ARAS 318 - Fashioning Women: Dress, Power, and Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond

CR: 3
Prerequisite: One ARAS course. This course explores representations of fashion and dress in the visual, textual, and material records of ancient Greece and Rome. It focuses in particular upon the dress practices of women, considering the ways in which the study of dress can enable us to reconsider the past experiences of groups that do not have a voice in more traditional sources. Through a pairing of text and image, we will evaluate the construction and deconstruction of identity and social structures, questioning the extent to which the expectations set up in textual sources are realized in the material record. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which gender is mediated and embodied through dress, and how these views, in turn, have influenced our present perceptions of the nature of fashion. Offered alternate years. Not open to students who have earned credit for CLAS 318 in Spring 2018. III.W, V.7