The city of Rome served as both a symbolic center of the Roman world and a physical space in which this symbolic role was monumentalized and negotiated. This course explores the ways in which political and social competition were inscribed on the cityscape from its earliest years through the end of the Republic and beyond, both in its topography and in the specific monuments constructed as the result of individual and group initiatives. Case studies explored in this course include the triumph and the process of memory construction in the city, the association of political movements and conflicts with specific urban topographies, the function of Rome and specific spaces within it as "museums" for foreign plunder, elite tombs as sites of competing elite identities, the shifting relationship between public and private in the Forum, and the competitive monumentalization of the city at the end of the Republic, especially in the Campus Martius.
- Instructor of record: Catherine Baker