The Life and Legends of Cleopatra VII

Catalog description

Ways certification pending for Aesthetic and Interpretative Inquiry (AII) and Exploring Difference and Power (EDP). The heir of a murderous and flagging dynasty, Cleopatra VII rose to be queen of Egypt when she was just a teenager. She solidified her power by defeating three of her siblings, branding herself a living goddess, and allying diplomatically and romantically with two of the most powerful Roman generals of the age: Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. After losing a war to the future Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, she chose suicide over being displayed as a war prize in his military parade. Roman poets called her "the whore queen," "the Egyptian wife," and "drunk on luck and wine." But even enemies found something fascinating about the charismatic queen. "No humble woman," admits the Roman poet Horace, she was "fiercer for choosing her own death." In this class, we will assess depictions of Cleopatra in literature and art, starting with ancient poetry and historical texts before moving through Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and finally to twentieth century media. In American film, Cleopatra shifts from Shakespeare's lovesick and capricious heroine to the conniving femme fatale, most famously in Joseph Mankiewicz' 1963 epic Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor. A consistent presence in Civil Rights activism, she simultaneously arises in Black American literature and art as a symbol of resistance against imperial domination. "I refuse to be eclipsed by Caesar's shadow and Caesar's sex," writes prolific poet and sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud, "Rome, don't cross me." Throughout this class, we will look closely at depictions of Cleopatra's race and gender, which authors and artists from antiquity onward adapted to their own ends. With consideration of Edward Said's concept of "Orientalism," or pervasive stereotypes about the East as intellectually and morally…