Please note: Due to alternative arrangements for teaching and
assessment in place from 18 March 2020 to mitigate against the restrictions in
place due to COVID-19, information shown for 2019/20 may not always be accurate.
Please note: you are viewing unit and programme information
for a past academic year. Please see the current academic year for up to date information.
| Unit name |
Pompeii |
| Unit code |
CLAS32345 |
| Credit points |
20 |
| Level of study |
H/6
|
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
|
| Unit director |
Dr. Hales |
| Open unit status |
Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None
|
| Co-requisites |
None
|
| School/department |
Department of Classics & Ancient History |
| Faculty |
Faculty of Arts |
Description including Unit Aims
Pompeii has played a major part in the way we imagine and relate to the ancient world. The urge to resurrect the city prompted the invention of archaeology and evidence from Pompeii is used in a range of disciplines from ancient history to psychoanalysis. At the same time, the human tragedy of the eruption of Vesuvius has inspired artists of all kinds. The city is at once the backdrop for erotic paganism and Christian judgement. She appeals to the intellectual elite but also to popular culture. This unit explores popular and intellectual responses to Pompeii since its rediscovery in the eighteenth century and how contemporary preoccupations have affected the way that Pompeii has been viewed in academic scholarship, art, fiction and film. We will also ask what we want from Pompeii at the beginning of the twenty first century (a century that Pompeii may well not survive).
Aims:
- To introduce students to the range of academic and creative responses to Pompeii formed from the eighteenth to the twenty first century.
- To make students aware of the social, political and intellectual contexts that have fuelled those responses and their development and evolution over time.
- To explore the ways in which academic and creative responses to Pompeii impinge on each other and relate to each other.
- To develop students’ experience of evaluating and comparing material across a range of media, and of developing their own interpretations of this material and its relevance to the topic.
Intended Learning Outcomes
- be familiar with a range of responses to Pompeii formed from the eighteenth to the twenty first century. Students should be aware of the contexts that have fuelled those responses and their development and evolution over time.
- have had some experience of evaluating and comparing material across a range of media, and of developing their own interpretations of this material and its relevance to the topic.
- be able to use the knowledge acquired in class and through their own reading to construct coherent, relevant and persuasive arguments on different aspects of the topic.
- have had the opportunity to develop their oral and written communication, in seminar discussion and in essays and written exams.
Teaching Information
1 x 2 hour seminar and 1 x 1 hour seminar per week
Assessment Information
one essay of approx. 3,000 words (50%), one 2 hour exam involving passages and images for comment and essay questions (50%).
Reading and References
- Shelley Hales & Joanna Paul (eds) Pompeii and Public Imaginations from its Rediscovery until Today (Oxford) 2011
- Robert Harris, Pompeii (London) 2003
- Mary Beard, Pompeii. Life and Times of a Roman City (London) 2009
- Victoria Coates, Kenneth Lapatin & Jon Seydl eds. The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection (Los Angeles) 2012
- Paul Roberts, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London) 2013
- Lord Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834)
