Module CLAS2561: IMAGES OF SLAVERY

Department: CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY

CLAS2561: IMAGES OF SLAVERY

Prerequisites

• Either (CLAS1601) 'Remembering Athens' or (CLAS1301) 'Monuments and Memory in the Age of Augustus'.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• Designed as an intermediate interdisciplinary exercise in the study of an important aspect of ancient Greek and Roman society.
• It is designed to develop the interdisciplinary approach introduced in the first-Year plenary courses 'Remembering Athens' and Monuments and Memory in the Age of Augustus', but to differ from them in offering a precise focus on one diachronic topic rather than a discrete historical period.
• It is intended to complement other second-level courses offered within the Classics department, especially the 'Traditions of Ancient Epic' module which is compulsory except for Ancient Historians, and to prepare students for advanced level modules with a heavier theoretical element, such as 'Women in Ancient Greek Literature and Society'.

Content

• This module studies the way in which slaves and slavery were represented in ancient Greek and Roman Society, using sources extending chronologically from Homeric epics until the Roman imperial novels of Petronius and Apuleius.
• Its primary focus is on the ways in which slavery was imagined - i.e. how ancient Greek and Roman authors and artists thought about and represented slavery, whether through realistic description of the lives of slaves, theatrical stereotypes, generic conventions, or philosophical argument.
• It discusses texts which both defend and support slavery as a system, and uses some comparative evidence from other slave societies to ask whether the subjective experience of the ancient slave can be accessed by modern scholarship.

Learning Outcomes

• The student should have a knowledge of the fundamental texts and artefacts discussing and representing slavery from Homeric epic until the Roman imperial novel, a grasp of the main theoretical models within slavery studies (the social death model, the chattel model), and some acquaintance with comparative material from other slave societies, especially those represented in the Bible, and operated in the British imperial colonies and in North America.

• The student should have acquired the ability to distinguish between subjective and objective narratives of slavery, and between realistic and generically determined modes of representation, and to evaluate critically and compare the evidence from different types of source material.

• The student will develop skills in written prose argumentation by being required by the mode of assessment (5000-word essay) to develop the ability to sustain an extended argument, and will be encouraged to acquire an appreciation of the possibilities and limitations of different languages, and translations, in the expression of mechanisms of social control.

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

• Most of the teaching will be done in weekly lectures, to ensure a wide basis of shared knowledge, supplemented by four seminars in which students will be encouraged to explore contracting views of the evidence.
• Since the course is heavily geared to acquiring skills in the comparative evaluation of evidence, the assessment will be entirely by written assignment entailing the comparison of selected items of text and visual image (gobbets).
• There will be one formative and one summative piece of written work, of 2,500 words maximum length.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

One formative essay (by beginning of term 2). 5,000 words maximum length).

■ 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