties that bound a dynam...
Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible s... more Prolific in urban centers across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman shop offered a flexible space for a host of different activities essential to the urban economy and society. Keywords: economic history; social history; urban history
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Si... more A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 4th-Century CE Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Sicily contains the largest collection of mosaics in the Roman world. However, due to accessibility issues (e.g., remote location, weak online presence), the Villa remains nearly unknown in comparison to popular sites like Pompeii, despite its cultural importance. VILLAE, a collaboration between archaeologists, classicists, and game designers at the University of South Florida and the University of Arkansas, aims to build academic and public engagement with the Villa through a serious game played directly online using WebGL. Addressing the issues of accuracy in 3D reconstruction versus digital embodiment and meaningful game play, this paper outlines the project's pipeline for synthesizing the extensive 3D documentation of the site to create the digital prototype for an immersive narrative that unfolds the Villa's history against the development of modern archaeology in Italy and focuses the human story and professional life of a pioneering female archaeologist, Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli.
While space syntax analysis has been widely applied to archaeological sites (including Pompeii), ... more While space syntax analysis has been widely applied to archaeological sites (including Pompeii), it is fundamentally limited by its isolation within the social sciences and its omission of decoration from the analysis of human cognition and movement within structures. At the same time, phenomenology in archaeology has typically arisen from the physical experiences of a limited number of professional archaeologists in a landscape, with little interest in digital embodiment in virtual spaces. The Virtual Pompeii Project has produced an updated version of space syntax which combines network measures common in the social sciences with visibility graphs to produce predictive models of movement within a set of three ancient Roman houses in Pompeii. These predictive models are tested through the navigation of virtual models of the houses by human subjects, demonstrating the significance of decoration in shaping movement, and, through quantitative and qualitative data, the value of digitally embodied phenomenology. This points ahead to the use of crowd-sourced, web-based global testing, diversifying the subject pool far beyond the narrow bounds of professional classicists or archaeologists.
TRAC 2020 – SESSION 1: CROSS-CRAFT INTERACTION IN THE ROMAN WORLD
Investigating cross-craft inte... more TRAC 2020 – SESSION 1: CROSS-CRAFT INTERACTION IN THE ROMAN WORLD
Investigating cross-craft interaction at Podere Marzuolo (Tuscany, Italy)
Multiple crafts were commonly practiced contemporaneously in the vicinity of one another in antiquity, but the dynamic cross-craft interactions that sometimes occurred between producers remain poorly understood (e.g. Dobres 2010, Brysbaert 2007, McGovern 1989). In the rural multi-crafting community of Podere Maruzolo (Tuscany, Italy), the spatial integration of different types of production (including pottery production, smithing and carpentry) in the 1st century AD in and around a large opus reticulatum structure allows for the detailed exploration of such cross-craft interaction. By combining intensive open-area excavation of the workshop complex with a multiple chaînes opératoires approach, the Marzuolo Archaeological Project (MAP) aims to reconstruct the technical aspects of production alongside the cognitive and social factors in order to identify potential points of intersections in production processes. The presence of carpentry tools in the blacksmith’s workshop discovered on site, for instance, indicates that woodworking was practiced in tandem with metalworking. Marzuolo has gained recognition for being a terra sigillata italica production center (Vaccaro et al. 2017). MAP’s excavations situate this ceramic production in close proximity to the blacksmith’s workshop, thus revealing the potential for entangled practices, as both crafts required open ground-floor space, access to water and high-quality fuel, and the technical knowledge to build refractory installations that could maintain consistently high temperatures. As such, MAP offers data to challenge assumptions about standardization and cross-craft relations (Rice 1991).
American Association of Teachers of Italian 2023, Catania, Sicily (IT)
The Virtual Roman Retail... more American Association of Teachers of Italian 2023, Catania, Sicily (IT)
The Virtual Roman Retail (VRR) research project investigates how ancient Romans shopped in shops. By designing interactive virtual reality applications of shops preserved in the urban landscapes at Pompeii and Ostia, the project tests how a shop's design may have shaped ancient consumer experience and behavior. VRR's work contributes to the digital turn in archaeology: digital technologies and practices have become essential tools for capturing, visualizing, analyzing, and disseminating archaeological data. Digital technologies are also transforming education, making digital skill development a core fundamental competency for ensuring a student’s success in their academic and professional careers. These transformations are not without their challenges. In education, it has exposed a rising inequality in digital literacy and technology access whereas in archaeology this digital divide makes it difficult for researchers to disseminate their data in a way that is both accessible and engaging to the general public. VRR attempts to address these challenges by bridging research, pedagogy, and practice in the classroom. In spring 2023, project directors will incorporate VRR into an honors colloquium, titled "Shopping in Ancient Rome", as a means for teaching students about socioeconomic history while enhancing their digital skills learning. In addition to using VR as an immersive teaching tool to transport students to ancient Roman commercial landscapes, students will also learn the project's 3D modeling workflow in Metashape to produce their own 3D model of a Roman shop. Students' models will be published to Sketchfab and exhibited in VRR's online Digital Shop Library. This high-impact digital project provides students with an opportunity to collaborate with faculty in tackling the important questions on ancient retailing that the research project is attempting to answer.
The AAC&U and IIE consider study abroad a high-impact practice, an experiential learning opportun... more The AAC&U and IIE consider study abroad a high-impact practice, an experiential learning opportunity important for enhancing student success as well as for building global skills and intercultural competency and awareness. Many Classics programs in the United States, including my own, also encourage students to study abroad as a way of immersing themselves in the past and deepening their appreciation for the Ancient Mediterranean World. In addition to numerous short-term study abroad programs, as of 2013, AACUPI reports 28 of its programs included a Classical Studies/Archaeology teaching model (Schneider 2013), two of the oldest among these being the American Academy in Rome (1897) and the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (1965). Despite all of this, scholarship on the best pedagogical practices for Classics-focused study abroad programs is virtually non-existent. While the Roman Forum makes for an evocative classroom space, most programs are still predominately lecture-based, casting the student as a passive receiver of the professor/guide’s expertise. Programs also tend to focus on “important” sites (e.g., Colosseum) (Costello 2020), which risks framing the student’s experience with the past through a top-down, monumental, elite lens that reinforces the problematic power structures and colonialism (Pipitone 2018) that already plague Classical Studies as a discipline. I think the time has come for more critical engagement when designing learning opportunities and curricula for study abroad contexts...
In 2018, during excavations of an opus reticulatum complex that may have functioned as a villa ru... more In 2018, during excavations of an opus reticulatum complex that may have functioned as a villa rustica or agricultural processing center in its initial occupational phase in the late 1st c BCE/early 1st c CE, the Marzuolo Archaeological Project uncovered two large cylindrical cement-lined tanks sunk into the floor of a room paved with opus signinum. Residue analyses (gas chromatography and mass spectrometry) of samples from the tanks’ plaster confirmed the presence of tartaric acid with succinic and malic acids at the bottom of one tank, likely evidence for its use in winemaking. While the western half of this room remains unexcavated, a lack of comparisons for the cement tanks, which have a raised lip but no inlet/outlet pipes, and an absence within the excavation area of a press or fermentation jars suggest that winemaking at Podere Marzuolo may have involved a treading floor and aerobic fermentation inside the tanks.
Although ironworking was widespread in the Roman World, evidence for it is not highly visible in ... more Although ironworking was widespread in the Roman World, evidence for it is not highly visible in the archaeological record. The number of smelting and smithing sites discovered is growing but very few workshops have been excavated extensively, and because iron was a valuable material, the iron tools used in metalworking and the objects produced are rare finds (e.g. V. Serneels, “Ironworking in Roman Switzerland” [Montagnac 2014] 163; R. Pleiner, Iron in Archaeology [Prague 2006] 135). The discovery of a Roman blacksmith workshop at the rural nucleated center of Marzuolo (Cinigiano, GR, Italy) in 2017 is, therefore, extraordinary. The smithy was sealed while still in use under a building collapse caused by a fire in the mid-first century CE. The collapse preserved its installations (e.g. hearths), raw materials (off-cuts), production waste (slag and hammerscale), and a complete assemblage of tools and objects in stages of production or repair, which allows for a detailed reconstruction of a ‘living workshop’ (e.g. A. Byrsbaert, “Talking Shop” [London 2014] 39).
This paper outlines the project’s evolving methodologies for excavating the workshop between 2017 and 2019 and provides preliminary results and interpretations of the spatial configuration of its production processes. Ongoing analysis of the material assemblage, including planned conservation of the tools and archaeometric analysis of raw materials and waste, will refine our understanding of the techniques and types of metalworking taking place in the forge. Future excavation will integrate the smithy with other crafts practiced simultaneously on site (e.g. pottery production). Ultimately, Marzuolo’s blacksmithing workshop makes a major contribution to the study of Roman metalworking: contextualized within the rural landscape of South-Central Tuscany, the presence of a master smith at a minor center like Marzuolo suggests a certain degree of specialization that highlights the extent of ‘metallization’ under the Roman empire.
Ancient Roman commercial landscapes provide a rich source of inspiration for the transformation o... more Ancient Roman commercial landscapes provide a rich source of inspiration for the transformation of brick-and-mortar retail from a space for goods to a place for socially rich experiences in response to an increasing shift today toward online buying. Unfortunately, despite the ubiquity of shops in Rome’s urban centers (e.g. 500+ at Pompeii alone), only a handful of publications exist on ancient retail. This oversight is partially due to a primitivist economic model, dominant in the second half of the 20th century, which assumed that the Roman economy lacked a sophisticated consumer market capable of supporting a highly specialized retail trade (e.g. Finley 1999). Many marketing historians likewise still insist that retail trades before 1850 did not exhibit key elements associated with retailing in a modern, industrialized society (e.g. shop economies, marketing strategies, shopping behavior; Mathias 1967). These traditional assumptions have been challenged, and more recent scholarship has begun to focus on the visibility of ancient Roman retail, establishing the shop as a significant component of urban economies (e.g. Holleran 2012, Ellis 2018). The Roman shop, however, was more than a unit in the distributive system or a passive architectural shell in which buying and selling simply happened; it was a setting for experiences and an active agent in fostering sociability and forging social identities. Nonetheless, a detailed study of dynamic buyer-seller interactions within the shop environment, the primary context for the negotiation and performance of consumer identities (e.g. Campbell 2004, Miller et al. 1998), is missing from the discussion. This poster will display the preliminary results of a project addressing this lacuna by leveraging cutting-edge VR technology to explore how commercial space impacted buyer behavior and reflected marketing strategies in ancient Rome. The project’s multidisciplinary approach incorporates archaeological theory, phenomenology, environmental psychology, game design, marketing theory, consumer culture theory, and classical studies.
In spring 2019, the project is building an interactive 3D model of a Pompeian shop in the Unity 3D game engine for application on desktop and in VR (e.g. Oculus Go, Quest) (Fig. 1). A core principle of game design is meaningful choice (Gee 2013; Salen and Zimmerman 2004), which empowers the player by giving them the sense that their behavior significantly impacts the game world. Meaningful choice drives player engagement, but it clearly has a comparative relation to consumer behavior. The model will be used to address the question of how Romans shopped in shops by tracking player reactions (e.g. movement patterns) to environmental variables (e.g. layout and furnishing) to understand how shop design facilitated and/or restricted movement into and around the shop space, shaping social interactions. The hypothesis is that placement of a shop counter at the entrance to many Pompeian shops restricted physical access to the interior, forcing commercial transactions to occur in the street where the consumer was on public display. The model will also track gaze paths to investigate how shop décor (polychromatic marbles, painted fresco, religious shrines, etc.) impacted the visual attention of the buyer. Archaeological evidence indicates that the façades of shops at Pompeii were more ornate than their interiors, suggesting that the shopfront reflects conscious marketing strategies for attracting potential buyers on the street.
Pompeii’s commercial landscape is remarkably well preserved and will form the basis for this study (Fig. 2). The existing shop remains can be reconstructed using photogrammetry and 3D modeling software while photographs and drawings from old excavation volumes (e.g. Spinazzola 1953) and online databases (e.g. pompeiiinpictures.com) preserve now faded shop décor (Fig. 3). While it is impossible to reconstruct a Pompeian shop with 100% accuracy, by capitalizing on methodologies already in use in marketing research (e.g. Burke 2018), 3D visualization technology offers an innovative, indirect way to approach questions of ancient consumer experience and behavior that is grounded in ancient evidence.
By emphasizing aspects of continuity and innovation in ancient retail trades, this work contributes to a broader synthesis of retail history. Roman shops can offer new-old ways of thinking about marketing strategies, the evolution of consumer behavior, and retail design. In particular, the project’s novel approach to viewing ancient shops as loci of sociability where cultural meaning and identities were actively produced and publicly displayed offers a fresh understanding of the social value of shops to urban life in ancient Rome, highlighting in turn the important role shops designed as gathering places for social encounters have in maintaining the vitality and civic community of our own urban centers.
The Marzuolo Archaeological Project completed its second season of excavation at Podere Marzuolo ... more The Marzuolo Archaeological Project completed its second season of excavation at Podere Marzuolo (Grosseto, Italy), a Roman period rural production site where evidence for an experimental and standardized phase of terra sigillata pottery has been discovered. The project aims to contextualize technical innovation in ceramic production within a local community of practice and within a broader regional network of production and distribution. The 2017 season specifically sought to uncover kilns and production waste for both phases of pottery production in order to refine our understanding of the technical changes between the two attested productions in the first centuries B.C.E./C.E. Instead of primary ceramic production evidence, however, the most recent excavations revealed evidence for metal production. A set of ironworking tools was discovered inside an opus quasi-reticulatum building, the site's most substantial masonry structure, which has also been associated with the standardized phase of sigillata production. The metalworking tools appear to have been hanging from hooks on the wall or arranged on wooden shelves just inside the wide-open entry-way of a single-roomed cella when the building burned down in the mid-late first century C.E. The remains of a tank lined with cocciopesto in the room to the west, as well as the remains of a large ceramic basin discovered a few meters to the east further characterize this area as an industrial zone. While previous excavations had investigated southern sections of the opus quasi-reticulatum structure, this season produced the first well-preserved occupation levels, significantly clarifying the building's chronology and function. The impetus to regard each craft separately still dominates approaches to Ro-man crafts production, largely overlooking the interaction that occurred between craft producers in a community. How does the practice of multiple crafts simultaneously and in close proximity to one another impact the process of innovation, the transfer of technical knowledge, the organization and social dynamics of pro-duction? Excavations by the Marzuolo Archaeological Project encourage a better contextualization of rural production sites by situating technical change in pottery production within the framework of a purpose-built, multi-crafting community.
Roman shop architecture was fairly uniform by the 1st c AD: one to two rectilinear rooms located ... more Roman shop architecture was fairly uniform by the 1st c AD: one to two rectilinear rooms located on a ground floor, typically fronting a street or portico with a wide, open entryway and long grooved threshold (Holleran 2012, 100-105). This standard design, easily recognizable in the archaeological record, proliferated in urban centers across the Roman empire (Purcell 1994, 661). One needs only to walk down the Via dell’Abbondanza in Pompeii or the Decumanus in Ostia to appreciate how prolific shops were in a Roman town. Despite their prominence in the urban fabric and important distributive role in the economy, very few systematic studies of the Roman shop exist; those that do exist focus primarily on typology, categorizing shops according to variations in size and plan, which does little to advance our understanding of the socio-economic activities that took place within the walls (e.g. Ziçans 1941; Girri 1956; Gassner 1986).
Through an interdisciplinary analysis of textual sources, archaeological and art historical evidence, comparative historical materials, and modern retail theory, this paper seeks to move beyond identifying the architectural type to exploring how the structural design of a shop might have influenced the buyers and sellers who once occupied the space. For the last 40 years, marketing researchers have acknowledged that shop environment has a significant impact on consumer behavior (Kolter 1973; Donovan and Rossiter 1982; Bohl 2013). Atmospheric cues within a retail setting, such as layout, décor, color, lighting, music, and smells, affects a consumer’s emotional state and determines shopping behavior (Mehrabian and Russel, 4; Donovan and Rossiter 1982, passim; Bitner 1992, 85). As a result, retailers today manipulate environmental stimuli within their shops in order to attract consumers and increase sales (Bitner 1992, 65; Lewis and Weitz 2011, chapter 17). This study investigates how less ephemeral environmental stimuli, including layout, décor, and lighting, preserved in the remains of shops from Rome, Ostia, and Pompeii, may have shaped buyer-seller relationships, affected consumer perceptions of store image and product quality, and determined purchase and patronage intentions. In doing so, this paper not only promotes a more holistic approach to the ancient Roman shop, but also contributes to an emergent trend in the field which addresses the obvious lacuna of scholarship concerning the retail trade in the ancient economy.
This lecture addresses a gap in scholarship concerning ancient distribution and encourages a more... more This lecture addresses a gap in scholarship concerning ancient distribution and encourages a more holistic approach to the Roman economy by outlining the organization of the sagarii’s trade in woolen cloaks from sheep to shop, following the products from centers of production in Northern Italy and Southern Gaul to their places of consumption in the warehouses, shops, and streets of Rome. A close analysis of the epigraphic evidence concerning the sagarii reveals that this particular retail trade involved a sophisticated network of producers, merchants, wholesalers, shopkeepers, and itinerant traders, who employed risk-reducing strategies and relied on various social institutions to ensure the prosperity of their businesses.
This paper uses the environmental theory of retail change to trace the development of a shop econ... more This paper uses the environmental theory of retail change to trace the development of a shop economy in the city of Rome between the late 3rd c BCE and 2nd/3rd c CE.
“Collective protest is spun out of a network of preexisting ties, ties of occupation and neighbor... more “Collective protest is spun out of a network of preexisting ties, ties of occupation and neighborhood that create solidarity and make organization possible.” (Nord, 1986)
Cicero depicts the political environment of the late Republic as wrought with turmoil, civil war, and class struggles. The scholarship dealing with this transformative historical period still focuses on the elite politicians involved in the strife; and consequently, has largely ignored the political clout of the urban plebs, who nonetheless affected change in government through “popular pressure”, violent riots, and through the organized support of populares leaders (e.g. Yavetz, 1969; Flambard, 1977; Millar, 1998; and Vanderbroeck, 1987). P. Clodius was one of the first senators to recognize the power of and effectively harness the collective political action of the plebs, appealing to the lower classes by proposing and forcibly ratifying legislature, such as the lex Cloidus de collegii. In addition, he fashioned himself as a champion of the people and a member of their society, which was centered both physically and symbolically on the vicus or neighborhood.
This paper argues that the tabernarii (shopkeepers), who numbered among Clodius's supporters (e.g. Cic. Dom.54; 89), were in a unique position to take part in the burgeoning grassroots politics of the period since their shops, which according to both literary sources and archaeological evidence lined the streets and major thoroughfares of the city, placed them at the center of neighborhood life. R. Laurence has recently argued that Roman streets, which acted as local fora, were multi-functional spaces where people congregated to exchange information, take part in religious cult, and engage in commercial activities (2001). Accordingly, any murmurs of discontent and/or resentment felt toward the senate would have first been expressed in the streets and the shops that flanked them. Thus, a shared occupation and the development, albeit informal in this period, of a neighborhood identity may have encouraged tabernarii to organize in support of Clodius’s campaign for tribune in 59 BCE (Nord, 1986, 23). This paper will incorporate modern theories of urban geography and urbanism into its analysis of the occupational group of tabernarii to argue that the urban revolution in Rome, which began in the 2nd c BCE, promoted the role of commerce in urban society. As a result, shopkeepers helped activate grassroots movements, which allowed the plebs urbana a stronger voice in late Republican politics (Lefebvre, 2003, 15).
Advertising in pre-industrial societies is a largely neglected topic as a consequence of the trad... more Advertising in pre-industrial societies is a largely neglected topic as a consequence of the traditional view in economic history that the development of marketing strategies was a modern innovation. To the contrary, various methods of consumer manipulation not only existed, but also were crucial to the economic success of pre-industrial retailers whose reputations were perceived as synonymous to the quality of their products and business ethics. The correlation between shopkeeper identity and product value was problematic for Roman retailers who were characterized widely in the literary sources as depraved and deceitful profiteers (e.g. Cic. de Offic. 1.150-51; Ovid Fasti 5.674-88). In response, shopkeepers were compelled to promote their reputations alongside their goods.
This paper suggests that shop design was the primary means for the self-representation of Roman shopkeepers. Borrowing from environmental psychology (e.g. Donovan and Rossiter 1982 and Bitner 1992), the author examines artistic representations and the physical remains of shops from Ostia to demonstrate how imperial shopkeepers influenced consumer perceptions of store image, financial security, and product quality through the manipulation of environmental cues within the retail setting (e.g. layout, furnishing, décor, color, signage, etc.). Marketing strategies focused primarily on the shop façade. Wide-open entryways and status indicators like polychrome marble created an appealing and disarming shop image that encouraged patronage and purchasing decisions. The efficacy of shop advertising is in part borne out in the increased number of shops that appear in the commercial landscape of Ostia between the first century B.C.E and second/third century C.E. In addition to addressing a lacuna in the scholarship of the ancient economy, this author challenges traditional models of retail history by establishing the shop – a physical construct of shopkeeper identity – as the principal method of advertising for retailers in a Roman town.
Shopping today is viewed as a meaningful cultural practice that fosters various social behaviors,... more Shopping today is viewed as a meaningful cultural practice that fosters various social behaviors, but very few scholars ask whether shopping was a meaningful action in pre-industrial societies. This is due in large part to the prevalent view that shopping behavior is a hallmark of modern retailing. An interdisciplinary approach to the evidence from ancient Rome, however, suggests that a sophisticated retail system developed in urban centers during the Republic so that by the Early Imperial period, many Roman towns were characterized by busy commercial streets and districts where people consumed time and space alongside ready-made goods and services. The shop became a place of leisure and a locus of sociability where status and identity were forged, negotiated, and performed. It also became a potentially subversive space where information was exchanged, and status and power could be challenged and temporarily overturned.
This course will be a mix of lecture, discussion, and workshops and is structured thematically, starting with a general history of retailing and how that has shaped approaches to ancient retailing. Taking primarily a social and cultural approach to ancient commerce, this course explores the questions of where, how, and why ancient Romans shopped. But to explore these questions, we will need to map distribution networks, trace the evolution of the retail trade, scrutinize Roman attitudes toward various forms of retailing, analyze commercial art and architecture, and embody the Roman shopkeeper as well as the ancient consumer to investigate evidence for marketing strategies, shopping behaviors, and consumption practices. Other topics may include politics and religion in the shop, shopping with the senses, and Virtual Reality (VR) applications. We will also be broaching topics that might be difficult to discuss like enslaved labor, the commerce of sex, and how socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity and other identities may have impacted commercial behaviors. Why should we discuss difficult topics in the classroom? Because discomfort is the catalyst of growth. More, censoring discussions of these topics presents a sanitized, often literally white-washed, narrative of Roman history that does not reflect the messy lived reality, especially of vulnerable and marginalized groups. This content can, however, resonate with traumatic experiences that remain unfortunately all too frequent for people living now. We cannot make the ancient material “safe,” but we can make the way we talk about it safe. If you encounter issues of past or current trauma in reading, talking, or writing about the course content, please reach out to me immediately so that we can try to work out solutions that can protect your health while allowing you to complete the course.
Designed according to high impact practices, this course also offers opportunities for students to develop digital skills through a podcasting and 3D modeling assignment, which contribute to furthering the research goals of the Virtual Roman Retail project.
“Sicily is an island lying outside time, where past events endure in an external present, a beach... more “Sicily is an island lying outside time, where past events endure in an external present, a beach on which the tides of successive civilizations have heaped in disorder their assorted treasure.” V. Cronin, The Golden Honeycomb: A Sicilian Quest
On this January intersession Honors Passport tour, students will explore Sicily's mosaic culture through the lens of its art, architecture, and archaeology. Located in the center of the Mediterranean, Sicily linked the Latin West to the Greek East, Christianity to Islam, and continues today to function as a bridge between Europe and North Africa. Over the last 3,000 years, the island's strategic location invited waves of conquest by foreign powers. Each civilization – Phoenician maritime traders, ancient Greek colonizers, the Roman empire, Byzantine, Muslim, and Norman conquests, Spanish and Bourbon rule, the Expedition of the Thousand, the Allied Invasion – left behind scars, but also contributed the best aspects of their cultures to create a remarkably complex and visually stunning place to receive hands-on training in “reading” visual and material culture as expressions of cross-cultural exchanges.
Every day of the tour will be a learning-filled series of adventures, as students circumnavigate the island, starting and ending in Sicily's bustling capital city Palermo, with trips to the Capuchin Catacombs and the Palatine Chapel. After visiting the Norman cathedral in the seaside village of Cefalù and the Greco-Roman theatre of Taormina, students will hike Mt. Etna, whose constantly smoking peak dominates the landscape. Next the group will stay on the myth-shrouded island of Ortygia in Syracuse and visit the picturesque Baroque town of Noto. In the center of the island, students will explore the ancient Sicel-Greek town of Morgantina and the world-famous mosaics in the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina. On Sicily’s west coast, students will hike down the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, as well as visit the ancient Greek colony of Selinunte, the Arabic Casbah of Mazara del Vallo, and the Punic settlement on Motya. A stop at the majestic Greek theatre in Segesta and the cathedral of Monreale, one of the best examples of Norman architecture anywhere, completes the tour. By the end of the trip, students will understand how Sicily’s multi-layered history developed from prehistory to the modern day and how cultural hybridization – the mixing and synthesizing of individual cultural tesserae – produced a wholly unique Sicilian cultural mosaic.
Rome has the power to inspire the imagination even today, a hundred and seventy years after Poe w... more Rome has the power to inspire the imagination even today, a hundred and seventy years after Poe wrote of “the glory that was Greece, / and the grandeur that was Rome.” But the city was and is more than the building of its monuments or the actions of its elites; it was shaped by the thousands of inhabitants who walked its streets, worshipped at its temples, voted in its assemblies, and bathed in its baths. The city of Rome is an organic entity, a constantly changing physical expression of cultural identities. These combined courses serve as an introduction to the history, society, and culture of ancient Rome on the one hand and the archaeology and topography on the other from the 8th c BCE to the 4th c CE, although these twin goals are in many respects inseparable.
Roman Reflections will introduce the history and development of Rome as city and as empire, focusing on a variety of topics in Roman culture (e.g., slavery, religion, sex and gender identity) and reading a number of primary texts which will help to illuminate these themes. We will also spend time discussing “Rome” in terms of its portrayal in later cultures: when, where, how, and why has it been used? What does it represent to whom, and what aspects of Roman culture have been celebrated or ignored, for what reasons? Ultimately, our goal is to critically evaluate various kinds of evidence – literary, historical, architectural, archaeological, etc. – in order to build up a nuanced portrait not only of Rome itself, but of its reception and representation over the centuries.
In Urban Space and Cultural Meaning, special focus will be placed on how the megalopolis of Rome developed over time, how it was maintained, as well as how different cultural groups transformed the urban landscape to meet their social, political, religious, and economic goals. The physical components of an urban environment, its public buildings, private houses, plazas, streets, etc. both shape and communicate identity, acting as repositories of the collective memory of a city’s inhabitants. The main aim of this course is for students to develop skills in “reading” Roman material culture (art, architecture, artifacts) within its socio-historical context. Students will be asked to synthesize material from primary sources, secondary literature, archaeological reports, handbooks, and finally – and perhaps most importantly – site visits and autopsy. We will explore comparative materials from other urban centers such as the harbor town of Ostia and the Campanian cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
This program will focus on Roman urbanism through a close "on the ground" comparison of the urban... more This program will focus on Roman urbanism through a close "on the ground" comparison of the urban landscapes of modern and ancient Rome, Ostia, and Pompeii. Students will learn how to "read" the urban environment as a reflection of society and group identities, using the architectural, art historical, and archaeological remains they encounter to reconstruct the lifeways and lived experiences of ancient Romans. While based in Rome where students will explore iconic sites (e.g. Colosseum, Pantheon) and museums (e.g. Vatican Museums), students will also spend 6 days in the Bay of Naples and 4 days in Ostia, conducting research and collecting data on domestic and commercial architecture which will contribute to the Virtual Pompeii and Virtual Roman Retail research projects.
Welcome to H2P! The Honors Humanities Project is a three-semester sequence (HUMN 1114, 1124, 2114... more Welcome to H2P! The Honors Humanities Project is a three-semester sequence (HUMN 1114, 1124, 2114), integrating core courses in world history, world literature, and the visual arts. It is an innovative approach, which seeks to expand the customary Eurocentric knowledge base that most students bring to college, searching over the millennia of human history for the significant connections that define the global citizens you must be upon graduation. The motto of Fulbright College, taken from Senator Fulbright's writings, sets forth our purpose: "...the highest function of higher education...is the teaching of things in perspective, toward the purposes of enriching the life of the individual, cultivating the free and inquiring mind, and advancing the effort to bring reason, justice, and humanity into relations of men and nations." Designed for superior students in the Honors Program in Fulbright College, the courses constituting H2P are open by invitation only, and the permission of the Director of Honors is required for registration.
This syllabus is a specific plan for the initial course the sequence, but because it establishes the thematic organization of the course as a whole, this syllabus serves as a guide for the work of the next three semesters. In each subsequent semester you will receive a detailed plan for that particular term listing lectures, guest lectures, films, discussions, and assigned readings.
Part of the innovative approach taken in H2P is that a three-person teaching team will share each section. In general, there will be two lectures and one discussion, presentation, or demonstration session each week. Each faculty member will thus be responsible for an average of ten (or seven) lectures. Each teaching team will include typically one faculty member from the visual arts, one history faculty member, and one literature faculty member.
The readings listed in the detailed plan for each semester involve to the maximum extent possible primary works encountered in their entirety. Each of the five themes, the SACRED, KNOWLEDGE, SOCIETY, POWER, and VISION, will be introduced by a source document, site, or work of art to which reference will be made over a period of two to three weeks. The lectures, additional readings, and demonstrations will expand upon this source work, reaching out to similar or contrastive phenomena in the broadest possible range of cultures. Of course, readings may be deleted, substituted, or added at the discretion of the teaching team.
This workshop introduces advanced Latin students to the discipline of Latin epigraphy. Over the c... more This workshop introduces advanced Latin students to the discipline of Latin epigraphy. Over the course of the semester, students will learn how to access and use epigraphic resources (e.g. CIL; http://www.manfredclauss.de/) and develop practical skills for expanding, translating, dating, and analyzing Latin texts. In the process, students will exercise and strengthen their Latin grammar, syntax, and translation skills. Latin epigraphy offers an important balance to the extant, canonical literary sources, whose top-down, elite perspectives provide a narrow understanding of the rich diversity that characterized Roman society. Instead, epigraphic texts encourage multivocality, preserving the unedited voices of underrepresented and marginalized groups (e.g. women, slaves, freed slaves). Moreover, students will learn to approach epigraphic texts as not only two-dimensional words on a page, but also as a physical object, whose interpretation must be situated within its sociohistorical context. The course is organized thematically: the first few weeks will provide an introduction to the discipline (e.g. historiography, resources, editing and dating conventions, etc.) while the majority of the semester will be organized according to categories of texts (e.g. civic, economic, social groups, entertainment, graffiti). For most weeks, Tuesday’s class will involve reading, lecture, and discussion while Thursday’s class will be devoted to going over that week’s assignment as a group and practicing other like texts.
Help unlock the secrets of ancient life in Pompeii through Virtual Reality! While Pompeii is one ... more Help unlock the secrets of ancient life in Pompeii through Virtual Reality! While Pompeii is one of the oldest (and most famous) archaeological sites, under excavation since the 18th century, much about life in this ancient city remains unknown. This is partly because contemporary approaches to understanding human environmental cognition have not been systematically applied to Pompeii. How did people in this ancient Roman city perceive, process, and navigate space, interpreting architectural and decorative cues to impact movement and behavior? How does this compare to how we contemporary humans navigate our cities, houses…and Walmart? The emergence of video game engines and Virtual Reality headsets as serious platforms for scientific visualization is transforming our ability to do cognitive research on archaeological sites like Pompeii. In addition to receiving a broad introduction to Pompeii's history, society, art and archaeology, students will collaborate with professors and the Tesseract Center for Immersive Environments and Game Design to create an interactive 3-D model of a selective section of the Via dell'Abbondanza, Pompeii's major thoroughfare. As a 4000-level honors colloquium, this course is reading intensive and will require students to meet outside of class hours to work on presentations and design projects. Learning Outcomes: 1. Students will learn the fundamental political, economic, and social history of Pompeii, and be able to relate this to the built form of the city and its visual and material culture, and more broadly to Roman history; 2. Students will come to understand and be able to apply critically tools, concepts, and methodologies found in contemporary spatial analysis and urban studies; 3. Students will learn the basic pipeline for creating 3D visualizations of archaeology and heritage sites; 4. Students will be able to address the strengths and pitfalls of real-time 3D visualizations as platforms for understanding past or other cultures, and how this varies from desktop to Virtual Reality to Mixed Reality.
The cultural history of ancient Rome is paved into the stones of its streets, built into the bric... more The cultural history of ancient Rome is paved into the stones of its streets, built into the bricks and tiles of its buildings, painted into its frescoes, carved into its marble sculptures, and preserved in the more quotidian objects, such as tableware and storage amphora, which were produced, used, and discarded by its people. While textual sources provide a limited top-down view of Roman history from the perspective of the 1%, an investigation of art, architecture, and artifacts can offer a more holistic, multiperspective understanding of life in the Roman World.
Starting in prehistory, this course traces the development of Roman visual and material culture through the Late Antique period, investigating how material objects and visual imagery produced by people shaped society and culture (religion, politics, economy, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, etc.). We will focus on the city of Rome and towns of Roman Italy, but we will also visit other sites from around the Roman World, which at its height spread well beyond the Mediterranean. In addition to introducing you to the iconic architectural monuments and famous works of Roman art, we will also take a bottom-up approach to investigate the objects and images of daily life and marginalized groups within society (e.g. women, slaves, freedmen), emphasizing the diversity that characterized Roman society.
Assignments in the course encourage practical skills acquisition: you will practice stylistic analysis, technical analysis, and sociohistorical analysis. You will learn to synthesize multiple categories of evidence (art, architecture, text, artifacts) to interpret human behavior in past landscapes. And you will engage with various critical approaches to the interpretation of ancient art and archaeology, such as reception, kopienkritik, arte plebea, visual-spatial analysis, and gender studies. This course fulfills the upper-level writing requirement for ART/ARHS majors.
The material culture – art, architecture, and artifacts – left behind by a civilization can be “r... more The material culture – art, architecture, and artifacts – left behind by a civilization can be “read” like a text of the past, since physical objects produced, used, reused, and discarded by human hands were active elements in human interactions. This course introduces students to the material and visual culture of the ancient Mediterranean from the Bronze Age through the Late Antique period. In addition to the great public architectural monuments, temples, and famous works of art, we will also explore the archaeological remains and visual images of everyday commercial and domestic space. We will focus our discussions on how visual and material culture both shaped and were shaped by different aspects of society in antiquity, such as religion, politics, economy, views on gender and sexuality, social status, and ethnicity. To this end, you will practice stylistic analysis, technical analysis, and interpretation of an array of ancient works within the socio- historical context they were produced. Throughout this process, you will engage with various critical approaches to the interpretation of ancient art, such as reception, kopienkritik, arte plebea, and gender studies.
While teaching grammar is a key component of Latin language learning, literacy also requires disc... more While teaching grammar is a key component of Latin language learning, literacy also requires discursive, social, and cognitive practice to understand the cultural and symbolic meaning of a language and a text. It’s not just about what it says but how it’s said and why it says that. To this end, the primary objective of this course is to establish a foundational knowledge of Latin grammar, syntax, and common vocabulary so that you can begin to read and understand Latin texts. While our focus is on reading Latin, speaking, listening, and writing skills will also be encouraged since a language is best learned through a holistic approach. This bottom-up processing at the semantic and syntactic level will be grounded in a critical investigation of the ancient Romans who actually spoke this language since we learn the most when our language learning is situated in meaningful socio-historical and cultural contexts. Information on Roman culture, society, history, art, and archaeology is integrated directly into our lessons in Disce and lectures and discussion on cultural topics have been built into the schedule. Finally, a third objective of this course is to introduce you to Latin epigraphy (texts carved, scratched, stamped, painted, etc. on a variety of materials like stone, bronze, plaster) and to help you build the basic skills to expand and translate simple inscriptions from the archaeological record, turning your Latin learning material. Epigraphy is our best evidence for the diverse voices, experiences, and self-representation of sub-elite Romans who made up 99% of people in the Roman World.
Disce follows the lives of two Roman families: Valeria the shopkeeper’s sub-elite family and Servilius the senator’s elite family. The experiences of these two families open opportunities to discuss potentially difficult topics, such as power, privilege, and inequality, patriarchy, slavery, race and ethnicity, gender, structural violence, mortality and death. Why should we discuss difficult topics in the Latin classroom? Because language has immense power – it both shapes and reflects our cultures. More, censoring discussions of these topics presents a sanitized narrative of ancient Rome that does not reflect the lived reality, especially of vulnerable and marginalized groups. So, if “discomfort is the catalyst of growth,” let’s get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
This content can, however, resonate with traumatic experiences that remain unfortunately all too frequent for people living now. We cannot make the ancient material “safe,” but we can make the way we talk about it safe. If you encounter issues of past or current trauma in reading, talking, or writing about the course content, please reach out to me immediately so that we can try to work out solutions that can protect your health while allowing you to complete the course.
During the 41 years of his reign, Augustus laid the foundations for an empire and dynastic regime... more During the 41 years of his reign, Augustus laid the foundations for an empire and dynastic regime that endured well into the 5th c AD. As Rome’s “first emperor,” he wholly transformed the city, not just physically, but also politically, culturally and ideologically. The primary focus of this course will be the life and deeds of this great man. During the first half of the semester, we will read the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an autobiographical account of Augusts’ military and political accomplishments and public benefactions, which has survived as a bi-lingual Latin/Greek inscription on the Temple to Augustus (Monumentum Ancyranum) in Ankara, Turkey. Since the Res Gestae (sometimes referred to as the “Queen of Inscriptions”) is in fact one of the longest extant Latin epigraphic texts from the Roman world, I have decided to include epigraphy as a component in the first half of this course.
After the midterm, we will turn our attention to the ‘Golden Age’ poets of Rome, translating selections from Vergil, Horace and Ovid all of who were patronized by Augustus and composed works lauding (and sometimes criticizing) his reign. We will conclude the semester with excerpts from the ‘Silver Age’ biographer Suetonius’ Divus Augustus.
Through a close reading of these texts, we will explore various themes, such as, the transition of Rome from a Republic to an Empire, the topography of the ancient city, and Augustan propaganda. In the end, you may judge for yourselves whether or not Augustus deserved the title Pater Patriae. Although attention will be paid to historical and archaeological contexts and, to some extent, literary criticism, the main objectives of this course are to facilitate your ability to READ (not simply translate) a Latin text while building on the grammatical concepts and vocabulary learned in Latin 101 and 102.
“Ergo,” inquit, “cum sciamus nos morituros esse, quare non vivamus? –Trimalchio (Pet. Sat.5.46-7)... more “Ergo,” inquit, “cum sciamus nos morituros esse, quare non vivamus? –Trimalchio (Pet. Sat.5.46-7)
While teaching grammar is a key component of Latin language learning, literacy also requires discursive, social, and cognitive practice to understand the cultural and symbolic meaning of the text. It’s not just about what it says but why it says that. To this end, students are expected to have completed LATN 1003 and 1013 or equivalent and must demonstrate a solid grasp on the basic principles of Latin grammar, syntax, and common vocabulary, which we will review, strengthen, and expand upon over the course of the semester. Success in this course does require you to be an active, self-directed leaner. Keep practicing and memorizing word forms and vocabulary! Seek help as soon as you feel like you might be struggling! This bottom-up processing at the semantic and syntactic level will be grounded in discussion and analytical assignments that explore the meaning of the text and its enduring relevance to our own lives and cultures.
So, quare non vivamus a little by reading Petronius’s Satyrica? On the surface, this Latin“novel” offers a bizarre and ribald satire of life in Roman Italy during the early Imperial period (mid-1st c. CE). Petronius has got jokes! The text, however, is also multivocal,including voices that speak in different Latin dialects and offer diverse – especially sub-elite and marginalized – perspectives on the dynamic interplay of social status, power, and agency. Our discussion of the Satyrica will center on freedpeople’s voices in the text and in Roman society to challenge the traditional elite viewpoints that dominate the Latin literary canon and still shape the way we interpret the past and approach Latin language learning today. In the process, you will develop critical literacy skills and deepen your critical consciousness, which will serve you in your college career and life beyond the classroom. Note that while the novel is meant to be comical (although…at whose expense?), it also broaches topics that can be difficult to discuss, including socioeconomic status-driven conflicts, slavery, race and ethnicity, gender, sex, and sexuality, sexual and structural violence, pederasty, mortality and death. Why should we discuss difficult topics in the classroom? Because language has immense power – it both shapes and reflects our cultures. More, censoring discussions of these topics presents a sanitized narrative of ancient Rome that does not reflect the lived reality,especially of vulnerable and marginalized groups. So, if “discomfort is the catalyst of growth,” let’s get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
This content can, however, resonate with traumatic experiences that remain unfortunately all too frequent for people living now. We cannot make the ancient material “safe,” but we can make the way we talk about it safe. If you encounter issues of past or current trauma in reading, talking, or writing about the course content, please reach out to me immediately so that we can try to work out solutions that can protect your health while allowing you to complete the course.
This course explores the role of the historian and historiography – the writing of history - in a... more This course explores the role of the historian and historiography – the writing of history - in ancient Mediterranean cultures through a survey of Greek (e.g. Herodotus, Thucydides) and Roman (e.g. Livy, Tacitus) historians in translation. Although ancient historiography has decisively shaped the way we in the 21st century approach history, the forms in which the Greeks and Romans constructed their past and their purposes for doing so differed greatly from our own. As the primary goal of this course, students will learn how to critically read and analyze primary historical texts within their socio-historical contexts, an essential skill for historical research of any period. Other topics will include the origin and development of the genre, lives of the historians, rhetoric and history, sources and methodologies, historical causation, military and political history, biography, portrayal of gender and the “other”.
In 79 CE, a violent eruption of Mt. Vesuvius resulted in the extraordinary preservation of entire... more In 79 CE, a violent eruption of Mt. Vesuvius resulted in the extraordinary preservation of entire Roman towns and villas around the Bay of Naples in Italy. Buried beneath the volcanic residue, archaeologists have discovered resplendent frescoes, impressive mosaics, furniture, medical tools, crass graffiti and everything from a loaf of bread to a personal library filled with the books of a previously unknown philosopher. This class will focus on the small provincial town of Pompeii, which has been considered one of the most famous archaeology sites in the world since its discovery in the 18th c. Pompeii’s public and private architecture, art and material culture provide us with important insight into the social, political, commercial and religious life under the Roman empire. Be forewarned: this course is reading and writing heavy and there is a public speaking component! You will be asked to analyze and interpret both material remains and primary and secondary sources.
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Investigating cross-craft interaction at Podere Marzuolo (Tuscany, Italy)
Multiple crafts were commonly practiced contemporaneously in the vicinity of one another in antiquity, but the dynamic cross-craft interactions that sometimes occurred between producers remain poorly understood (e.g. Dobres 2010, Brysbaert 2007, McGovern 1989). In the rural
multi-crafting community of Podere Maruzolo (Tuscany, Italy), the spatial integration of different types of production (including pottery production, smithing and carpentry) in the 1st century AD in and around a large opus reticulatum structure allows for the detailed exploration of such cross-craft interaction. By combining intensive open-area excavation of the workshop complex with a multiple chaînes opératoires approach, the Marzuolo Archaeological Project (MAP) aims to reconstruct the technical aspects of production alongside the cognitive and social factors in order to identify potential points of intersections in production processes. The presence of carpentry tools in the blacksmith’s workshop discovered on site, for instance, indicates that woodworking was practiced in tandem with metalworking. Marzuolo has gained recognition for being a terra sigillata italica production center (Vaccaro et al. 2017). MAP’s excavations situate this ceramic production in close proximity to the blacksmith’s workshop, thus revealing the potential for entangled practices, as both crafts required open ground-floor space, access to water and high-quality fuel, and the technical knowledge to build refractory installations that could maintain consistently high temperatures. As such, MAP offers data to challenge assumptions about standardization and cross-craft relations (Rice 1991).
The Virtual Roman Retail (VRR) research project investigates how ancient Romans shopped in shops. By designing interactive virtual reality applications of shops preserved in the urban landscapes at Pompeii and Ostia, the project tests how a shop's design may have shaped ancient consumer experience and behavior. VRR's work contributes to the digital turn in archaeology: digital technologies and practices have become essential tools for capturing, visualizing, analyzing, and disseminating archaeological data. Digital technologies are also transforming education, making digital skill development a core fundamental competency for ensuring a student’s success in their academic and professional careers. These transformations are not without their challenges. In education, it has exposed a rising inequality in digital literacy and technology access whereas in archaeology this digital divide makes it difficult for researchers to disseminate their data in a way that is both accessible and engaging to the general public. VRR attempts to address these challenges by bridging research, pedagogy, and practice in the classroom. In spring 2023, project directors will incorporate VRR into an honors colloquium, titled "Shopping in Ancient Rome", as a means for teaching students about socioeconomic history while enhancing their digital skills learning. In addition to using VR as an immersive teaching tool to transport students to ancient Roman commercial landscapes, students will also learn the project's 3D modeling workflow in Metashape to produce their own 3D model of a Roman shop. Students' models will be published to Sketchfab and exhibited in VRR's online Digital Shop Library. This high-impact digital project provides students with an opportunity to collaborate with faculty in tackling the important questions on ancient retailing that the research project is attempting to answer.
This paper outlines the project’s evolving methodologies for excavating the workshop between 2017 and 2019 and provides preliminary results and interpretations of the spatial configuration of its production processes. Ongoing analysis of the material assemblage, including planned conservation of the tools and archaeometric analysis of raw materials and waste, will refine our understanding of the techniques and types of metalworking taking place in the forge. Future excavation will integrate the smithy with other crafts practiced simultaneously on site (e.g. pottery production). Ultimately, Marzuolo’s blacksmithing workshop makes a major contribution to the study of Roman metalworking: contextualized within the rural landscape of South-Central Tuscany, the presence of a master smith at a minor center like Marzuolo suggests a certain degree of specialization that highlights the extent of ‘metallization’ under the Roman empire.
In spring 2019, the project is building an interactive 3D model of a Pompeian shop in the Unity 3D game engine for application on desktop and in VR (e.g. Oculus Go, Quest) (Fig. 1). A core principle of game design is meaningful choice (Gee 2013; Salen and Zimmerman 2004), which empowers the player by giving them the sense that their behavior significantly impacts the game world. Meaningful choice drives player engagement, but it clearly has a comparative relation to consumer behavior. The model will be used to address the question of how Romans shopped in shops by tracking player reactions (e.g. movement patterns) to environmental variables (e.g. layout and furnishing) to understand how shop design facilitated and/or restricted movement into and around the shop space, shaping social interactions. The hypothesis is that placement of a shop counter at the entrance to many Pompeian shops restricted physical access to the interior, forcing commercial transactions to occur in the street where the consumer was on public display. The model will also track gaze paths to investigate how shop décor (polychromatic marbles, painted fresco, religious shrines, etc.) impacted the visual attention of the buyer. Archaeological evidence indicates that the façades of shops at Pompeii were more ornate than their interiors, suggesting that the shopfront reflects conscious marketing strategies for attracting potential buyers on the street.
Pompeii’s commercial landscape is remarkably well preserved and will form the basis for this study (Fig. 2). The existing shop remains can be reconstructed using photogrammetry and 3D modeling software while photographs and drawings from old excavation volumes (e.g. Spinazzola 1953) and online databases (e.g. pompeiiinpictures.com) preserve now faded shop décor (Fig. 3). While it is impossible to reconstruct a Pompeian shop with 100% accuracy, by capitalizing on methodologies already in use in marketing research (e.g. Burke 2018), 3D visualization technology offers an innovative, indirect way to approach questions of ancient consumer experience and behavior that is grounded in ancient evidence.
By emphasizing aspects of continuity and innovation in ancient retail trades, this work contributes to a broader synthesis of retail history. Roman shops can offer new-old ways of thinking about marketing strategies, the evolution of consumer behavior, and retail design. In particular, the project’s novel approach to viewing ancient shops as loci of sociability where cultural meaning and identities were actively produced and publicly displayed offers a fresh understanding of the social value of shops to urban life in ancient Rome, highlighting in turn the important role shops designed as gathering places for social encounters have in maintaining the vitality and civic community of our own urban centers.
Through an interdisciplinary analysis of textual sources, archaeological and art historical evidence, comparative historical materials, and modern retail theory, this paper seeks to move beyond identifying the architectural type to exploring how the structural design of a shop might have influenced the buyers and sellers who once occupied the space. For the last 40 years, marketing researchers have acknowledged that shop environment has a significant impact on consumer behavior (Kolter 1973; Donovan and Rossiter 1982; Bohl 2013). Atmospheric cues within a retail setting, such as layout, décor, color, lighting, music, and smells, affects a consumer’s emotional state and determines shopping behavior (Mehrabian and Russel, 4; Donovan and Rossiter 1982, passim; Bitner 1992, 85). As a result, retailers today manipulate environmental stimuli within their shops in order to attract consumers and increase sales (Bitner 1992, 65; Lewis and Weitz 2011, chapter 17). This study investigates how less ephemeral environmental stimuli, including layout, décor, and lighting, preserved in the remains of shops from Rome, Ostia, and Pompeii, may have shaped buyer-seller relationships, affected consumer perceptions of store image and product quality, and determined purchase and patronage intentions. In doing so, this paper not only promotes a more holistic approach to the ancient Roman shop, but also contributes to an emergent trend in the field which addresses the obvious lacuna of scholarship concerning the retail trade in the ancient economy.
Cicero depicts the political environment of the late Republic as wrought with turmoil, civil war, and class struggles. The scholarship dealing with this transformative historical period still focuses on the elite politicians involved in the strife; and consequently, has largely ignored the political clout of the urban plebs, who nonetheless affected change in government through “popular pressure”, violent riots, and through the organized support of populares leaders (e.g. Yavetz, 1969; Flambard, 1977; Millar, 1998; and Vanderbroeck, 1987). P. Clodius was one of the first senators to recognize the power of and effectively harness the collective political action of the plebs, appealing to the lower classes by proposing and forcibly ratifying legislature, such as the lex Cloidus de collegii. In addition, he fashioned himself as a champion of the people and a member of their society, which was centered both physically and symbolically on the vicus or neighborhood.
This paper argues that the tabernarii (shopkeepers), who numbered among Clodius's supporters (e.g. Cic. Dom.54; 89), were in a unique position to take part in the burgeoning grassroots politics of the period since their shops, which according to both literary sources and archaeological evidence lined the streets and major thoroughfares of the city, placed them at the center of neighborhood life. R. Laurence has recently argued that Roman streets, which acted as local fora, were multi-functional spaces where people congregated to exchange information, take part in religious cult, and engage in commercial activities (2001). Accordingly, any murmurs of discontent and/or resentment felt toward the senate would have first been expressed in the streets and the shops that flanked them. Thus, a shared occupation and the development, albeit informal in this period, of a neighborhood identity may have encouraged tabernarii to organize in support of Clodius’s campaign for tribune in 59 BCE (Nord, 1986, 23). This paper will incorporate modern theories of urban geography and urbanism into its analysis of the occupational group of tabernarii to argue that the urban revolution in Rome, which began in the 2nd c BCE, promoted the role of commerce in urban society. As a result, shopkeepers helped activate grassroots movements, which allowed the plebs urbana a stronger voice in late Republican politics (Lefebvre, 2003, 15).
This paper suggests that shop design was the primary means for the self-representation of Roman shopkeepers. Borrowing from environmental psychology (e.g. Donovan and Rossiter 1982 and Bitner 1992), the author examines artistic representations and the physical remains of shops from Ostia to demonstrate how imperial shopkeepers influenced consumer perceptions of store image, financial security, and product quality through the manipulation of environmental cues within the retail setting (e.g. layout, furnishing, décor, color, signage, etc.). Marketing strategies focused primarily on the shop façade. Wide-open entryways and status indicators like polychrome marble created an appealing and disarming shop image that encouraged patronage and purchasing decisions. The efficacy of shop advertising is in part borne out in the increased number of shops that appear in the commercial landscape of Ostia between the first century B.C.E and second/third century C.E. In addition to addressing a lacuna in the scholarship of the ancient economy, this author challenges traditional models of retail history by establishing the shop – a physical construct of shopkeeper identity – as the principal method of advertising for retailers in a Roman town.
This course will be a mix of lecture, discussion, and workshops and is structured thematically, starting with a general history of retailing and how that has shaped approaches to ancient retailing. Taking primarily a social and cultural approach to ancient commerce, this course explores the questions of where, how, and why ancient Romans shopped. But to explore these questions, we will need to map distribution networks, trace the evolution of the retail trade, scrutinize Roman attitudes toward various forms of retailing, analyze commercial art and architecture, and embody the Roman shopkeeper as well as the ancient consumer to investigate evidence for marketing strategies, shopping behaviors, and consumption practices. Other topics may include politics and religion in the shop, shopping with the senses, and Virtual Reality (VR) applications. We will also be broaching topics that might be difficult to discuss like enslaved labor, the commerce of sex, and how socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity and other identities may have impacted commercial behaviors. Why should we discuss difficult topics in the classroom? Because discomfort is the catalyst of growth. More, censoring discussions of these topics presents a sanitized, often literally white-washed, narrative of Roman history that does not reflect the messy lived reality, especially of vulnerable and marginalized groups. This content can, however, resonate with traumatic experiences that remain unfortunately all too frequent for people living now. We cannot make the ancient material “safe,” but we can make the way we talk about it safe. If you encounter issues of past or current trauma in reading, talking, or writing about the course content, please reach out to me immediately so that we can try to work out solutions that can protect your health while allowing you to complete the course.
Designed according to high impact practices, this course also offers opportunities for students to develop digital skills through a podcasting and 3D modeling assignment, which contribute to furthering the research goals of the Virtual Roman Retail project.
On this January intersession Honors Passport tour, students will explore Sicily's mosaic culture through the lens of its art, architecture, and archaeology. Located in the center of the Mediterranean, Sicily linked the Latin West to the Greek East, Christianity to Islam, and continues today to function as a bridge between Europe and North Africa. Over the last 3,000 years, the island's strategic location invited waves of conquest by foreign powers. Each civilization – Phoenician maritime traders, ancient Greek colonizers, the Roman empire, Byzantine, Muslim, and Norman conquests, Spanish and Bourbon rule, the Expedition of the Thousand, the Allied Invasion – left behind scars, but also contributed the best aspects of their cultures to create a remarkably complex and visually stunning place to receive hands-on training in “reading” visual and material culture as expressions of cross-cultural exchanges.
Every day of the tour will be a learning-filled series of adventures, as students circumnavigate the island, starting and ending in Sicily's bustling capital city Palermo, with trips to the Capuchin Catacombs and the Palatine Chapel. After visiting the Norman cathedral in the seaside village of Cefalù and the Greco-Roman theatre of Taormina, students will hike Mt. Etna, whose constantly smoking peak dominates the landscape. Next the group will stay on the myth-shrouded island of Ortygia in Syracuse and visit the picturesque Baroque town of Noto. In the center of the island, students will explore the ancient Sicel-Greek town of Morgantina and the world-famous mosaics in the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina. On Sicily’s west coast, students will hike down the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, as well as visit the ancient Greek colony of Selinunte, the Arabic Casbah of Mazara del Vallo, and the Punic settlement on Motya. A stop at the majestic Greek theatre in Segesta and the cathedral of Monreale, one of the best examples of Norman architecture anywhere, completes the tour. By the end of the trip, students will understand how Sicily’s multi-layered history developed from prehistory to the modern day and how cultural hybridization – the mixing and synthesizing of individual cultural tesserae – produced a wholly unique Sicilian cultural mosaic.
Roman Reflections will introduce the history and development of Rome as city and as empire, focusing on a variety of topics in Roman culture (e.g., slavery, religion, sex and gender identity) and reading a number of primary texts which will help to illuminate these themes. We will also spend time discussing “Rome” in terms of its portrayal in later cultures: when, where, how, and why has it been used? What does it represent to whom, and what aspects of Roman culture have been celebrated or ignored, for what reasons? Ultimately, our goal is to critically evaluate various kinds of evidence – literary, historical, architectural, archaeological, etc. – in order to build up a nuanced portrait not only of Rome itself, but of its reception and representation over the centuries.
In Urban Space and Cultural Meaning, special focus will be placed on how the megalopolis of Rome developed over time, how it was maintained, as well as how different cultural groups transformed the urban landscape to meet their social, political, religious, and economic goals. The physical components of an urban environment, its public buildings, private houses, plazas, streets, etc. both shape and communicate identity, acting as repositories of the collective memory of a city’s inhabitants. The main aim of this course is for students to develop skills in “reading” Roman material culture (art, architecture, artifacts) within its socio-historical context. Students will be asked to synthesize material from primary sources, secondary literature, archaeological reports, handbooks, and finally – and perhaps most importantly – site visits and autopsy. We will explore comparative materials from other urban centers such as the harbor town of Ostia and the Campanian cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
This syllabus is a specific plan for the initial course the sequence, but because it establishes the thematic organization of the course as a whole, this syllabus serves as a guide for the work of the next three semesters. In each subsequent semester you will receive a detailed plan for that particular term listing lectures, guest lectures, films, discussions, and assigned readings.
Part of the innovative approach taken in H2P is that a three-person teaching team will share each section. In general, there will be two lectures and one discussion, presentation, or demonstration session each week. Each faculty member will thus be responsible for an average of ten (or seven) lectures. Each teaching team will include typically one faculty member from the visual arts, one history faculty member, and one literature faculty member.
The readings listed in the detailed plan for each semester involve to the maximum extent possible primary works encountered in their entirety. Each of the five themes, the SACRED, KNOWLEDGE, SOCIETY, POWER, and VISION, will be introduced by a source document, site, or work of art to which reference will be made over a period of two to three weeks. The lectures, additional readings, and demonstrations will expand upon this source work, reaching out to similar or contrastive phenomena in the broadest possible range of cultures. Of course, readings may be deleted, substituted, or added at the discretion of the teaching team.
Starting in prehistory, this course traces the development of Roman visual and material culture through the Late Antique period, investigating how material objects and visual imagery produced by people shaped society and culture (religion, politics, economy, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, etc.). We will focus on the city of Rome and towns of Roman Italy, but we will also visit other sites from around the Roman World, which at its height spread well beyond the Mediterranean. In addition to introducing you to the iconic architectural monuments and famous works of Roman art, we will also take a bottom-up approach to investigate the objects and images of daily life and marginalized groups within society (e.g. women, slaves, freedmen), emphasizing the diversity that characterized Roman society.
Assignments in the course encourage practical skills acquisition: you will practice stylistic analysis, technical analysis, and sociohistorical analysis. You will learn to synthesize multiple categories of evidence (art, architecture, text, artifacts) to interpret human behavior in past landscapes. And you will engage with various critical approaches to the interpretation of ancient art and archaeology, such as reception, kopienkritik, arte plebea, visual-spatial analysis, and gender studies. This course fulfills the upper-level writing requirement for ART/ARHS majors.
Disce follows the lives of two Roman families: Valeria the shopkeeper’s sub-elite family and Servilius the senator’s elite family. The experiences of these two families open opportunities to discuss potentially difficult topics, such as power, privilege, and inequality, patriarchy, slavery, race and ethnicity, gender, structural violence, mortality and death. Why should we discuss difficult topics in the Latin classroom? Because language has immense power – it both shapes and reflects our cultures. More, censoring discussions of these topics presents a sanitized narrative of ancient Rome that does not reflect the lived reality, especially of vulnerable and marginalized groups. So, if “discomfort is the catalyst of growth,” let’s get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
This content can, however, resonate with traumatic experiences that remain unfortunately all too frequent for people living now. We cannot make the ancient material “safe,” but we can make the way we talk about it safe. If you encounter issues of past or current trauma in reading, talking, or writing about the course content, please reach out to me immediately so that we can try to work out solutions that can protect your health while allowing you to complete the course.
After the midterm, we will turn our attention to the ‘Golden Age’ poets of Rome, translating selections from Vergil, Horace and Ovid all of who were patronized by Augustus and composed works lauding (and sometimes criticizing) his reign. We will conclude the semester with excerpts from the ‘Silver Age’ biographer Suetonius’ Divus Augustus.
Through a close reading of these texts, we will explore various themes, such as, the transition of Rome from a Republic to an Empire, the topography of the ancient city, and Augustan propaganda. In the end, you may judge for yourselves whether or not Augustus deserved the title Pater Patriae. Although attention will be paid to historical and archaeological contexts and, to some extent, literary criticism, the main objectives of this course are to facilitate your ability to READ (not simply translate) a Latin text while building on the grammatical concepts and vocabulary learned in Latin 101 and 102.
While teaching grammar is a key component of Latin language learning, literacy also requires discursive, social, and cognitive practice to understand the cultural and symbolic meaning of the text. It’s not just about what it says but why it says that. To this end, students are expected to have completed LATN 1003 and 1013 or equivalent and must demonstrate a solid grasp on the basic principles of Latin grammar, syntax, and common vocabulary, which we will review, strengthen, and expand upon over the course of the semester. Success in this course does require you to be an active, self-directed leaner. Keep practicing and memorizing word forms and vocabulary! Seek help as soon as you feel like you might be struggling! This bottom-up processing at the semantic and syntactic level will be grounded in discussion and analytical assignments that explore the meaning of the text and its enduring relevance to our own lives and cultures.
So, quare non vivamus a little by reading Petronius’s Satyrica? On the surface, this Latin“novel” offers a bizarre and ribald satire of life in Roman Italy during the early Imperial period (mid-1st c. CE). Petronius has got jokes! The text, however, is also multivocal,including voices that speak in different Latin dialects and offer diverse – especially sub-elite and marginalized – perspectives on the dynamic interplay of social status, power, and agency. Our discussion of the Satyrica will center on freedpeople’s voices in the text and in Roman society to challenge the traditional elite viewpoints that dominate the Latin literary canon and still shape the way we interpret the past and approach Latin language learning today. In the process, you will develop critical literacy skills and deepen your critical consciousness, which will serve you in your college career and life beyond the classroom. Note that while the novel is meant to be comical (although…at whose expense?), it also broaches topics that can be difficult to discuss, including socioeconomic status-driven conflicts, slavery, race and ethnicity, gender, sex, and sexuality, sexual and structural violence, pederasty, mortality and death. Why should we discuss difficult topics in the classroom? Because language has immense power – it both shapes and reflects our cultures. More, censoring discussions of these topics presents a sanitized narrative of ancient Rome that does not reflect the lived reality,especially of vulnerable and marginalized groups. So, if “discomfort is the catalyst of growth,” let’s get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
This content can, however, resonate with traumatic experiences that remain unfortunately all too frequent for people living now. We cannot make the ancient material “safe,” but we can make the way we talk about it safe. If you encounter issues of past or current trauma in reading, talking, or writing about the course content, please reach out to me immediately so that we can try to work out solutions that can protect your health while allowing you to complete the course.