This is a preliminary format for our weekly schedule. Subject to substantial changes, ripe for contemplation... Each week, we will be focused in studying specific case studies of pictorial narratives of antiquity. Tuesday meetings will involve a lecture and discussion of the relevant historical-cultural context and in Thursday meetings, we will discuss and work workshop-style on a particular monument (or set of artifacts).
Week 1. Sept 4. Introduction: how does one tell stories with pictures? The idea of the story-board.
- Eisner, Will; 2008. Graphic storytelling and visual narrative. New York: Norton and Company. (Handout)
Optional reading for future reference:
- Altman, Rick; 2008. "What is narrative" in A theory of narrative. Columbia University Press, 1-28.
- Holliday, Peter J.; 1993. "Introduction" in Narrative and event in ancient art. Peter J. Holliday (ed.). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 3-13.
Week 2. Sept 9-11. Origins of the image: telling stories in pictures...
Tuesday: Monuments, Memory and Narrative: the architectural context of storytelling.
Readings
- Kemp, Wolfgang; 2003. "Narrative" in Critical terms for art history. Robert S. Nelson (ed.). The University of Chicago Press, 62-74. (Handout)
- Hugo, Victor (1831). "This will kill that" in Notre Dame de Paris. Trans. John Sturrock. Penguin 1978, 188-202.
Thursday: Hunter-gatherers, shamans and cave paintings: looking for stories on rocks. Is this really "art"? Palaeolithic cave paintings from South Africa.
Readings
- Lewis-Williams, J. David; 2001. “South African shamanistic rock art in its social and cognitive contexts,” in Archaeology of shamanism. Niel S. Price (ed.). London and New York: Routledge, 17-39.
- Taçon, Paul S. C. and Sven Ouzman; 2004. “Worlds within stone: the inner and outer rock art landscapes of northern Australia and southern Africa,” in The figured landscapes of rock art: looking at pictures in place. C. Chippindale and G. Nash (eds). Cambridge University Press, 39-68.
Week 3. Sept 16-18. Rituals and war: Early Mesopotamian visual narratives -The Uruk Vase from Warka and the Stele of Eannatum (vultures) from Tello. --->Discussion page
Tuesday
Download Readings ~ Study Images
- Roaf, Michael; 1990. "The urban explosion" in Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. Facts on File, 58-77.
- Schmandt-Besserat, Denise; 2007. "The Uruk vase: sequential narrative" in When writing met art : from symbol to story. Austin : University of Texas Press, 41-46.
- Bahrani, Zainab; 2002. “Performativity and the image: narrative, representation and the Uruk vase,” in Leaving no stones unturned: essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in honor of Donald P. Hansen. E. Ehrenberg (ed.), Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, Indiana, 15-22.
Thursday
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- Winter, Irene J.; 1985. “After the battle is over: the stele of the vultures and the beginning of historical narrative in the art of the ancient Near East”, Studies in the History of Art. 16:11-32.
- Bahrani, Zainab; 2008. “Image of my valor,” in Rituals of war: the body and violence in Mesopotamia. MIT Press: Zone Books, 131-158.
Week 4. Sept 23-25. From the underworld with love: Pictorial narratives of Early Egypt.
Tuesday: The Narmer Palette
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- Davis, Whitney 1993. "Narrativity and the Narmer Palette," inn Narrative and Event in Ancient Art. Peter J. Holliday (ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Thursday: Private lives: Old kingdom elite tombs from Saqqara
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- Janosi, Peter; 1999. "The tombs of officials: houses of eternity" in Egyptian art in the age of the pyramids. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 27-40.
Week 5. Sept 30-Oct 2. The paradise painted: Minoan frescoes at Thera and Knossos.
Tuesday: Introduction to Aegean Bronze Age and its visual culture
- Preziosi, Donald, and Louise Hitchcock; 1999. Aegean art and architecture. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 89-135.
- Rehak, Paul; 2002. "Imag(in)ing a women's world in Bronze Age Greece: The frescoes from Xeste 3 at Akrotiri, Thera"] in Among women: from the homosocial to the homoerotic in the ancient world / edited by Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Lisa Auanger. Austin : University of Texas Press, 34-59.
- Doumas, Christos; 1992. The wall paintings of Thera. Athens: The Thera Foundation. (I am putting this on the reserve shelf in the Joukowsky institute Library, please stop by to look at pictures)
Download Readings ~ Study Images
Thursday: Minoan frescoes in Akrotiri, Thera: The West House
Optional reading:
Download Readings ~ Study Images
Sept 30: Museum Paper drafts returned to you by Writing Fellow Nathan.
Week 6. Oct 7-9. Theater of the world: Queen Hatschepsut's complex at Deir el Bahri.
Tuesday: Architecture, theatricality, drama
- Arnold, Dieter; 2005. "The temple of Hatshepshut at Deir el-Bahri" in Hatshepsut : from Queen to Pharaoh. Catharine H. Roehrig with Renée Dreyfus and Cathleen A. Keller (eds). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 135-140.
- Roth, Ann Macy; 2005. "Hatshepshut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri: architecture as political statement" in Hatshepsut : from Queen to Pharaoh. Catharine H. Roehrig with Renée Dreyfus and Cathleen A. Keller (eds). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 147-151.
- Liverani, Mario; 2001. "Hatshepsut and Punt: Trade or tribute?" in International relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600-1100 BC. Palgrave, 166-169.
Thursday: Egyptians representations of the "other": Punt relief program in the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepshut at Deir el-Bahri
- Harvey, Stephen P.; 2003. "Interpreting Punt: geographic, cultural and artistic landscapes" in Mysterious Lands. David O'Connor and Stephen Quirke (eds.). UCL Press, 81-92.
- O'Connor, David; 2003. "Egypt's view of others" in Never had the like occured: Egypt's view of its past. John Tait (ed.). UCL Press, 155-185.
Download Readings ~ Study Images
Oct 7: Museum Paper final drafts due to Omur.
Week 7. Oct 14-16. Assyrian palace reliefs - Assurnasirpal II's Palace at Nimrud/Kalhu
Oct 14 -Tuesday: no class.
Thursday: Introduction to Assyrian pictorial narratives
- Roaf, Michael; 1996. "Assyria and its rivals" in Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. Oxfordshire, 159-191.
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Thursday: Museum of Fine Arts and discussion with Prof Irene J. Winter at the Art and Empire exhibit galleries
- Winter, Irene J.; 1981. "Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs", Studies in Visual Communication 7: 2-38.
- Winter, Irene J.; 1997. "Art in empire: The royal image and the visual dimensions of Assyrian ideology," in Assyria 1995. Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Simo Parpola & R.M. Whiting (eds.). Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 359-381.
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Week 8. Oct 21-23. Bronze Gates of Balawat: the map of the world. Bronze repousse reliefs of Shalmaneser III.
Tuesday: Representations of landscapes as ideological discourse
- Marcus, Michelle I.; 1995. “Geography as visual ideology: Landscape, knowledge, and power in Neo-Assyrian art,” in Neo-Assyrian geography, M. Liverani (ed.), Roma: 193-202.
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Thursday: Bronze reliefs of Balawat gates: the map of the world
- Harmansah, Omur; 2007. “Source of the Tigris: event, place and performance in the Assyrian landscapes of the Early Iron Age,” Archaeological Dialogues 14.2 (December): 179-204.
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Oct 23 Midterm take-home distributed- due Monday Oct 27.
Week 9. Oct 28-30. The story of Athena and her peplos: Panathenaia on the Parthenon
Tuesday: Festival and the Polis- Panathanaia in Athens
- Hurwit, Jeffrey M.; 2005. "Space and theme: the setting of the Parthenon" in The Parthenon: from antiquity to the present. Jenifer Neils (ed.). Cambridge University Press, 9-33.
- Neils, Jenifer; 1992. "The Panathenaia: an introduction," in Goddess and the polis: The Panathenaic festival in ancient Athens. Jenifer Neils (ed.). Princeton University Press, 13-27.
Thursday: Narrating the polis: Panatheneic frieze on the Parthenon
Week 10. Nov 4-6 Of giants and really cool warriors: The altar of Zeus at Hellenistic Pergamum.
Tuesday: Attalid Pergamon and the drama of urban life
- Pollitt, J.J. 1986. "The sculpture of Pergamon," in Art in the Hellenistic Age. Cambridge University Press, 79-110.
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Thursday: Telephos Frieze: myth, time and the city
- Stewart, Andrew 1996. "A Hero's Quest: Narrative and the Telephos Frieze," in Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar, vol. 1, ed. Renee Dreyfus and Ellen Schraudolph (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996.
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Week 11. Nov 11-13. Power of images: narrative in late Republican-Early imperial Rome- Altar of Peace (Ara Pacis)
Tuesday
Thursday
- Kleiner, Diana E.E.; 2005. "Semblance and storytelling in Augustan Rome," in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus. Karl Galinsky (ed.). Cambridge University Press, 197-233.
Week 12. Nov 18-20. The (sad) story of an emperor: Trajan's column in Rome
Image Gallery for the Column of Trajan ~ Download Readings
Tuesday:
- Brilliant, Richard. 1984. "The column of Trajan and its heirs: helical tales, ambigious trails" in Visual narratives : storytelling in Etruscan and Roman art. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 90-123.
Thursday:
Nov 25. Back to the story board: what is narrative?
November 26-30. Thanksgiving recess. No class
Week 14. December 2-4. Presentation of student projects (Paper drafts due to Nathan and Omur).
December 9 –Final paper drafts returned to you by Nathan and Omur
December 16- Final final papers due.
