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Essays


Term 2, assessed essay

Deadline, Monday 18th February at midday

Essays must be written to a length of approximately 2,500 words, and include a bibliography and footnotes. For advice on style and referencing, see the Department Handbook.

The bibliography is a suggested list of titles only, students will be expected to look for additional material.

Please choose one of the following essays:

1. How did the architecture of the Acropolis reflect Athenian identity in the Classical period?

Goette, H.R., Athens, Attica and the Megarid: An Archaeological Guide (London, 2001)

Keesling, M., Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis (Cambridge, 2003)

Neer, R.T., Art and Archaeology of the Greek World, 2500-150 (London, 2012)

Osborne, R., Archaic and Classical Greek Art (Oxford, 1998)

Rhodes, R.F., Architecture and Meaning on the Athenian Acropolis (Cambridge, 1995)

Spawford, T., The Complete Greek Temples (London, 2006)

Travlos, J., The Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (New York, 1980)

Whitley, J., The Archaeology of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2004)

2. What was the significance of nudity in Classical sculpture?

Bonfante, L., 'Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art' in American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989) 543-70

Kampen, N. B. (ed.) Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece and Italy (Cambridge,

1996)

Koloski-Ostrow, A.O & Lyons, C.L (eds.) Naked Truths: Women, Sexuality & Gender in Classical Art & Archaeology (London, 1997)

Osborne, R., ‘The Erection and Mutilation of the Hermai’ in Proceedings of the Cambridge

Philological Society 211 (1985) 47-67

Osborne, R., ‘Men Without Clothes: Heroic Nakedness and Greek Art’ in M. Wyke (ed.) Gender

and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford, 1998) 80-104

Osborne, R., Archaic and Classical Greek Art (Oxford, 1998)

Richlin, A. (ed.) Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1994)

Stewart, A., Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1997)

3. What was the role/s of the female figure on painted pottery of the Archaic and Classical period?

Blundell, S. and Rabinowitz, S.N., ‘Women’s bonds, women’s pots: Adornment scenes in Attic vase-painting’ in Phoenix 62 (2008) 115-144

Kampen, N. B. (ed.) Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece and Italy (Cambridge,

1996)

Kilmer, M.F., Greek Erotica on Attic Red-Figure Vases (London, 1993)

Koloski-Ostrow, A.O & Lyons, C.L (eds.) Naked Truths: Women, Sexuality & Gender in Classical Art & Archaeology (London, 1997)

Lewis, S., The Athenian Woman: An iconographic handbook (London, 2002)

Lissarrague, F., ‘Figures of Women’ in P. Schmitt-Pantel (ed.) A History of Women in the West: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints (Cambridge MA 1994a) 139-229

Osborne, R., ‘Desiring Women on Athenian Pottery’ in N.B. Kampen (ed.) Sexuality in Ancient Art (Cambridge, 1996) 65-80

Rabinowitz, N.S., ‘Excavating Women’s Homoeroticism in Ancient Greece: The evidence from

Attic vase painting’ in N.S. Rabinowitz and L. Auanger (eds.) Among Women: From the

Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (Austin, 2002a) 106-166

Reeder, E.L. (ed.) Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Baltimore, 1995)

Richlin, A. (ed.) Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1994)

Stansbury-O’Donnell, M.D., Vase Painting, Gender, and Social Identity in Archaic Athens

(Cambridge, 2006)

Stewart, A., Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1997)

Sutton, R.F. Jr., ‘Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery’ in A. Richlin (ed.) Pornography

and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1994) 3-35

Sutton, R.F. Jr., ‘The Good, the Base and the Ugly: Drunken Orgy in Attic Vase Painting and the

Athenian Self’ in B. Cohen (ed.) Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the

Other in Greek Art (Leiden, 2000) 180-202

4. What is the cultural and historical significance of the Parthenon to the contemporary world?

Beard, M. The Parthenon (London, 2002)

Hitchens, C., The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification (London, 2008)

Lagerlöf, M. R., The Sculptures of the Parthenon: Aesthetics and Interpretation (London, 2000)

Neils, J. The Parthenon Frieze (Cambridge, 2001)

Neils, J. (eds.) The Parthenon: From Antiquity to Present (Cambridge, 2005)

Osborne, R., Archaic and Classical Greek Art (Oxford, 1998)

Woodford, S., The Parthenon (Cambridge, 1981)

Yalouri, E., The Acropolis: Global Fame, Local Claim (Oxford, 2001)

*do not be afraid to look for articles in newspapers and museum websites