Under Pompeii’s Ashes: Contesting Roman Identities

Everybody knows Pompeii, the city that was buried under the ashes of the Vesuvius in AD 79. No site, it seems, preserved the daily life of the Romans as well. But how "Roman" was Pompeii? This course will challenge existing views on Roman cultural and social identities and material remains, using Pompeii as a case study. Pompeii, in fact, offers a unique playground to test ideas about the relationships between material culture, style, and societies in the past and the present.