ARTH 301-303 Undergraduate seminar: Architecture and Identity

Tuesdays 3:00-6:00 p.m., JaffeBuilding 201

Instructor: Robert Ousterhout (office: 208 Jaffe; )

Course Requirements:

  1. Class participation (40% of grade)
  2. Midterm take-home essay, assigned 9 October; due 23 October (20% of grade)
  3. Seminar paper, 20m-minute version presented in class 4 December; full version submitted by 19 December (40% of grade)

Textbooks (available at PennBookCenter):

  • Mary Beard,The Parthenon (Harvard, 2003)
  • Simon Goldhill, The Temple of Jerusalem (Harvard, 2005)

Other readings:

  • All books listed will be on reserve in Fisher Fine Arts Library
  • Articlesmarked [JSTOR] are available on the web
  • Articles marked [BB] will be available on the course Blackboard site

Course Schedule:

[Note: Each meeting will be divided between presentation of new material and class discussions based on readings]

11 September:

Introductory discussion: the construction of identity

Reading:

  • Daniel Chandler, “Semiotics for Beginners,”

Lecture: Washington, D.C., and national identity

Reading:

  • Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (Yale, 1992), 3-67 [BB]

18 September:

Discussion: What does Washington Mean?

Readings:

  • Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (Yale, 1992), 3-67
  • James Thomas Flexner, “The Great Columbian FederalCity,” American Art Journal2 (1970), 30-45 [JSTOR]
  • C.M. Harris, “Washington’s Gamble, L’Enfant’s Dream: Politics, Design, and the Founding of the National Capital,” William and Mary Quarterly 56/3 (1999), 527-64 [JSTOR]
  • Kirk Savage, “The Self-Made Monument: George Washington and the Fight to Erect a National Memorial,” Winterthur Portfolio 22/4, 225-42 [JSTOR]

Lecture: Athens and the Acropolis

Readings:

  • Mary Beard, The Parthenon
  • Christopher Ratté, “Athens: Recreating the Parthenon,” Classical World 94 (2003), 41-55
  • Robin Rhodes, Architecture and Meaning on the Acropolis (Cambridge 1995)

25 September:

Discussion: Contrasting Readings of the Past

Readings:

  • Mary Beard, The Parthenon
  • Pericles’ Funeral Oration, from Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War [BB]
  • J.J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge, 1972), esp. 64-110

Lecture: Contesting Identities: the Parthenon as Church and Mosque

Readings:

  • Mary Beard, The Parthenon, esp. chapter 3
  • Robert Ousterhout, “‘Bestride the Very Peak of Heaven’: The Parthenon in the Byzantine and Ottoman Periods,” The Parthenon from Antiquity to the Present (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005), ed. Jenifer Neils, 292-325 [BB]

2 October:

Discussion: Nationalism and Tourism on the Acropolis

Readings:

  • Mary Beard, The Parthenon, esp. chapters 4-5
  • Dimitris Philippides, “The Parthenon as Appreciated by Greek Society,” in the Parthenon and Its Impact in Modern Times, ed. Panayotis Tournikiotis (Athens, 1994), 278-308
  • Richard McNeal, “Archaeology and the destruction of the later Athenian acropolis,” Antiquity 65 (1991), 49-63 [JSTOR]
  • Yannis Hamilakis & Eleana Yalouri, “Antiquities as symbolic capital in modern Greek society,” Antiquity 70 (1996), 117-29 [JSTOR]

Lecture: Persepolis: Good and Evil Identities (film: Flame of Persia)

Reading:

  • W. Lawrence, “The Acropolis and Persepolis,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 71 (1951), 111-119 [JSTOR]
  • Henri Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (Harmondsworth, 1977), 350-78

9 October:

Discussion: Who owns the Past?

Readings:

  • Mary Beard, The Parthenon, esp. chapter 6
  • Dorothy King, The Elgin Marbles (London, 2006)
  • Yannis Hamilakis, “Stories from exile: fragments form the cultural biography of the Parthenon (or ‘Elgin’) marbles,” World Archaeology 31/2 (1999), 303-20[JSTOR]
  • Perusal of websites on the ownership of the Parthenon Marbles

Lecture: Jerusalem, city of the Temple

Reading:

  • Simon Goldhill, The Temple of Jerusalem

23 October:

Discussion: Architecture and religious identity

Reading:

  • Simon Goldhill, The Temple of Jerusalem

Lecture: Jerusalem as a Christian city (church of the Holy Sepulchre)

Readings:

  • Robert Ousterhout, "The Temple, the Sepulchre, and the Martyrion of the Savior," Gesta, 29 (1990), 44-53 [JSTOR]
  • Martin Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Sutton, 1999)

30 October:

Discussion: Medieval perceptions of Jerusalem (with guest Lucas Wood)

  • Robert Ousterhout, “Architecture as Relic and the Construction of Sanctity: The Stones of the Holy Sepulchre,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 62 (2003), 4-23 [BB]
  • Idem, “Flexible Geography and Transportable Topography,” The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art (Jerusalem, 1998), 393-404 (published as Jewish Art 23-24 [1997-98]) [BB]
  • John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades ((Warminster: Aris & Philips, 1977), selections
  • J. Wilkinson, et al., Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099-1185 (London, 1988), selections

Lecture: Muslim Jerusalem (the Dome of the Rock)

Reading:

  • Oleg Grabar, The Shape of the Holy (Princeton, 1996), esp 52-116

6 November:

Discussion: Nationalism and religious identity in modern Jerusalem

Readings:

  • Moshe Safdie, Jerusalem the Future of the Past (Boston, 1989), selections about Western Wall
  • Nadia Abu el-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago, 2001), esp. chapters 7-8

Lecture: Imperial Rome: the city of Augustus (guest: Lothar Haselberger?)

Readings:

  • Diane Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge, 1996), selections
  • Lothar Haselberger, Urbem Adornare: Rome’s Urban Metamorphosis under Augustus (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 64), selections

13 November:

Discussion: the Pantheon and the Forum of Trajan

Readings:

  • William MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire, I (Yale, 1982), 94-121
  • James, E. Packer, The Forum of Trajan in Rome (California, 2001), esp. 4-17, 174-91

Lecture: Christian Rome, St. Peter’s basilica and the conversion of Rome

Readings:

  • Richard Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics (Berkeley 1983), chapters 1 and 4
  • Idem, Rome: Profile of a City 312-1308 (Princeton, 2000), esp. 3-58
  • Dale Kinney, “The Church Basilica,” Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 15 (2001), 115-35 [BB]

20 November:

Discussion: Mussolini’s new Rome (guest: Valentina Follo)

Readings:

  • George Mras, “Italian Fascist Architecture: Theory and Image,” Art Journal 21 (1961), 7-12 [JSTOR]
  • John Agnew, “The Impossible Capital,” Geografiska Annaler 80 B (1998), 229-40 [JSTOR]
  • Medina Lasansky, The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (PennState, 2004), selections

Lecture:Constantinople, foundation of a Christian and imperial capital

Readings:

  • Cyril Mango, “The Development of Constantinople as an Urban Centre,” Studies on Constantinople(Ashgate, 1993), I:117-36 [BB]
  • Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge, 2004), esp. 1-97
  • Robert Ousterhout, “Sacred Geographies and HolyCities: Constantinople as Jerusalem,” Hierotopy: The Creation of Sacred Space in Byzantium and Medieval Russia, ed. A. Lidov(Moscow, 2006), 98-116 [BB]

27 November:

Discussion: the meaning of Hagia Sophia

  • Cyril Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453: Sources and Documents (Prentice-Hall, 1972), texts by Procopius, Paul the Silentiary, Narratio de S. Sophiae
  • Cyril Mango, Hagia Sophia: a vision for empires (Istanbul 1997)
  • W.E. Kleinbauer, et al., Hagia Sophia (Scala, 2004)

Lecture: From Constantinople to Istanbul

Readings:

  • Speros Vryonis, Jr., “Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul: Evolution in a Millennial Imperial Iconography,” in the OttomanCity and Its Parts: Urban Structure and social Order, eds. Irene Bierman, et al. (New Rochelle, 1991), 13-52 [BB]
  • Gülru Necipoğlu, “The Life of an ImperialMonument: Hagia Sophia after Byzantium,” Hagia Sophia from the Ages of Justinian to the Present, eds. R. Mark and A. Çakmak (Cambridge, 1992), 195-225 [BB]
  • Robert Ousterhout, “The East, the West, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture,” Gesta 43/2 (2004), 167-78 [BB]

4 December:

Final Discussion: The meaning of the past in an uncertain present

Summary presentations of seminar papers (20 minutes each)

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