CLC 3301G/IT 3340G - ROME: THE ETERNAL

CITY

Winter 2014

Anti-requisite(s): CLC 2100/Ital 2100 Extra Information: 3 hours, 0.5 course. Classes: Monday 1:30-11:30

Wednesday 9:30-10:30

Office hours: Tuesday 1:00-2:30, UC 258

Instructor Mark breakdown Professor Cristina Caracchini 519.661.2111 [x.85897] ccaracch@uwo.ca

a. active participation 10% b. midterm 25% c. group presentation 15% d. take home essay 20% e. final exam 30%

Our course stands at the crossing of multiple disciplines and will lead you to identify and map traces of the past in the city’s contemporary urban landscape and daily life. All roads lead to Rome. Were you really to travel to Rome, you would step on streets

where, over 2000 years ago, you would have heard conversations held in Latin. You could eat in a restaurant built upon the ruins of the Theater of Pompey whose millenary columns hold the roof over your head. You would meet elegantly dressed people (ah, the Italian style!) coming out of Sunday services just as they would from fashion magazines. They have just left their alms in the box, near Caravaggio’s Baroque fresco in which Saint Mathew is busy counting the tax money he has

collected. You could sleep near Piazza di Spagna, just like Byron, Hemingway, Shelley, and so many others did. You would visit the humble Saint Callisto Catacombs where the first Christians hid, and be humbled by the grandiosity with which art, history and faith have empowered the Vatican. By taking this course, you will go on a virtual journey. You will explore the city’s present and recent past through their cinematic representations; you will visit the Vatican’s main museums through their virtual web portals ; by reading the pages of

Rome’s famous visitors, such Goethe, you will experience the amazement of travelling among architectural must sees (like San Pietro, the Colosseum and the Pantheon) and artistic masterpieces (including Raffaello’s and Michelangelo’s) and learn to recognize their stylistic features; in the pages of Standhal ‘s chronicles you will read the love and heroism displayed in the fight for a united Italian nation. You will also laugh with the verses written in dialect by a XIX century Roman resident such as Belli; meet Celestine V, the Medieval Pope whose abdication inspired playwrights and artists, and you will get to know his great enemy, Boniface VIII, the Pope that Dante depicted in Hell. In the lines of its Latin poets, you will enjoy meals “20 centuries old”, sitting at the table of Roman patrons and hearinf the hustle and bustle of the Eternal City, that hustle and bustle that will resonate, twenty centuries later, in Pasolini’s works.

Learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

-Engage in visual interpretations of the social and urban space through films and other

media

-Identify in the synchronic texture of the city the traces of its diachronic development and

apply this methodology to examine the complexity of the Italian urban landscape

-Use different media and genres to reconstruct the history of Rome from Latin Antiquity

to Contemporary days

-Discuss the role of emblematic historical figures crucial for the destiny of their city and

the Western world, such as Caesar, Boniface VIII, the Borgias.

-Create a case study that analyzes the coexistence of the sacred and the secular by

examining the works of artists, writers and directors such as Bernini, Michelangelo,

Raffaello, Virgil, Belli, Silone, Fellini, Moretti …

-Assess the interplay between artistic endeavors and economical, political and religious

power.

-Reflect on the concepts of museum, collection, original and copy.

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Our lessons will unfold according the following order:

Screening of Federico Fellini’s Roma

A ) The foundation

The origins, as told by Livy and sung by Virgil, and daily life in the Roman Empire according to Martial epigrammatic poetry.

Local voices from the past:

1) Martial 2) Livy: The histories 3) Virgil, The Aeneid.

B) The Papacy and its Art

The spiritual and temporal power of the Popes from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The fight against Heresy. (see READER) An irreverent and disenchanted Nineteenth century portrait of the Papal Rome. Raffaello and the Vatican Rooms. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Baroque masterpieces by Caravaggio.

Modern gaze on the past:

Silone, Ignazio. The Story of a Humble Christian.

Film screening: Moretti, Nanni. Habemus Papam

Local voices from the past:

Giuseppe Belli, selected Sonets . Screening of Roma Barocca.

C) History through the tales of Rome’s visitors

Eighteenth and Nineteenth century German and French appreciation of the Eternal city.

External gaze:

1) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Italian Journey.

2) Stendhal, Three Italian Chronicles.

D) The Open City and its people

1) Rossellini, Roberto. Roma, città aperta.

2) Pasolini, Pier Paolo, The Ragazzi

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

A READER prepared by the instructor and the following books will be available at the Campus Bookstore. A detailed list of required reading, critical and theoretical, included in the reader, will appear in detail on the course calendar:

Rome. Art and Archaeology. Ed. by Andrea Augenti. Riverside Book Co: 2000.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Italian Journey: 1786-1788. Trans. W. H Auden and

Elizabeth Mayer. Penguin, 1962. Print.

Silone, Ignazio. The Story of a Humble Christian. Trans. William Weaver. New York,

Harper & Row: 1971.

Stendhal, ‘’Vanina Vanini’’ in Three Italian Chronicles.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo The Ragazzi, New York: Carcanet. 1986.

Attendance and Participation:

Students are expected to maintain regular attendance and participate actively in class. Should you miss a class, you will be responsible for inquiring with your classmates in order to keep up with the course.

Cellular phones must be turned off during class. Laptops can be used for the sole purpose of taking notes. Use of laptops for purposes other than taking notes (i.e., to access the Internet, check email, watch videos, play games, etc.) is distracting to the instructor and to other students and will not be tolerated. Text messaging during class is disruptive and is strictly not allowed

Prerequisites

Students are responsible for ensuring that their selection of courses is appropriate and accurately recorded and that all course prerequisites have been successfully completed, and that they are aware of any antirequisite course(s) that they have taken. If the student does not have the requisites for a course, the University reserves the right to remove the student from the course and to delete it from the student’s record. This decision may not be appealed. A student will receive do adjustment to his or her fees in the event that he or she is dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a major academic offense (see Scholastic Offense Policy in the Western Academic Calendar). Plagiarism is the inclusion of someone else's verbatim or paraphrased text in one's own written work without immediate reference. Verbatim text must be surrounded by quotation marks or indented if it is longer than four lines. A reference must follow right after borrowed material (usually the author's name and page number). Without immediate reference to borrowed material, a list of sources at the end of a written assignment does not protect a writer against a possible charge of plagiarism. This also applies to work facilitated or written for students by third parties. The University of Western Ontario uses a plagiarism-checking site called Turnitin.com.

Absenteeism

Students seeking academic accommodation on medical grounds for any missed tests, exams, participation components and/or assignments must apply to the Academic Counseling office of their home Faculty and provide documentation. Academic accommodation cannot be granted by the instructor or department.

UWO's Policy on Accommodation for Medical Illness

(https://studentservices.uwo.ca/secure/index.cfm)

Downloadable Student Medical Certificate (SMC): https://studentservices.uwo.ca under

the Medical Documentation heading