CL AR 541 A: Seminar in Greek and Roman Art

Vision and Viewership in Roman Culture

Fall 2026

T, Th 2:30-4:20pm

Meg Greenfield Room (Denny 257)

Sarah Levin-Richardson

Pronouns: she/her/hers

sarahlr@uw.edu

Office Hours: TBD and by appointment (Zoom option available, too—please email me in advance so I can email you the link)

Office: Denny 227

Description:

In this class, we examine how the Romans discussed their relationship with vision and art. Topics to be explored include literary ekphrasis, sight and disability studies, polychromy, humor, religion, and the viewership of different types of individuals (including those of various legal statuses, ethnic origins, and genders). Case studies will be drawn from literary and artistic evidence. No previous experience is required.

The scholarship of John Clarke, Verity Platt and Curtis Dozier will be featured in advance of their respective visits.

Assignments:

• Participation in class: 50%
• Skills/Corpora Assignment (credit/no credit): 10%
• Research paper preparation (meeting; abstract and bibliography; presentation: credit/no credit): 20%
• Research paper (15-20 double-spaced pages): 20%

Supporting your learning and well being

If you know of something that might affect your learning (technology problems; health or family crisis; religious observance) please contact me as soon as possible, ideally at the beginning of the quarter, so that I can make appropriate accommodations. Below you can find further resources:

• UW Counseling Center: http://www.washington.edu/counseling/
• Husky Health and Well-Being: http://wellbeing.uw.edu
• Disability Resources for Students: http://depts.washington.edu/uwdrs/
  • If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please communicate your approved accommodations to me at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this course.
  • If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations (conditions include but not limited to: mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts), you are welcome to contact DRS at uwdrs@uw.edu or uw.edu. DRS offers resources and coordinates reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities and/or temporary health conditions.  Reasonable accommodations are established through an interactive process between you, your instructor(s) and DRS.  It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law.
• Classics Department Graduate Student Accessibility Fund.
• Religious Accommodations:
  • Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy . Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form .

Schedule of Topics/Readings:

All readings are on canvas or are accessible online. Readings are to be completed before each session.

Week 1

Th Oct 1: Introduction to Sight

• Squire, Michael. 2016. “Introductory Reflections: Making Sense of Ancient Sight.” In Sight and the Ancient Senses, ed. Michael Squire. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 1-35. [canvas]
• Davis, Lennard. 2021. “Foreword.” In Disability Studies and the Classical Body: The Forgotten Other, Ellen Adams. London and New York: Routledge. xv-xix. [https://www-taylorfrancis-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/books/edit/10.4324/9780429273711/disability-studies-classical-body-ellen-adams ; click “read online” near the top right to access the foreword]

Week 2: no classes, but please do the following readings/assignments

T Oct 6: Ancient Polychromy: no class, but please do the following readings:

• Brinkmann, Vinzenz. 2017. “A History of Research and Scholarship on the Polychromy of Ancient Sculpture.” In Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Pp. 12-25. [canvas]
• Brinkmann, Vinzenz, and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann. 2017. “On the Polychromy of Ancient Sculpture.” In Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Pp. 26-51. [read pp. 26-28 (the introduction), skim through images on pp. 28-46, and read pp. 46-end] [canvas]
• Talbot, Margaret. “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture.” New Yorker. 29 October 2018. [canvas]

Th Oct 8: Skills/corpora: no class, but please work on the skills/corpora assignment (under the assignments tab) to be submitted by Sunday October 11

Week 3

T Oct 13: Ekphrasis

• Elsner, Jas´. 2002. “Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis.” Ramus 31: 1-18. [canvas]
• Newby, Zahra. 2009. “Absorption and erudition in Philostratus’ Imagines.” In Philostratus, ed. Ewen Bowie and Jas´ Elsner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 322-342. [canvas]

Th Oct 15: Art and Text

• McKay, Gretchen Kreahling. Review of below in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007-12-18.html)
• Elsner, Jas´. 2007. Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art & Text. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [read pp. 67-112 (“Ekphrasis and the Gaze”) [canvas]

Week 4

T Oct 20: Visual Language

• Hölscher, Tonio. 2004. The Language of Images in Roman Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1-6 [canvas]

Th Oct 22: Visual Language

• Hölscher, Tonio. 2004. The Language of Images in Roman Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapters 7-conclusion [canvas]

Week 5 [meetings]

T Oct 27: Rhetoric

• Squire, Michael. 2014. “The ordo of Rhetoric and the rhetoric of order.” In Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture, ed. Jas’ Elsner and Michel Meyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 353-417. [canvas]

Th Oct 29: Viewership and Humor

• Clarke, John. 2007. Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 B.C-A.D. 250. Berkeley: University of California Press. Intro and chapters 1-4 [canvas]

Friday Oct 30: John Clarke Lecture at 3:30pm

Week 6

T Nov 3: Viewership and Religion

• Platt, Verity. 2020. "Religion and Ritual.” In A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity, ed. Wharton. Bloomsbury. Pp. 63–80. [canvas]
• Platt, Verity. 2016. “Sight and the Gods: On the Desire to See Naked Nymphs.” In Sight and the Ancient Senses. The Senses in Antiquity, ed. Michael Squire. Routledge. Pp. 169-87. [ebook available through UW libraries]
• Heath, Jane. 2016. “Sight and Christianity: Early Christian Attitudes to Seeing.” In Sight and the Ancient Senses, ed. Michael Squire. Routledge. 220-236. [ebook available through UW libraries]

Th Nov 5: Viewership and Religion

• Neis, Rafael. 2013. The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1 and 2. [ebook available through UW libraries]

Friday Nov 7: Verity Platt Lecture at 3:30pm

Week 7

T Nov 10: Viewership and Disability

• Sneed, Debby. Review of below in Bryn Mawr Classical Review: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.02.09/
• Adams, Ellen. 2021. “Introduction.” In Disability Studies and the Classical Body: The Forgotten Other, Ellen Adams. London and New York: Routledge. 1-36. [https://www-taylorfrancis-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/books/edit/10.4324/9780429273711/disability-studies-classical-body-ellen-adams ]
• Graham, Emma-Jayne. 2021. “Interactional sensibilities: Bringing ancient disability studies to its archaeological senses.” In Disability Studies and the Classical Body: The Forgotten Other, Ellen Adams. London and New York: Routledge. 165-191. [https://www-taylorfrancis-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/books/edit/10.4324/9780429273711/disability-studies-classical-body-ellen-adams ]

Th Nov 12: Viewership and Gender

• Laird, Margaret. 2021. “Drawings of Women at Pompeii.” In Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices, ed. Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pp. 247-274. [ebook available through UW libraries]
• Åshede, Linnea. 2020. “Neutrumque et Utrumque Videntur: Reappraising the Gender Role(s) of Hermaphroditus in Ancient Art.” In Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World, ed. Allison Surtees and Jennifer Dyer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pp. 81-94. [canvas]
• Optional: Clarke, John. 2005. “Representations of the Cinaedus in Roman Art.” Journal of Homosexuality 49: 271-298. [canvas]

Week 8 [abstract and bibliography due this week]

T Nov 17: Viewership and Status

• Severy-Hoven, Beth. 2012. “Master Narratives and the Wall Painting of the House of the Vettii, Pompeii.” Gender and History 24: 540-580. [canvas]
• Joshel, Sandra, and Lauren Hackworth Peterson. 2014. The Material Life of Roman Slaves. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2. [canvas]

NB: Wed Nov 18: Medieval Manuscripts

• 10-11:30am: Workshop
• 2-3pm: Lecture

Th Nov 19: Reception

• Singh Dhindsa, Hardeep. 2024. “‘Strange and Uncouth’: Exoticism and Orientalism in British Responses to the Eighteenth-Century Excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum.” Res Difficiles2: 8-29. [on canvas]
• Dozier, Curtis. 2026. The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chapter 5. [on canvas]

Friday Nov 20: Curtis Dozier Lecture at 3:30pm

Week 9

T Nov 24: Viewership and Multiculturalism

• Versluys, Miguel John. 2013. “Material Culture and Identity in the Late Roman Republic ( 200–c. 20).” In Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Republic, ed. J. D. Evans. Blackwell. Pp. 429-440. [canvas]
• Chimirri-Russell, Geraldine. 2008. “Taking an Oblique Point of View: The Challenges of Interpretation and Display in Museums.” The International Journal of the Humanities 5: 115-126. [canvas]
• Riggs, Christina. 2018. “Art and Identity in Roman Egypt.” In Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World, Jeffery Spier, Timothy Potts, and Sarah E. Cole. Los Angles: J. Paul Getty Museum. Pp. 218-223. [canvas]
• Beyond the Nile catalogue entries 138-146, 151, 154-161 [canvas]

Th Nov 26: No Class [Thanksgiving]

Week 10

T Dec 1: Viewership and Blackness

• Derbew, Sarah. 2022. Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1, 5 and 6. https://www-cambridge-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/core/books/untangling-blackness-in-greek-antiquity/5520140757B8E3C8CD5EA8BD4CAFD8A4

Th Dec 3: Oppositional and Resistant Gazes

• hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representations. Boston. (reprinted in Amelia Jones, ed. 2010 [2003]. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. Second Edition. Routledge. Pp. 107-118.) [read pp. 115-131 (“The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”)] [canvas]
• Pandey, Nandini. 2014. “Reading Rome from the Farther Shore: Aeneid 6 in the Augustan Urban Landscape.” Vergilius 60: 85-116. [canvas]

Week 11: Presentations

T Dec 8: workday/ research paper presentations

Th Dec 10: workday/ research paper presentations

Research papers due by midnight on Tuesday Dec 15 via Canvas