FVID-384P Cities and the Dead

3 Credits

This three-week winter course in Rome, Italy will focus on the portrayal of death in the arts through walking tours, film screenings, museum visits and readings. The first theme of the course is Memento Mori, Latin for Remember your Death, the ancient practice adopted by early Christians of focusing on a meaningful life by reflecting on death. Rome with its paintings of martyrs and saints, its catacombs, ossuaries, mausoleums and a necropolis underneath the Vatican is the prime location to study this. The second theme will examine literary and esoteric responses to death including tarot cards, an Italian invention, as well as contemporary takes on death including visits to locations of the stylized Giallo horror films.