Art History 391B - S-Death in the Roman World

In this seminar we will explore ancient Roman funerary monuments and attitudes about death, memory and commemoration. Our primary focus will be the rich artistic tradition of Roman tombs, their architectural layout and sculptural decoration of portraits, sarcophagi, funerary altars and ash urns, but we will also explore potent images such as the skeleton and the ancestor mask. Roman society was exceptional in allowing widespread access to funerary commemoration across different social levels, so we will also compare the art set up in tombs of the elite to the funerary portraits and reliefs of the freedman class.
Although there are lots of books on death in Rome, most tend to focus either on self-sacrifice, suicide and gladiators in the arena (such as C. Edwards, Death in Ancient Rome, Yale 2007 or D. Kyle, Spectacles of death in ancient Rome, Routledge 1998) or on rites and ceremonies for the dead (V. Hope, Death in Ancient Rome. A sourcebook, Routledge 2007; eadem, Roman death. The dying and the dead in ancient Rome, Continuum 2009). So rather than assign one text, we will be reading a wide variety of sources, mainly articles and book chapters, and using evidence from archaeology, epigraphy, history and literary studies as well as art history.