CLAS3861: Experiencing Rome in the Provinces

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• To introduce students to life under Roman rule in the regions of the Roman world outside of Italy, from the late Republic to late Antiquity.
• To explore the origins and history of provincial administration and its impact on municipal life in the provinces.
• To consider the ways in which provincial communities responded to aspects of Roman imperialism, citizenship and law, and to explore the extent to which their own traditions were incorporated into this new hegemonic system.
• To study how the context of Roman imperialism led provincials to formulate their own conceptions of power, law, and citizenship or membership with a given group.
• To study a range of provincial communities and to develop a broader understanding of the geography of the Roman world outside of Italy and Rome.
• To explore the phenomenon of imperialism and the experience of empire more generally, and to consider how these responses to Roman rule can inform our understanding of other imperial projects.
• To develop students' skills in analysing literary and material sources.

• At its peak, the Roman world stretched from the North-East of England, across central Europe to the Black Sea, and from the northern coast of Africa, across Egypt to northern Iraq and Syria; the literary and material evidence that survives from this dominion constitutes a rich and exciting source of evidence for students of ancient history and offers insight into how provincial communities experienced and responded to Roman rule.
• In this module, we will explore questions concerned with the Roman imperial project, Roman law and citizenship and how these affected the lives of provincial communities by studying a wide range of ancient sources, including material from the literary record, inscriptions, papyri and archaeological sites.
• This study will advance understanding of how provincial communities experienced Roman rule, and the extent to which their own traditions of language, culture, religions and administration responded to contact with Rome, and by extension the rest of the empire.
• This module will equip students with a very broad understanding of the geography and administration of the Roman world and will introduce them to communities that they might otherwise not encounter in the course of their studies. The module will also highlight the importance of using a wide range of sources and materials simultaneously, in order to build a comprehensive picture of how life in the Roman provinces worked, from provincial and Roman perspectives.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Detailed knowledge of the history of Rome's interactions with a selection of provincial communities.
• Detailed knowledge of the cultural, religious and political nature of those provincial communities studied.
• Engagement with current scholarship on those regions.
• An understanding of the history of scholarship on Roman expansion and imperialism, and how this is understood in the context of current decolonising discourse.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Capacity to access, discuss and engage critically with a combination of different source materials which throw light on the Roman imperial system and responses to it.
• Ability to make proper use of the basic reference tools and bibliography.

Key Skills:

• The ability to assess and compare a range of different arguments and methodologies.
• The ability to collaborate with your peers in seminar presentations and discussions.
• Ability to pursue independent research on an aspect of the course and to produce well-evidenced, clearly expressed, and original arguments in written form.

• Weekly lectures organised thematically either by provincial community or subject.
• 6 seminars examining case-studies such as language exchange, religious syncretism, the law, socio-economic development.
• Formative assessments will allow students to develop both key methodological skills and wider analytical skills.
• Summative assessment will be (i) a 3,500-word project on a topic developed by the student, in consultation with the module convenor(s); (ii) a (non-oral) presentation of an aspect of or event in provincial life, such as a poster, or sharepoint site.

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