| Unit name | Reception: History, Time and the Archive |
|---|---|
| Unit code | CLASM0024 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Ika Willis |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Classics & Ancient History |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
How do we, how can we, and how should we approach cultural productions from a different historical period? To read a past text is always to take it out of context. Play texts or musical scores appear as traces of vanished live performances, but past written texts and visual artworks are also missing their original context, which is only ever partially recoverable. Yet texts from the past have been reread, translated, performed and rewritten in many historical presents. In accounting for the afterlife of works of art, then, how should we think about temporal difference/distance, about the relationship between text and context, and about the complex combination of material and cultural factors which influence the survival of artworks over time?
