Elective Course. How made religion urban life work in ancient cities? 2900-HAMC-HMDU
Whereas life in cities is the primary form of human life today, it was restricted to 5-10 % of the population in the ancient Mediterranean world. While archaeological documentation is slowly improving our knowledge about life in the countryside, nearly all textual evidence is from ancient cities. This allows to not only inquire into the arrangement of urban space as reconstructed by archaeology but to inquire into how people live in the city and how they lived the city, that is, how they made urban settlements special places, adapting to life under the conditions of high population density and high diversity. The course focuses on the role of religious imaginations and practices in ancient urbanism and such ‘urbanity’. How did religious rituals, festivals, and discourses make life bearable or enjoyable? How could people learn to deal with interpersonal relationships and the problems of subsistence or even affluence under such conditions? How did they experience the modes and frequency of encounters and make sense of it? Drawing on texts from the city of Rome, the course will try to reconstruct such experiences and strategies. By reading not just small particularly relevant passages but entire literary units, analysis will also address the questions of the role and position of the authors as observers and participants in urban discourse: How were these very texts engaged in the production of specific forms of urbanity and urban ethos? Whenever possible, the discussion will also allow to reflect on contemporary urban life in the light of ancient institutions and voices.
The course is organized in the form of four seminars and a concluding lecture:
1) Introduction: Ancient urbanism: Cultural life and mere survival
2) Urban religion as space of interaction and valorisation
3) Urban resilience in the face of the urban–rural dichotomy
4) Urban ethos
5) Religion in an urban world (concluding lecture)
Wymagania wstępne (w tym formalne) / Prerequisites (including formal)
Knowledge of English at B2 level. A working knowledge of Greek and Latin will be useful but is not necessary.
Rodzaj przedmiotu
Koordynatorzy przedmiotu
Efekty kształcenia
Knowledge about processes of urbanisation in antiquity; skills in reading and interpreting ancient texts (read either in original language or translation); competences to critically analyse ancient texts and to transfer problems and solutions identified in ancient cultures to contemporary problems.
Kryteria oceniania
No more than one absence is allowed during the course. It is not possible to make up for extra absences due to the brevity of the course.
Method of scoring: Default type of course examination report: exam, pass for assessment, pass with grades, pass
Literatura
Literatura / Bibliography Woolf, Greg 2020. The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History, New York: Oxford University Press.
Rüpke, Jörg 2020. Urban Religion: A Historical Approach to Urban Growth and Religious Change. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. X, 240 pp. DOI: 10.1515/9783110634426
Reading per topic (obligatory):
1) Fisher, Kevin D. and Creekmore III., Andrew T. 2014. 'Making Ancient Cities: New Perspectives on the Production of Urban Places', in Andrew T. Creekmore III. and Kevin D. Fisher (eds.), Making Ancient Cities: Space and Place in Early Urban Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 1-31.
2) Rüpke, Jörg 2022.“Economies of ancient Mediterranean religion: Symbolic, communicative and spatial terms of religious production and consumption“, Mythos 16 (2022), 1-19. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/mythos/3929.
3) Rüpke, Jörg; Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli, “Urban religion beyond the city: Theory and practice of a specific constellation of religious geography-making”, Religion 53,2 (2023), 289-313. DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2023.2174913.
4) Rubina Raja, Jörg Rüpke, “Urban Religion through the Lens of Urban Archaeology”, Mythos 18 (2024), 1-30. DOI: 10.4000/12hzb.
Sources per topic (obligatory reading):
1) Iuvenalis, Satire 3
2) Ovid, Fasti book 1
3) Letter of James (New Testament)
4) Publilius Syrus, Sententiae/Sayings
Więcej informacji
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