Module CLAS1711: Introduction to Greek and Roman Art and Architecture

Department: CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY

CLAS1711: Introduction to Greek and Roman Art and Architecture

Prerequisites

• None.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To equip students with a broad overview of the basic developments in Greek and Roman art and architecture during the period 1000 BC - AD 1000.
• To give students some understanding of a selection of the most important or best-known objects and monuments of Greek and Roman culture.
• To help students to develop skills in different ways of looking at visual material (including painting, sculpture and buildings) and to gain confidence in using the language of visual criticism.
• To enable students to begin to evaluate objects and to make independent stylistic, aesthetic and historical judgments in order to be able to assess visual, as well as textual, evidence for the ancient world.
• To help students to acquire an initial appreciation of how such objects are related to ancient culture and society and of how they have been used, studied and appreciated up to the present day.
• To provide a combination of lectures, seminars, essay tutorials and field trips as a basis for student learning.
• To develop knowledge and practise evaluative skills through essays and seminar presentations and to test these skills by essay and written examination.

Content

• The module, intended to be accessible to all first-year students with some general historical and visual awareness, approaches the different ways in which we look at visual objects and material.
• This introductory module adopts both a chronological and a thematic approach, considering a broad range of material from the early Greek period to the Byzantine age and focusing on the range of approaches that have been used to assess visual material.
• The module will involve close visual analysis of a selection of objects.
• Specific subjects covered include:
• general consideration of the nature of art and architecture, their roles in society, and the status of the artist or architect
• vase-painting
• architectural and free-standing sculpture
• portraiture
• architecture
• decorative arts (including gems and metal-ware)
• A range of different kinds of visual material and selected extracts of literary sources in translation will be studied.

Learning Outcomes

• A knowledge of painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts between 1000 BC and AD 1000, based on an acquaintance with individual examples and some literary evidence.
• Awareness of pertinent issues of scholarly debate relating to visual material, including its classification and evaluation, the status of the artist and/or patron, and the reception of art and architecture in its own time and at later periods by users/viewers.

• An ability to handle a range of methodologies appropriate for an initial understanding of a diverse range of visual artefacts and structures.
• A readiness to look at objects visually and an ability to use a critical vocabulary appropriate for the evaluation of visual material and to make stylistic and aesthetic judgements.
• An ability to start to assess and to raise valid questions in response to critical archaeological and art-historical literature.
• An ability to present ideas and arguments in written form according to academic conventions.

• The skills needed to analyse, evaluate, and synthesise a wide range of evidence, both in character and in chronology, and to select and apply methodologies appropriate to the material discussed.
• The capacity to sustain a clear, well structured, and well-defended argument in written form.
• The ability to respond constructively and imaginatively to visual signs in the world around us.
• The ability and self-discipline to work autonomously, and the capacity for organization required to meet deadlines and to negotiate competing claims on finite resources.
• Facility with key IT resources, in particular word-processors, online databases, and to make profitable and selective use of relevant internet resources.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lectures are appropriate to the imparting of information and of methods of interpretation, concerning both ancient evidence and modern scholarship.
• Seminars on individual examples provide engagement with and informed collective discussion of varieties of visual material.
• Group presentations facilitate students' understanding of methodologies for handling artefactual and written material, their capacity for constructive collaboration with peers, and their ability to initiate and continue informed discussion that engages with visual material and raises a level of academic debate.
• Field trips provide opportunities for direct experience of and confrontation with visual material and for discussion with staff and peers.
• Writing essays enables the assembling and evaluation of material and the formulation of logical and coherent argument, as well as skills in writing coherent, comprehensible and grammatically correct English. An initial essay provides formative practice in developing these skills, while a second essay tests the attainment of such skills and forms part of the summative assessment of the module.
• Tutorials contribute to the critical handling of evidence and facility of discussion and develop skills of essay writing.
• A final examination tests ability to understand and recall material and to focus relevantly on critical issues and to organize knowledge and argument appropriate to questions raised.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Group presentations (combination of group assessment and assessment of each individual participant). Essay, 1500-2000 words.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University