Imaginary Worlds in Renaissance Italy
During the Italian Renaissance, many artists, writers, and thinkers saw themselves as cultural heirs to ancient Rome and Greece. While valid, this characterization leaves out the Renaissance fascination — and perhaps obsession — with a larger span of antiquity and with contemporary "others." From inventing their own interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs and stealing obelisks, to recreating the Holy Land as a premodern tourist attraction in northern Italy, the Italian Renaissance defined itself through an embroidery of invented histories and imagined worlds.
In this course, we will learn about the various fantasies woven through Renaissance and Early Modern Italy (c.1400-1750) that influenced visual art, from elite commissions to popular culture. Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Etruria were revival hot spots from history, while the contemporaneous Middle East and New World served as reference points for fabricating various in-groups and out-groups. The rhetorical collapsing of time and place will be explored.
Topics covered in this class include: Egyptomania, faux archaeology, tourism and pilgrimages, villa culture, maps, costume books, memory and memorials, and most especially how storytelling defines self.
Assigned readings will relate to the topic of the course and will serve as guides and models for effective writing. In this class, you will have the opportunity to improve your writing through small writing assignments and a substantial research paper (15-20 pages), which you will submit in multiple drafts. Students will receive feedback on their writing through peer review, during in-class workshopping sessions, and from the instructor's written comments and assessment.
Course Readings: Available through Canvas. There is no textbook.
Course Requirements:
Intended Audience: Undergraduates who have already satisfied the LSA First-Year Writing Requirement (FYWR).
Estimated cost of materials: $0
Class format: Two 80-minute seminar sessions per week, with in-class discussions, workshops, and writing activities
HISTART Distribution Requirements: Europe and the US, Early Modern
Keywords: art, Italy, fantasy, imagination, maps, costume, Renaissance, memory
This course satisfies the Upper-Level Writing Requirement in the College of LSA.
