What is Said’s concept of Orientalism? How can it help us understand the Ancient World in Cinema?

Let’s use the replies to this post to try and develop your own understandings of Said’s discussion of Orientalisms.

How does Said define Orientalism, or discourses of the Orient, in the selection we’ve read? What does he say about it? Direct quotations are welcome in the comments, especially if you follow up with your own analyses of the direct quotations. Be sure to cite the page number you are quoting from.

What are some of the characteristics, values, and concepts that Western thinkers have associated with the idea of the Orient as they have defined it?

How can we turn Said’s ideas of Orientalism towards Herodotus’ Histories?

How can we turn Said’s ideas of Orientalism towards 300?

Can we think of examples of contemporary orientalisms?

Sign up to run discussion for a day

In the second half of the semester, students will begin to be in charge of our class discussion and lectures throughout the semester. I would like to have students sign up as a PAIR  to lead discussion or to give a lecture for 30 minutes of the class period.

These team presentations should:  explore the historical background and ancient primary sources, present Cyrino’s chapter to us all, or introduce us to a new piece of peer-reviewed published criticism or a new tool for analyzing film. Hand-outs, blog posts, or powerpoint presentations are STRONGLY encouraged.

To sign up, comment on this post.

Dates and Films:*

Gladiator                                                Monday, Oct. 18      Students: Connor and Prince

300 (2006)                                              Monday, Oct 25       Students: Keith and Carsen

(this is a presentation about Said’s Orientalism, or close reading of the film with visual and other formal analysis)

Titus (1999)                                            Monday,   Nov. 1        Students: Gavin and Henry

The Trojan Women (1971)                   Mon, Nov. 8th           Students: Alvin and Grace

(a presentation about close reading of the film set alongside Euripides’ tragedy)

A Funny Thing Happened  . . .                Wed, Nov 10                Students: Kyle +  Cade

A Funny Thing Happened . . .              Monday, Nov 15           Students: Jeremy + Hunter

Agora                                                       Mon, Nov 22**           Students: Jason and Chris

* It’s possible that as a class, we may find that these discussion dates shift.

**  First full drafts of your research projects are due Tues, November 23rd, so plan ahead.

Screening # 6: HBO Rome (2005), Rome on television

For our first screening the week of September 27th, I will ask you all to do some additional viewing on your own. Here are the episodes we will discuss in our class meetings.

HBO’s Rome (2005):  a 2 season series that ran on HBO in 2005 and 2007.

Please watch: Season 1. Episode 8: Caesarion; and Episode 10: Triumph; Season 2. “No God can Stop a Hungry Man”

For Monday, Sept 27th I will also ask each of you to read through the critical reviews of HBO’s Rome that I link here and on blackboard from Metacritic. Choose two critic’s (as opposed to user) reviews, and come prepared to present them to your fellow students. 

For Monday, Sept. 27th, you will also discuss how this HBO series re-characterizes Cleopatra. How does she become a character viewers project sexist, imperialist, orientalist, or racist ideas onto? What elements of the Cleopatra icon continue, and what have changed?

Screening # 4: Cleopatras on Screen and in Text

As we begin to study the representation of Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last Ptolemaic pharaoh of Egypt, let’s focus on these questions in our reading and in our screenings.

Silver Denarius of 32 B.C.E with Cleopatra and Mark Antony. from http://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=163651

For Wednesday, as you read Horace, Propertius, and Vergil’s poems about the Battle of Actium, pay attention to what Cleopatra may mean for the Roman imagination. How is she represented? What kind of visual details can we find? How does she act? How do Roman poems variously react to her actions? What kinds of Roman ideologies about Egypt and Cleopatra do we find in these texts? Are there common threads in these poets?

Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra

As we move to our Tuesday screening of De Mille’s Cleopatra and the first portion of Mankiewicz’ Cleopatra, let us for this week think about how 20th Century directors adapted ancient materials (these poets and Plutarch’s Life on Antony) to create a new film version on screen. What elements of the mise en scène drew your attention? How do these aspects create a Roman and Egyptian world effectively? What visual and narrative elements do we find drawn from the ancient texts?

Our third theme will focus on the question of multiple adaptations of the same basic narrative. How does Mankiewicz’ Cleopatra distinguish itself from De Mille’s? What kinds of contemporary resonances did you find in each film?

Screening Number Two: Quo Vadis (1951)

As you (re) watch Quo Vadis, pay particular attention to these viewing questions.

1. What kinds of ideas do Roman characters and Christian characters represent in this film? Can these representations have allegorical implications?

2. Imagine you were a Roman living in this version of Rome. What would your daily life be like?

3.    Films, like texts, are products of their own time. What political stories could this film be telling U.S. audiences in 1951?  Viewers, like readers, bring our own interpretive stances to everything we watch. What political stories, symbols, and allegories do we hear and see as we watch this film?

4. How does the film adapt stories like that of Perpetua in Perpetua’s Passion?

5. How do Pliny’s letters to the Emperor Trajan compare with Quo Vadis‘ representation of the Roman Emperors?

Syllabus for Classics 329: The Ancient World in Cinema

“Welcome to Classics 329: The Ancient World in Cinema”

Course Goals & objectives.

This course examines cinematic and television representations of the ancient Greek and Roman Mediterranean, viewed through a variety of literary and cinematic genres in European and American cinema of the 20^th and 21st Centuries. These films offer an opportunity to reflect on how our many modern visions of the ancient world cast light on our present as much as they represent the past. Students will read selections from Greek and Roman literary texts (in translation) in conjunction with weekly viewings; secondary readings will be drawn from ancient and contemporary criticism and theory. As active viewers and readers of multiple media, students will learn to react to the ways that films and written narratives are constructed, attending to editing and the composition of scenes, and to how a director uses the process of adaptation and the opportunities of film as a medium to create a multi-sensory reception of a written text. Satisfies the Literary Studies Analysis (FSLT) requirement. Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies Historical Perspectives credit (WGHP).

Textbooks, Films, and Supplies

Monica Silveira Cyrino. 2005. Big Screen Rome. Blackwell Publishing.

Online texts: many readings (will be available two weeks before they are due via this course’s Blackboard site or are on e-reserve).

Course Blog: Urancientworldincinema.wordpress.com

Summary of Grading: 

:::::::::::::::::::::(based on 1,000 + points total; subject to modification):::::::::::::::::::

Attendance: 75 points
Class Participation + Viewing Response Questions: 125 points
Lead Discussion: 100 points
2 substantial Blog Posts: 300 points
Blog Comments: 100 points or more
Project Proposal (outline, thesis, annotated bibliography): 100 points
Final Interpretive Research Paper: 200 points

Film Analysis Interpretive Research Paper (9-12 pgs); Proposal; Rough Draft; Final Draft

This final interpretive research paper will be a scaffolded assignment, where each stage helps develop your final paper into a polished piece of writing and a honed argument that engages other critics, primary, and secondary sources.

Substantial Blog Entries (2). Blog as Criticism.

In place of traditional short essays, students in this course will compose two major blog entries (600 words or more, limit 1,000 words). These blog entries might explore in greater depth a theme or topic we’ve raised as a community during our discussions, or might be a response that occurs to a student after a unit or after a particular reading that we did not voice as a group. These blog entries will be substantive in that students will incorporate and properly credit the written work of other critics, and will incorporate illustrative media as well (e.g. photographs, film stills, film clips, links to other online media), alongside their own insights. Like a traditional essay, these blog critiques will persuasively advance a claim or interpretation logically supported with evidence and structured argumentation.

Blog Commenting:

Throughout the semester, I will offer up discussion questions to frame our screenings and to frame or to reinforce our classroom discussions on the blog. Students will be required to comment at least every other week. Be careful, precise, and constructive—no flaming or trolling. These discussion points are to encourage students to engage in dialogues about the readings, or about the themes, critiques, and problems raised by the readings.

Course Blog:
The course blog is: https://urancientworldincinema.wordpress.com. Everyone will have to sign up for WordPress: http://wordpress.com/ by the second week. I will collect the emails you signed up under during class session to add you as authors to the blog. To write a blog post, sign in at: http://dashboard.wordpress.com.

Extra credit: relevant additional blog posts (400 + words, two max.) can receive up to

First Blog Online– No Later than Friday Sept 24, 5 pm

Second Blog Online– No Later than Friday Oct 29, 5 pm

Thesis Statement, outline, and beginning bibliography – due by 5 pm Friday, Nov 12

(via email or in paper copy)

First Draft of Project Due – Tuesday, Nov 23 by 5 pm (By email, and in paper copy to my office)

Final Draft of Project Due – Friday, Dec 10th (in paper copy to my office)

Policies.

1. This syllabus (especially the schedule) is subject to change with notice.
2. Check Blackboard and the blog before class for readings, updates, images, links, etc.
3. To succeed in this course, you must read the readings and watch the films actively, take notes, and create discussion questions for 2–3 hours on your own for every hour spent in class—this means 2–3 hours between each class, at least 6–9 hours per week total.
4. Success in this course depends upon regular attendance.  You are responsible for learning the material covered in class discussions, including any you may miss.  You should be forewarned that the bulk of what we cover cannot be found in any textbook, so attendance and accurate note-taking are especially important. I allow two absences, with no questions asked. After the third absence, your final grade will suffer substantially. In the case of excessive absences (5 or more, or over two weeks of our course) this will mean that you will automatically fail the course.
5. Our classroom and blog are safe and brave spaces. Please be respectful of differences of opinion, be mindful to take responsibility for your own statements, and to distinguish between a comment and the speaker who voices it. Films and criticism about the ancient world raise many controversial issues, and we will work together to create an open-minded, diverse community of speakers and opinions. No forms of hate-speech will be tolerated. 

Disability statement:  If you have a documented disability, I’d like to discuss academic accommodations with you.  Please contact me as soon as possible.

Honor Code:

This course recognizes and adheres to the principles of the University of Richmond Honor Code.  All students are expected to be familiar with the code and follow it consistently.

Monday August 23rd. First Screening. L’Odissea (1911) and Adaptation

As we open our seminar with our first film–Milano Film’s L’Odissea (1911), and with a brand-new music video, Lizzo’s Rumors (2021), feat. Cardi B–we can begin to ask ourselves some of the most important questions for our seminar.

Why film imagined reconstructions and fictional versions of the ancient world?

How can we as viewers find changing representations of the ancient Mediterranean throughout the first century of films?

What changing representations will we meet?

What is adaptation, and how can we think about it?

Each week of the semester, we will view a different film, movie, or TV episode. Here’s a teaser of movie posters for select films and television series.

  

A Roundup of Reviews of HBO Rome

Please edit this blog post to create a round-up of links to the reviews of HBO’s Rome (2005 – 2007) that you read. How do these reviews we read ahead of watching selected episodes color our expectations of what the show will be like? Post links to your reviews in the comments so I can edit this post!

 

 

Putting it together: Roman tropes in Quo Vadis and Spartacus

Now that we have watched two Roman sword-and-sandal epics, we can begin to compare different aspects of the genre. Here are some key questions we’ll return to with each film set in the Roman world.

1. What does this Rome look like?
2. How does this film express social hierarchies and differing statuses in the Roman world? It would be reasonable to think here about visual ways this film represents hierarchies, and about soundscapes, and camera work as well as dialogue.
3. This seems like a silly question, but which famous Roman politicians become characters in the plot of this film?
4. What other aspects of this film strike you as recurring tropes of the genre?