Classical Art & Archaeology

Module code: 7AACK840
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

This MA module will provide an in-depth study of the influences shaping the multiple images and narrative traditions of Alexander the Great, as well as key phases of his reception and redefinition in later cultures. The popular history of Alexander in folklore, literature, art and film will be considered on an equal footing with the development of ancient and modern historiography. In addition, the course highlights his cultural significance in both the Western Christian and Eastern Arabic and Persian-speaking worlds and examines its implications. Discussion and coursework directions can follow ongoing themes, which bridge the weekly topics, such as Alexander and India, imperialist and kingship ideologies, ethnic and national appropriations and narratology.

Module code: 7AACK814
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 

Aphrodite's island lies at the crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Rich in natural resources and strategically located, Cyprus has long benefited from contact with surrounding cultures: the Levant to the east, Egypt to the south, Anatolia to the north and the Aegean to the west. These interactions played a crucial role in the formation of a distinctive, prosperous and fascinating island culture during the prehistoric and early historic periods (c. 7,000-325 BC).

Teaching staff: Dr Will Wootton
Module code: 7AACK818
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

This is a dedicated MA course engaging with Greek and Roman visual and material culture through an in-depth examination of a single source of evidence, mosaics. It covers a large chronological period and geographical area, while exploring the value of mosaics for understanding aspects of the ancient world, the range of approaches employed in modern scholarship as well as the future direction of the discipline.

Module code: 7AACM855
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 

This module investigates the impact of the Roman empire on the societies, cultures and economies of the western Mediterranean (Italy, Spain, North Africa) and north-west Europe (Gaul and Germany) from the first century BC to fourth century AD. It introduces and explores archaeological evidence, both monuments and material culture and, where appropriate, documentary, sources (an ability to read ancient languages is not required). After considering the process of conquest, the creation of provinces and frontiers, it studies different facets of provincial communities, including cities and other settlements, landscapes and agriculture, religious practice and burial rites, cuisine, dress and bodily decoration. It also assesses the impact on provincial life of barbarian invasion and political instability in the late Roman period. Critical traditions in the archaeology of the Roman world are also reviewed.

Module code: 7AACM320
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 

This is a research-led module aiming to follow the anti-theatrical thread in European literature (including theatre itself) and culture from the Greek dramatic texts to the aesthetic and performative explorations of the twentieth century. Major stops/themes include: Greek drama; Plato; the anti-pantomime discourses of imperial and late antiquity; Christians against the theatre in imperial and late antiquity; the infamia of professional actors in Roman society (and possible reverberations of anti-theatrical tendencies in Roman Comedy); English Renaissance Drama and Renaissance theatrical polemic; the social status of actors in eighteenth-century France and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Lettre à Monsieur D'Alembert sur les spectacles; the ferocious attacks on popular entertainment in eighteenth-century London; the alleged cultural degeneration associated with Italian opera in eighteenth-century London; the suspicion of the stage and the actors as reflected in the nineteenth-century English novel (e.g. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park); the furore against gender-bending opera singers (castrati) and male ballerinos in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the revolutionary aesthetic and theatre practice of Bertolt Brecht. Part of the intellectual challenge offered by this module arises from the detection of recurrent patterns, concerns and anxieties across geographical, chronological and cultural borders.

Teaching staff: Dr Fiona Haarer
Module code: 7AACM005
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  written examination/s 

This module offers, to postgraduates who have not had the opportunity to learn ancient Greek in their previous education, an intensive training in an essential skill for their research.

Teaching staff: Professor Charlotte Roueché
Module code: 7AABMB09
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the issues raised by the development of a new literary genre, hagiography, from the fourth century. As well as looking at the wider issues, and reading a considerable number of texts in translation, they will also be expected to analyse the language and content of a specific text (in Greek). In the course of the investigation students will be asked to question assumptions about literary genre, about sources of sanctity, and about textual analysis. They will also need to consider and develop the skills necessary to present material of this kind.

Teaching staff: Dr Dionysios Stathakopoulos
Module code: 7AABZ303
Credit level: 0
Credit value: 20
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

This module aims to provide a broad comparative study of the economic, political, cultural and religious relations between the Byzantine East and European West in the 9th, 10th and early 11th centuries. Through sources such as Liutprand of Cremona's account of his two visits to Constantinople, we will address many of the problems associated with diplomacy: questions of transport, lodging, protocol, reception, translation of official documents and presentation of luxury gifts.

The main focus is on the conflicting claims of two empires, each seeking to legitimate its descent from Rome through traditional ceremonies, costumes and regalia. In this module, we will give particular attention to the growth of Ottonian power in the West, from Otto I's victory on the Lech (955), his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor (962), and the marriage of his son, Otto II, to the Byzantine princess Theophano (972). By comparing these two medieval societies, a key period of European history will be illuminated.

Teaching staff: Dr Tassos Papacostas
Module code: 7AABMB11
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

The module offers the opportunity to acquire a deep knowledge of the evolution, artistic production and monumental heritage of a part of the medieval world that exemplifies developments beyond Constantinople and has generated a lot of recent and incisive scholarship.

The subject matter is approached (i) as a case study of a Byzantine province, looking at its fate in the 'dark age' and medieval period, and (ii) as a prime example of western expansion into the eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the Crusades and later in the context of Venice's commercial empire. The island's history illustrates several important themes in the evolution of the Mediterranean and consequently its artistic and monumental heritage encapsulate and exemplify the principal wider trends (the centrality of Byzantine culture, the introduction of Gothic architecture, the genesis of Crusader art, the impact of the Renaissance). Thus one of the overarching themes is the wider context (Byzantine and/or Crusader, Levantine and/or Mediterranean) which will loom large over the investigation of each topic.

Module code: 7AACM321
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 

This is a research-led module aiming to follow the pro-theatrical voice as heard in European literature (including theatre itself) and culture from the Greek dramatic texts to the aesthetic and performative explorations of the twentieth century. Major stops/themes will include: Greek drama; the pro-pantomime and mime discourses of imperial and late antiquity (Lucian, Libanius, Choricius); Roman Comedy; English Renaissance Drama and Elizabethan defences of the stage; Pierre Corneille's masterpiece L'Illusion Comique, an exuberant defence of actors and the stage; Diderot's famous Paradox of Acting, legendary eighteenth-century tragic actors and the beginnings of a "science" of acting in France; the seminal importance of Lucian's apologetic On the Dance (second century AD) for eighteenth-century dance defences and the birth of the "ballet d'action", a precursor of the classical/romantic ballet; David Garrick's acting "revolution" and the emancipation of acting as a liberal art; twentieth-century explorations in search of "truth" and "self-knowledge" in theatre and acting. Part of the intellectual challenge offered by this module arises from the detection of recurrent patterns in the struggle to legitimate theatre and acting/dancing across geographical, chronological and cultural borders.

Module code: 7AACM730
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

This unique course offers a year of training in Greek epigraphy, taught by experts on all periods, from the archaic to the late Roman: it is taught by scholars from three colleges, King's, Royal Holloway and UCL, and is offered at each college. It is offered in close collaboration with the British Museum, and exploits their collection. The aim is to give students both a training in the practical techniques of epigraphy, experience in dealing with inscriptions and their context, and also practice in the analysis and use of inscribed texts in the study of the Greek-speaking world. The course is designed with an extensive chronological range from the earliest inscriptions of the 8th century BC to the last phases of the significant use of inscriptions in civic life, in the 6th century AD.

Module code: 7AACM830
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

This module studies the development of pottery, vase-painting and other forms of painting in Greece from Geometric to South Italian. While the course is primarily art-historical, subjects to be covered include technique, iconography and myth, and the importance of pottery as an indicator of date, social customs and workshop practice, and the relationship of pottery to sculpture and literature. Consideration will also be given to connoisseurship and varying approaches to the subject. The evidence for lost wall-painting will be assessed. Much use will be made of the collections of the
British Museum.

Module code: 7AACM820
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 

A review of the development of Greek Sculpture from c. 700 BC to the early Hellenistic period, focusing on issues of style, technique, patronage, genre and cultural context. The course develops students' visual skills in recognising and assessing details of technique and iconography, and fosters critical consideration between different forms of visual and textual evidence.

Module code: 7AACK160
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

Greek poetry of the third century BC renaissance is both absorbing and fascinating in itself, and of huge historical signficance for its influence on Roman poetry of the late Republican and Augustan periods, and thus on European literature more broadly. This course offers an intensive study of key poems by three major poets fo the period - Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes - including both complete and fragmentary works, and epigram as well as large-scale compositions. Class time will be devoted to a combination of close reading of texts in the original Greek and discussion of larger issues of interpretation, bearing both on the individual poets, and the cultural environment in which they worked.

Module code: 7AACM220
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

This dedicated MA module aims to introduce Horace as a lyric poet. In his first book Horace offered the reader an exceptional variety of lyric forms and themes (hymns, narratives, erotic, sympotic, and political situations). In addition to seeing how Horace adapted the rich tradition of Greek lyric (and epigram) for Latin lyric, we will particularly concentrate on his poetic style, since one of the issues he faced was the creation of a satisfactory verbal medium for lyric, which had only a slight tradition in Rome. Close attention will therefore be paid to diction, word order and sentence structure. The organization of the individual ode, and the ordering of the poems within the book will also be studied.

Module code: 7AACM015
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 40
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  written examination/s 

A course for students who have completed a beginners' course in Greek, designed to extend their knowledge of the language to the point where they are ready to read substantial texts.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/classics/modules/level7/7AACM015.aspx

Module code: 7AACM731
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 

Prerequisite: Students require a good knowledge of Latin, normally after at least 2 years of study.

This unique course offers a year of training in Latin epigraphy, taught by experts on all periods, from the archaic to the late Roman: it is taught by scholars from three colleges of the university of London, King's, Royal Holloway and UCL. It is offered in close collaboration with the British Museum, and exploits their collection. The aim is to give students both a training in the practical techniques of epigraphy, experience in dealing with inscriptions and their context, and also practice in the analysis and use of inscribed texts in the study of the Latin-speaking world. The course is designed with an extensive chronological range from the earliest inscriptions of the Roman Republic to the last phases of the significant use of inscriptions in civic life, in the 6th century A.D.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/classics/modules/level7/7AACM731.aspx

Teaching staff: Mr Daniel Hadas
Module code: 7AAH1003
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Full-year 
Teaching pattern: 20 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  written examination/s 
1 x 3 hour examination

Latin for Graduates aims to provide students with the translation skills necessary to carry out research for an MA dissertation or PhD thesis in late antique, medieval, or early modern studies. The module consists of intensive instruction in Latin grammar, from the basics to complex sentence structures involving a range of clauses, indirect speech, participles, etc. Students will also read a variety of texts in order to achieve an understanding of the particular features of post-classical Latin. The module is divided into beginning and advanced sections: the beginning section presumes no previous knowledge of Latin, while those students who have studied Latin to GCSE level or above are welcome to enter the advanced section.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH1003.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Tassos Papacostas
Module code: 7AABMB10
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

The course provides an introduction to the varied physical remains of all types left behind by Byzantine civilization: architecture, painting, the so-called minor arts, and manufactured objects. The selection of material and issues to be examined range from the urban and rural landscapes, fortifications, palaces, houses, monasteries and churches, to mosaics, frescoes, sculpture, enamels, ivories, reliquaries, lead seals and pottery as well as traded goods. This wide range of topics will be investigated chronologically as well as thematically from a primarily functional and practical point of view, in order to trace and highlight the changes that occurred over the centuries, signaling different stages in the millennial existence of Byzantium. Each subject will be approached on the basis of case studies that exemplify the nature and problems of the evidence.

Module code: 7AACM290
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 40
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework;  presentation/s; 
In the first part of the course students will be expected to prepare texts for each week and to offer at least one class-presentation or essay. In the second term each student will be given a section of the text to edit with critical apparatus, translation, and commentary on all aspects.

Prerequisites: good intermediate Latin is necessary to take this module.

The course is in two parts. The first term is exploratory: students will read a substantial sample of verse and prose, concentrated in a particular period, normally c. 1100 - 1200 AD (e.g. accounts of the First Crusade and of the Murder of Thomas Becket, Carmina Burana, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Abelard). In the second term the class will learn how to edit a medieval Latin text. The text chosen will be one which (i) has not been published, or critically edited, before; (ii) exists in at least one accessible MS(S) for first-hand collation (i.e. BL or Lambeth; other witnesses may be supplied in microfilm); (iii) is of interest to the current takers of the course.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/classics/modules/level7/7AACM290.aspx

Module code: 7AACK806
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

A topographical and archaeological study of the second century A.D. writer Pausanias' Periegesis tes Ellados with particular reference to Attica, Olympia and Delphi. As well as the life and work of Pausanias, the course will cover the literary, political, and social background to the relations between Greece, Asia Minor and Rome, including the Second Sophistic and the Panhellenion.

Teaching staff: Dr Dionysios Stathakopoulos
Module code: 7AABM111
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20

The aim of the course is to examine how historical, political and visual aspects of the Greek tradition have been seen, presented and appropriated over several centuries. Students will also be expected to engage with broader ideas of reception, and with the methodologies required for research in this area.

Teaching staff: Professor David Ricks
Module code: 7AABM112
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20

Much attention has been devoted in recent years to the construction of 'imagined communities', modern Greece since 1821 being a paradigmatic case. This module (which complements 7AABM111 Perceptions of the past) seeks to explore how such constructions emerge and are then canonized through the poetic tradition, in a country in which poetry has been especially prized, not least for its susceptibility to being read in national (and indeed in nationalist) terms. Covering a representative range of major poets since the initial rising against the Ottomans up to the declaration of war by Greece in 1940, this module seeks to encourage students to interrogate (but not necessarily to disavow) connections between the poetic tradition and the mental map which it constructs of significant, even sacred, places in the modern national memory. Within that memory, the ancient, Byzantine and Revolutionary pasts each have a salience which derives as much from poetry as it does from history – and the aim of the module is help students to explore the relation between the two, on the basis of texts to be studies either in the Greek original or in translation.

Module code: 7AACM560
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

This module uses the extensive archaeological and epigraphic remains from Pompeii and Herculaneum to provide an in-depth understanding of a wide range of historical issues that include urban development and local politics, social structures and relations, economy and production, public and private art and architecture, the Roman family, culture and literacy, gender and sexuality, and health and nutrition. In addition, the module explores the reception of the Vesuvian cities, tracing their impact on contemporary western culture from the 18th century until the present day. The module involves the discussion of ancient sources in Latin.

Module code: 7AACM900
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 40
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

The module is a case study in Roman Imperialism and introduction to the material culture of the Roman empire. It covers the conquest of Britain, its transformation into a Roman province, later changes in its administration and defence, and the impact of incorporation into the Roman empire on the physical environment, religion, economy and society of Britain. The module develops students' ability to understand and use archaeological evidence of all types, and Latin epigraphic sources, for historical reconstruction of processes of social and economic change; the problem of using concepts such as 'Romanisation' is constantly confronted.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/classics/modules/level7/7AACM900.aspx

Module code: 7AACK585
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

This module investigates the main themes and topics of current scholarly interest in the history of Egypt as a province of the Roman Empire (I - III AD) through in-depth study of selected groups of the written and material evidence. The course focuses on the papyrus documents, but also integrates the general archaeological record. The outline programme is flexible and will, if practicable, be tailored to reflect particular interests of the class.

Module code: 7AACM500
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Teaching pattern: Two hours per week, with a mix of lectures and discussion.
Assessment:  coursework 

The module provides an introduction to some of the disciplines, methodologies, problems and themes that may be encountered by those undertaking research work in the field of ancient history. The topics covered range from papyrology, numismatics and archaeology to general issues of method in ancient history. The objective is that students beginning research should be equipped with the knowledge, skills and bibliography that will enable them to develop a research project and pursue it successfully. Seminars are given by staff with personal research interests in the topics discussed. This is the core module for the MA in Ancient History.

Module code: 7AACM280
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

Through a close reading of Tacitus, Annals 13-16, the course combines historical study of the reign of Nero with literary study of Tacitus. Tacitus' language and style are analysed in the context of their creation of a particular portrait of Nero. Tacitus' presentation of the key episodes and issues in Nero's reign is examined and compared with other accounts and evidence to assess the historicity of the Tacitean image of Nero.

Module code: 7AACK410
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

This module studies how the peoples of the ancient Greek world defined themselves in terms of their origin, in the senses of both birth and place. The purpose of the course is to investigate multiple layers of social content embedded in the term 'ancient Greeks'. Engaging with this broad concept, the students learn to expose and explore the patchwork of many civic and territorial identities that underlie the overarching concept of 'the Greeks': regional, ethnic, polis, tribal (also defined by affiliation to kin-groups), and demotic identities.

Module code: 7AACM851
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 

British School at Rome Annual Postgraduate Course
This course is designed to develop postgraduate students' research skills in the study of ancient Rome. It examines the city as a whole - the topography, development and function of the Imperial capital - and analyses selected monuments in terms of their structural history, their architectural characteristics, their place in the development of the urban plan, their social, economic or religious function and their subsequent use and influence.

Module code: 7AABMB07
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 

The reign of Constantine I (306-337) marks a dramatic period of change in the Mediterranean world. Constantine legalised and favoured the Christian church; he adopted the city of Byzantium as his new capital of Constantinople. Both of these moves would come to be seen as determining the course of the following centuries. This reign has therefore been the subject of constant assessment and reassessment. In this course we will look at contemporary descriptions of Constantine; at the emperor's own words; and at other evidence for his activities. We will also look at later interpretations of the reign. In learning about this crucial period, students will be expected to develop their critical skills, and their own independent analysis, in looking at conflicting evidence, much of which is highly opinionated.

Module code: 7AACM230
Credit level: 7
Semester:  Full-year 
Assessment:  coursework 

We will be reading extracts from the whole of Virgil's work, concentrating on the Aeneid, but beginning with the Eclogues and Georgics. Students will be expected to read 300-400 lines of Latin per week, together with one or two articles or chapters from books. The purpose of the class is to acquire an understanding of the shape and character of Virgil's oeuvre, of the main critical issues it raises and of the nature of Virgil's style. The final weeks of the Lent term will be devoted to aspects of the reception of Virgil, according to student interest.