A course with Professor Alain Schnapp

(Photograph courtesy of Michael Shanks)

The concern for the past, the curiosity for monuments, is generally attributed to the spirit of the Renaissance. Without neglecting the originality of the antiquarian practices in XVth/XVIth-century Europe, this course will first explore the interest for the past among the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Chinese and then examine the emergence of « archaiologia » and « antiquitates » in the Greco-Roman world. With an established comparative framework, we shall turn to the antiquarian curiosity in the medieval world, then into the Arabic, Persian and Indian thought. Finally back to Europe, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment; we will end this journey with reflections on the definition of the past in preliterate societies and the methods required to apprehend this different dimension of thought.

CLASSART 230 and ARCHLGY 230

Time and Location
Fridays from 10:00 till 11:50 in the Archaeology Center main conference room, Building 500.

Lectures
1) 14 April Material and immaterial dimension of the past
2) 28 April « Stein und Zeit »: ancient Egyptians and the past
3) 4 May (changed to Thursday from 9 to 11) The past is in front of us: ancient Mesopotamians and the exploration of the past
4) 12 May Bronze vessels, poetics and collecting: the Chinese experience of the past
5) 19 May The Greeks and the Romans as antiquarians
6) 26 May Antiquarian attitudes in the Middle Ages
7) 2 June The many dimensions of antiquarianism in Arabic, Persian and Indian tradition
8) 9 June Originality of Western antiquarianism

(more forthcoming)