Semester:
Offered:
Irene Soto Marín (Department of the Classics)
First-Year Seminar 65N 4 credits (spring term)
The aim of this seminar is to explore the manufacture, trade, and social function of objects of fashion in the Ancient Mediterranean World. More than a tool for aesthetic purposes, clothing, cosmetics, and hair performed significant functions as markers of status and class, as well as social identity. Furthermore, the manufacture of jewelry, perfumes, and makeup in antiquity represented some of the most highly skilled ancient industries, and textiles and garments were the most widely traded and highly valued goods in antiquity. We will encounter how men, as well as women, were subject to fashion in personal adornment.
While this seminar has a particular focus on material from Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman Egypt, we will also engage with objects coming from the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean basin, as well as Central Asia and Britain. We will cover topics such as the production and trade of textiles, dyes, and make-up, and explore the ways in which they were utilized as signs of wealth, financial investment, and other symbols of power and identity. The types of objects we will encounter in the seminar are archaeological (such as textiles, wigs, and beauty implements), as well as sculptural. Papyrological and literary texts will further illuminate our discussion of the daily use, manufacture, and purchase of textiles in antiquity.
Over the course of the term, we will furthermore encounter the influence that ancient textiles retrieved from archaeological excavations exert on modern and contemporary fashion designers like Fortuny, Matisse, Versace, and Dior.