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New application deadline (May 27) for Graduate Masterclass: The Classical Body Exposed by Byvanck professor Carrie Vout

18 May 2022

Professor Carrie Vout

From Wednesday 8th until Tuesday 14th June 2022, the Byvanck Professor of Classical Archaeology & Art, Carrie Vout, will be holding a week of masterclasses which aim to take the dust covers off the classical body both to understand why it is what it is, and discover the real Greeks and Romans beneath. Today the classical body conjures up an image of the ideal nude, of buff bronze or white marble. But the bodies of real Greeks and Romans did not always glisten with oil at the gymnasium, or sport swords and sandals in the Roman arena. The anxious, ailing, imperfect bodies that inhabited the Greek and Roman world have left, for good and for bad, a legacy as lasting as their statues. What did their bodies mean to the Greeks and the Romans, and what do their attempts to make sense of them mean to us?

These classes are designed to have students get to grips with a wide range of material (archaeological, art historical, historical, literary, philosophical, medical)  to show how Greek and Roman concerns with the body pervaded everything they thought and did, even the ways they did theology. The skills of close reading and interdisciplinarity learned are transferable, as are the lessons about how rich the body was – and is – for understanding the world.

Key readings

Key reading: Michel Foucault (1978, 1985) The History of Sexuality; Jim Porter (ed.) (1999) Constructions of the Classical Body; Brooke Holmes (2010) The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece; Christian Laes (ed.) (2016) Disability in Antiquity; Helen King (2020) Hippocrates Now: The ‘Father of Medicine’ in the Internet Age; Peter Brown (1988) The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity; Michael Squire (2011) The Art of the Body: Antiquity and its Legacy; introduction and sub-introductions of Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos (eds.) (2013) Transformative Change in Western Thought: A History of Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood.  

Closer to the time, students will also be circulated with two chapters of my forthcoming book, Exposed: the Greek and Roman Body (Profile/Wellcome) to read for the sessions on 9th June.

Programme

LOCATION: Old Observatory (Sterrewacht) C006

Wednesday 8th June:
11.30-13.00. The myth of the classical body
15.15-17.00. Bodies of evidence

Thursday 9th June:
11.30-13.00. Being human, Greek, Roman
15.15-17.00. Sex, gender and society

Friday 10th June:
11.30-13.00. Beauty and ugliness
15.15-17.00.Afternoon in the Museum preparing ‘Texts and contexts’

Monday 13th June:
11.30-13.00. Life, death and immortality
15.15-17.00. The body politic and the Christian body

Tuesday 14 June:
11.15-17.00. ‘Texts and contexts’ group work

Should you be taking this course for credits (5 EC), there will be a 4000-word piece of written work to submit. Professor Vout will meet with you individually to advise you on this project.

There is a limited amount of places available for this masterclass, for ambitious Master or Research Master students as well as beginning PhDs in Classics, Art History, (Classical) Archaeology or Ancient History.

Application Procedure

If you are interested in participating please write a motivation letter of max. 1 page A4 as well as your CV for the attention of Prof. Dr. Miguel John Versluys (m.j.versluys@arch.leidenuniv.nl) before 27 May. The selection of participants will be made the week after.

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