Rome & America

Catalog description

This course explores a range of social structures and contexts, cultural understandings and intellectual practices where the influence of Roman exemplars is discernible in both historical and present-day America. It presents students with Roman and American materials placed in explicit or implicit dialog with one another: e.g., descriptions and discussions of political processes and structures; attitudes towards games, public entertainments, and communal cohesion; rhetorics and vocabularies of public space. Among other tasks and projects, students will stage a 'reimagination' of the Constitutional (Philadelphia) Convention of 1787, which resulted in the United States Constitution. They will also emulate ancient moralists and satirists, who attacked Rome's 'Bread and Circuses' culture, by focusing their attention upon comparable practices in modern America.