The goals of the class are:
to learn more about Greek art, particularly vases but also sculpture, coins, architecture and other media;
to investigate the roles such works of art played in ancient Greek society;
to consider how scholars and students use works of art and other sources to learn about ancient society;
to become familiar with scholarly research techniques, especially the use of computer databases in the humanities; and
to gain experience presenting the results of your inquiries to an audience, and discussing the results of other people's presentations.
The required books for the course are Rasmussen and Spivey, Looking at Greek Vases (Cambridge, 1991) and Frank J. Frost, Greek Society (D.C. Heath & Co., 1987). Both are available at the University Bookstore. In addition, a preliminary version of the unpublished documentation for Perseus 2.0 is available at Bob's Copy Shop in University Square.
The main resource for the class, however, will be the Perseus database. This can be accessed on Apple Macintosh computers in the computer laboratories and other networked sites throughout the campus. See below for how to access Perseus. A project assistant, Dena Gilby, will be available to help you learn Perseus and work on your projects.
Perseus is a hypertext database of primary information on Greek culture: photographs and descriptions of vases, sculptures, sites, buildings, coins and other works of art, ancient Greek texts, maps, plans, dictionaries, etc., linked through sophisticated searching and browsing tools. It is quite different from a scholarly book or article on some aspect of Greek civilization, which interprets such primary sources and presents conclusions and syntheses in a linear fashion. We will base our investigations on the primary sources in Perseus rather than such secondary sources. This means that the approach of this seminar may differ from those of other courses you may have taken. Rather than reading some famous scholar's approaches, reasoning, interpretations and conclusions on a subject, you will have to search and sift through ancient evidence to find relevant material, evaluate and synthesize it, and draw your own conclusions. You will thus be doing original scholarly research. You may find this more time-consuming than reading textbooks and learning a body of material, and should plan to devote time out of seminar to learning Perseus and doing research.
Some of the communication in this class will be done through email, and all students should have email accounts. If you don't have an email account, you should activate one in the first week of classes by going to any of the campus computer laboratories (for instance the one in 140 Memorial Library) and asking the staff there for help. A mailing list (ah-115@lists.students.wisc.edu) is being set up so mail can be sent to the whole class at once. If you send a message to this address, it will be rebroadcast to the other members of the seminar, Dena Gilby and myself. For this to work, each student must register their email address with the registrar, using the EASI (Extended Access to Student Information) program. This program comes with the WiscWorld package (which you can purchase at DoIT, and should if you have a computer and a modem), and is also on all the computers in the computer laboratories.
The seminar meets two days a week, MW from 2:25-3:40, in room 1270 Grainger Hall. This is a seminar, not a lecture course, and sessions will involve extensive participation on the part of all members of the seminar. Attendance is mandatory.
The class will be grouped into four groups to work on assignments and presentations. You will be jointly responsible for all work. You will need to spend time each week working with your group outside of seminar discussing results and planning presentations in the latter part of the course. We will try to arrange the groups to accomodate everyone's schedule.
There will first be a series of assignments and readings aimed at helping you learn to use Perseus and learn about Greek culture. See the syllabus attached. Most of these will include a short writeup or other work, which should be turned in to me, on paper if appropriate, or by email or on a floppy disk, by Friday of each week. You should do the work together as a group, but each member should turn in assignments individually.
After spring break, we will move to a series of more general topics which will explore the relationships between Greek art and society. For instance, one topic will be the place of death in Greek culture. Each group will be given an area to concentrate on: images of death in Greek art, concepts of death in Greek poetry, in religion, in law, etc. The groups should divide up their part of the topic so that each person has a particular focus -- one member of the group looking at art might look at Classical tombstones, another on white-ground lekythoi used as burial goods, another at plaques used to decorate built tombs, etc.
These topics will each last 2 weeks. In the first meeting of a topic, we will propose and explore various areas in which we might investigate these issues, split the topics up into manageable chunks, and divide the chunks among the members of the seminar. In the next two meetings, groups will report on their progress, and the seminar will discuss how things are going, offer suggestions, try to solve problems you may have encountered, etc. For the last meeting for the topic, groups should prepare more formal presentations, about 15 minutes in length, to give to the rest of the class. Each member of the group must present at least once during the semester; you may choose who to speak on each topic as you wish, by lottery or whatever. In the course of these meetings, the seminar will put the results of each type of inquiry together into a more coherent whole. Our room is equipped with a network connection and a projector for showing computer images, so presentations can use Perseus directly. Each group should also prepare a path through Perseus recording the results of their studies, and submit this to me at the last meeting; I will put them on the server so it will be accessible to everyone as a record of your research and to help with the paper (below).
The topics and discussions will concentrate on method as well as content: that is, we will be interested as much in how you investigate such issues, how you look, read and interpret sources such as vases and ancient texts, how you break down issues into answerable questions, and how you combine different sources and types of information into a sophisticated and coherent whole, rather than in simply answering questions. I do not want you to give reports on the current state of scholarship on these issues, to read other people's opinions on these issues and regurgitate them in class. This does not mean that you cannot use secondary sources, but if you do so, you must look all the harder at the types of primary sources they use, how they interpret them, what sources they don't use, etc.
In the course of working on the first three topics, you should choose one as the subject of a written essay. This paper should not be simply a summary of the results of your research using Perseus, but will be a critical analysis of one or more secondary sources dealing with your topic. When you have chosen a topic, I will suggest or assign sources.
First, summarize the sorts of materials that we used to learn about the topic in seminar. How did each contribute to your understanding? How did they supplement one another, how did they give different pictures? Where they were contradictory, how could you resolve them? You can make use of the paths which were turned in by each group.
With your understanding of the sources, read the article(s) or book(s) closely. What sources does the author use? What weight does he/she put on different types of sources, how does he or she interpret the works, resolve conflicting types of information, bring in types of sources you hadn't thought of or ignore important works? Think about how you would have read this if you had not had access to Perseus, and how your work with primary sources has changed your approach to learning. Your paper can thus be an evaluation of your own experience as well as of the scholar's arguments.
The paper should be about 10 pages long. You should submit a rough draft sometime before that, preferably a week or so early.
There will be no exams. Your grade will be based on participation in the seminar, on your reports, and on the written essay, each counting for about 1/3 of your grade.
This course does not presuppose any computer experience; Perseus and the Macintosh are both relatively easy systems to learn, and acquiring these skills is one of the objectives of this seminar. But you may want some help.
The Division of Information Technology offers free courses in computer skills if you want help here. No registration is required. Classes are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. Among these are (information culled from the WiscWorld gopher):
Computer Basics
Monday, 2/6/95 1:00 PM-3:00 PM B203 1210 W. Dayton St.
Monday, 3/27/95 4:00 PM-6:00 PM B203 1210 W. Dayton St.
Introduction to the Macintosh
**Monday, 1/23/95 5:00 PM-7:00 PM B207 1210 W. Dayton St.
Monday, 2/6/95 4:00 PM-6:00 PM B207 1210 W. Dayton St.
Email for the Mac (Eudora)
Please bring a formatted 3 1/2" disk to class.
Tuesday, 1/24/95 7:30 PM-9:30 PM CALS InfoLab, 149/150 Animal Science
Monday, 2/6/95 7:00 PM-9:00 PM CALS InfoLab, 149/150 Animal Science
There are lots of other good courses including courses on the Internet, etc. For more information, contact the Student Peer Trainers, 265-4615 or email trainers@doit.wisc.edu.
Nick Cahill. Office: 220 Elvehjem Museum. Phone: 263-8980. Office hours: Th. 3-5 or by appointment. Email: ndcahill@facstaff.wisc.edu
Dena Gilby. Office: 212 Elvehjem Museum. Office hours by appointment. Email: dmgilby@students.wisc.edu.
Changes to the syllabus will be posted in the AH 115 area of Perseus News; remember to check here when you start Perseus. I'll notify you of major changes by email on the ah-115 list.
M Jan. 23: Introduction
W Jan. 25: meeting in Elvehjem Museum to look at vases.
Assignment: Get an email account, if you do not already have one. Send me a message (ndcahill@facstaff.wisc.edu).
Go to the InfoLab in Room 140 Memorial Library, and find Perseus on one of the Macintoshes there (or start Perseus on another Mac). Spend an hour playing with the database: find the vase catalog in the Art & Archaeology department and look at some pictures; look at the on-line help system; try some of the tool like the Browser and the English Index.
M Jan. 30: Introduction to Perseus
W Feb. 1: Using and creating paths
Assignment: follow the path "Greek Vase Shapes" in the stack "AH 115 Paths" again (we will go through it once in class).
Then choose one of the following vase shapes: lekythos, aryballos, krater. Find an example of this shape in the Elvehjem collection. Then use the techniques you learned in the path to figure out what this shape was used for. Write a short (1-2 pp.) account of the vase shape, what kinds of information you found about it, what these vases were used for, and how you know this. Don't rely on the information in the encyclopedia or the vase descriptions, which are modern interpretations: look for yourself at the vases, how they are decorated, and particularly at representations of the vases in vase paintings. What do people in Greek vase paintings do with lekythoi, aryballoi, kraters?
Read the Perseus documentation, ch. 3-5, and ch. 1 of Rasmussen and Spivey, Looking at Greek Vases. Begin Frost, Greek Society.
Week 3: Using Perseus and other electronic tools
M Feb. 6: Navigating, searching and browsing
W Feb. 8: Introduction to gopher, the World Wide Web, and other internet sources
Assignment: create a path exploring the vase shape you chose last week. (See instructions below on creating a new path stack and saving it). Include notes explaining the significance of each stop. Either email it to me (in Eudora, use the "Attach document" command under the Message menu) or bring it to class on a floppy disk that you can leave with me.
Continue to explore Perseus on your own over the next couple weeks. Become acquainted with the different Greek authors in the database (read their biographies in the Encyclopedia; use the Browser to view texts by genre, etc.). Look at sculpture, architecture, sites, site plans, coins, etc. (all these will be demonstrated in class; review them yourself). Work with the searching and browsing tools. Think about what different kinds of sources are available for your investigations later in the seminar.
Read the Perseus documentation, ch. 6-8 and 11-12 (excluding the Greek philological tools if you don't know Greek yet). Finish Frost, Greek Society.
Week 4: Greek Art: a ridiculously brief overview
M Feb. 13: Brief history of Greek vase painting, sculpture, etc. etc.
W Feb. 15: See week 5.
Assignment: Each group will choose one of the following vases in the Elvehjem Museum represented in Perseus:
Madison 1976.31: kylix attributed to the Penthesileia Painter
Madison 68.14.1: hydria attributed to the Priam Painter
Madison 70.2: lekythos near the Timokrates Painter
Madison Anonymous (Moon No. 56): neck amphora attributed to the Medea Group.
Look at the vase in the Elvehjem carefully, and read the description in Perseus. Then use Perseus to find:
Other vases by the same painter. What shapes and what subjects does the painter prefer?
Other vases of the same shape. When is the shape most popular, what is it used for, and how is it decorated?
Other vases with the same subject. When is the subject popular, and on what shapes?
Think about these questions on different levels. On the one hand, look carefully at many vases individually, look for differences in the depiction of similar subjects, or the decoration of the same shape. On the other hand, look for the bigger picture: try to get an overview of patterns and trends, using the Browser and similar tools. Try to quantify when related vases were made, what sorts of subject matter is depicted, etc.
Write up your results in a brief essay of 2-3 pages, making references to the other vases you have found, or tabulating broader trends to support your arguments.
Read Rasmussen & Spivey, ch. 2-5.
W Feb. 15: Introduction
M Feb. 20: Discussion
Assignment: follow the path "The Symposium" in the AH 115 Paths stack.
The symposium took place in the formal men's dining room, or andron (Greek éndr~n) of the house. There is no single English translation for the word andron so you can't necessarily find ancient references in the English index. The path will take you through the Greek morphological tools for references to this space in Greek literature, and to archaeological remains of such rooms. Where are they found? What distinguishes them from other rooms?
Read the passages of Xenophon, Plato, Thucydides, Aristophanes and the other authors in the path. If you don't know who these authors were, look them up in the Encyclopedia. What kind of an account do they give of the symposium? Who is present? What do they do? When were these passages written? Who is the audience?
Look at the scenes of symposia depicted on vases. In Perseus, use the Browser, select Vases, Keywords, Generic Scenes, Symposium. Who is present? What is the setting? What activities are going on? When were they these scenes most common? On what vase shapes are these scenes painted, what were these vases used for, and who, therefore, is the likely audience?
How are different views of the symposium reconcilable?
There are no written assignments for this or the following weeks.
Week 6: Greek Vases and Mythology
W Feb. 22: Introduction
M Feb. 27: Discussion
What are the inspiration(s) of the mythological scenes on Greek vases? How do mythological depictions differ from literary ones?
Each group will each take a different mythological story, read ancient accounts and look at artistic representations of the myth. Learn the myth and look for variants in literary sources. When looking at the literary sources, think about the whole work, not just the passage cited: what is the author saying about the myth, how does he or she use the myth to make a point in the work?
Then find artistic representations of the myth. The browser is a useful tool for this, as is the English Index. You can use the "Enter Destination..." tool to find alternate names and spellings of characters. Compare the representations carefully with the literary accounts. Do not take it for granted that the artist was thinking about the same version of the myth as the writer. Think about the whole object as an object, not just as an illustration of a story. Too frequently art historians use written sources to "explain" the representations they study, as if the literary source was more primary and important than the artistic, and philologists use art as simple "illustrations" of written texts; both ignore the complexities of the other's studies. Compare different tellings of the same story: how are they similar, how do they differ? How does the medium affect how the myth is cast? What can literature do that art can't, what can art do that literature can't?
Week 7: Patronage and the Greek Artist
W Mar. 1: Introduction
M Mar. 6: Discussion
Greek artists did not create works of art for the aesthetic pleasure of doing so: there was no ideal of "Art for Art's Sake" in antiquity. All the works of art we will see were either commissioned by a patron or intended for sale to a particular audience.
Follow the path on Patronage, and consider the different mechanisms for hire and patrons available for Greek artists.
The groups should research the place of the artist in Greek culture. What status was accorded these people? How are they portrayed in works of art? In literature of different sorts?
(Spring Break)
Week 9: Religion and sanctuaries (1)
M Mar. 20: Introduction
W Mar. 22: Progress reports
Two groups will investigate Delphi, and two Olympia. Groups will look at the archaeology of the site, at depictions of the site in vase paintings, and read literary references and descriptions of the site. We will then compare these two most important sanctuaries of the Greek world.
Week 10: Religion and sanctuaries (2)
M Mar. 27: Progress reports
W Mar. 29: Final reports
M Apr. 3: Introduction
W Apr. 5: Progress reports
We will look at images of women in art and literature. We will look at women on Greek vases of different sorts, on sculpture, in mythology, in comedy and tragedy, in Athenian law and philosophy.
M Apr. 10: Progress reports
W Apr. 12: Final reports
M Apr. 17: Introduction
W Apr. 19: Progress reports
We will look at various views and practices surrounding death in the Greek world. We will look at the Homeric and later notions of what death is like; at Greek cemeteries; at tombstones and the representation of the dead to living passers-by, at grave furniture.
M Apr. 24: Progress reports
W Apr. 26: Final reports
M May 1: Introduction
W May 3: Progress reports
Warfare was endemic in the Greek world. We will consider the place of war and of the warrior in Greek thought; what a Greek battle was actually like, and how it was depicted in art; at Greek military equipment etc.
M May 8: Progress reports
W May 10: Final reports
PAPER DUE