AMS 300 - Swords & Sandals: Ancient Film

Credits: 4

This course explores how film can act like a lens into the past and the present. We will think about how film has influenced modern popular ideas about life in Ancient Greece and Rome. We will also investigate how the themes and cultural anxieties of the 20th and 21st centuries reverberated through the films we will watch (e.g. political and religious persecution; race and racism; gender and sexuality; superpower standoffs, and others). We will think about how serious topics are dealt with in a sub-genre that is often not taken seriously, why we keep looking at the past, and what kinds of aims the filmmakers were pursuing in their cinematic projects. Offered regularly, every other year.