ARCH 1710 Architecture and Memory
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World ~ Brown University ~ Spring 2009
Course Description
Why did the Philadelphia police bomb a house in West Philadelphia in 1985 and let the whole neighborhood burn for hours? Why did a Hindu nationalist mob destroy a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya during a riot in 1992? Why is "Ground Zero" such a powerful and evocative place? Why did ancient Babylonian kings dig around to locate the foundations of ancient temples? Why do ruins always draw our interest and curiosity? What stories are told on the walls of ancient, medieval and modern structures?
Buildings and monuments have been mediators of the past, with their powerful presence and often turbulent histories. Stories cling to their stones, which become visible residues of the human lives that shape them. Memories, imaginations and experiences, collectively shared or individual, give meaning to architectural spaces. This course explores the intersections of memory and architecture through various archaeological case studies from the ancient world.
Meets Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:30-11:50 am. Biomed Center 081 (a.k.a. the Abyss)..
Instructor: Ömür Harmanşah
Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies
E-mail: Omur_Harmansah@brown.edu
Ömür's Office Hours: Tuesdays 1-3 pm at the Institute and Wednesdays 11-12 am at Blue State Café (w/ coffee and ginger biscuits - no kidding)
TA: Keffie Weiss
Graduate Student, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
Keffie's Office Hours: Mondays 1-3, Room 302 at the Joukowsky Institute or by appointment
Books ordered at the Brown Bookstore
You are not required to buy any of these books. We will read portions of most of them, and all are recommended readings. A copy of each of these books is placed on Reserve at the Rock.
- Connerton, Paul; 1989. How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Nelson, Robert S. and Margaret Olin (eds.); 2003. Monuments and memory: made and unmade. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London.
- Alcock, Susan E.; 2002. Archaeologies of the Greek past: landscape, monuments, and memories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Van Dyke, Ruth M. & Susan E. Alcock (eds.); 2003. Archaeologies of memory. Ruth M. Van Dyke & Susan E. Alcock (eds.); Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
- Harbison, Robert; 1991. The built, the unbuilt, and the unbuildable. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.
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