Making it: Ancient Rome

Catalog description

This course will focus on the artists, architects, and craftspeople in order to consider how things were made in ancient Rome. The course modules will introduce students to classes of materials and categories of crafts and craft products . A methodological thread that will link course modules together involves a consideration of the costs, economics, and logistics of “making”, thereby providing a comparative framework that allows students to interrelate various, disparate materials categories in order to glimpse something of the larger materials-focused reality of the ancient Roman world. This course envisions an on-the-ground experience in Rome and environs during the spring break period that will expose students to materials in person and allow for one or more practica that correspond to approaches and methodologies that will have already been introduced in the classroom in Binghamton.