Week 1
•Course Introduction and Syllabus Overview
•Site walk from the Ghetto to the Campidoglio: Segregation and public punishment in era of the Council of Trent
Week 2
•Visibility and invisibility in the city: gendered spaces of confinement
•Urban planning as instrument of social control: Rome under Pope Sixtus V
Week 3:
•The deserving and undeserving poor: the Hospice for Poor Mendicants (Ospizio dei Poveri Mendicanti) and the Pilgrims’ Hospice (SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini)
•Poverty, pilgrimage and the problem of decorum: Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto
Week 4:
•Chaste bodies: the imposition of modesty in Counter-Reformation imagery
•Forbidden images: Sexuality and sex work in Rome
Week 5:
•Scenes of martyrdom, from Santo Stefano to Santa Susanna
•The religious and social functions of representing violated bodies
Week 6:
•The Case of Beatrice Cenci: between papal justice and martyrdom
•Useful cadavers: artists and the acquisition of dead bodies for study
Week 7:
•Violence and gender: readings of Artemisia Gentileschi’s rape trial
•Violence and gender: virtuous women and physical injury
Week 8:
•Discussion of texts and images for review
•Midterm examination
Week 9:
•Giulio Mancini, from anatomist to art theorist
•Artist’s biographies: Narrating artistic talent and social deviance
Week 10:
•Ethnic representation and genre: The Fortune Tellers and Roma communities
•The Catholic discourse on slavery and its visual representations
Week 11:
•Public spectacle and public order
•Street scenes: the Bamboccianti and other foreigners observing Rome
Week 12:
•The Birth of the Prison: the Carceri Nuove on via Giulia
•Transgression and liberation in practice and patronage