Bettina Reitz-Joosse
I studied Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (BA 2007, MSt 2008) and I hold a PhD (2013) from Leiden University. After postdoctoral fellowships at Leiden, the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome (KNIR), and the University of Pennsylvania, I joined the Groningen department in 2015. I am a member of De Jonge Akademie of the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018) and of the Young Academy Groningen (2016).
My research focusses on the relationship between literature and material culture in the Roman world. I am currently finishing a monograph based on my dissertation (Building in Words: The Process of Construction in Latin Literature), which will be published by Oxford University Press. In 2015, I was awarded a four-year research grant (NWO-Veni) for a project which deals with the representation of ‘landscapes of war’ (battlefields and other post-war spaces) in Roman literature. With a group of school teachers, I am also working on a lesson series for secondary school students, based on the results of this research.
I also have an ongoing Classical Reception project with my colleague Han Lamers (Leuven/Oslo), which deals with the role of the Latin language in Fascist Italy. Our edition and study of a Fascist Latin text composed in 1932 (Aurelio Amatucci’s Codex fori Mussolini) was published by Bloomsbury in August 2016.
I teach a range of courses in the Groningen BA and MA programmes. In the academic year 2018-19, I am teaching an interdisciplinary course on Landscape and Memory in the Ancient World and serve as the first-year mentor. I am also collaborating with students the Fascist Latin digitalization project and a project on classical antiquity in the city of Groningen. In April 2018, I was elected Lecturer of the Year of the University of Groningen.
My research focusses on the relationship between literature and material culture in the Roman world. I am currently finishing a monograph based on my dissertation (Building in Words: The Process of Construction in Latin Literature), which will be published by Oxford University Press. In 2015, I was awarded a four-year research grant (NWO-Veni) for a project which deals with the representation of ‘landscapes of war’ (battlefields and other post-war spaces) in Roman literature. With a group of school teachers, I am also working on a lesson series for secondary school students, based on the results of this research.
I also have an ongoing Classical Reception project with my colleague Han Lamers (Leuven/Oslo), which deals with the role of the Latin language in Fascist Italy. Our edition and study of a Fascist Latin text composed in 1932 (Aurelio Amatucci’s Codex fori Mussolini) was published by Bloomsbury in August 2016.
I teach a range of courses in the Groningen BA and MA programmes. In the academic year 2018-19, I am teaching an interdisciplinary course on Landscape and Memory in the Ancient World and serve as the first-year mentor. I am also collaborating with students the Fascist Latin digitalization project and a project on classical antiquity in the city of Groningen. In April 2018, I was elected Lecturer of the Year of the University of Groningen.
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embedding and legitimising changes in every sphere of life through an appeal to a
supposedly shared Roman heritage. In this article, we scrutinise these Fascist dynamics
of anchoring through an analysis of the Mussolini obelisk in Rome and the
Latin text hidden below it: Aurelio Amatucci’s Codex Fori Mussolini. We focus
especially on the Fascist manipulation of the obelisk tradition, the significance of
Amatucci’s choice of language, and his use of ancient authors within the Codex.
We argue that the ‘ground’ in which monument and text are anchored is fundamentally
unstable: the Roman past itself is a dynamic and adaptable construction.
Obelisk and Codex selectively evoke and (re-)combine a multiplicity of elements
– from antiquity to the twentieth century, from the Renaissance to the Risorgimento.
In doing so, obelisk and text shape the very tradition in which they anchor.
On the lexical level, the dominant metaphor Vitruvius uses to describe his own text is not the city (or any type of architecture) but the body. The implications of the corpus-metaphor have been explored in detail (Callebat 1989, McEwen 2003, Oksanish 2011). By using it, Vitruvius suggests that unlike his predecessors’ smaller projects, his own work is an organic whole, made up of its membra, its constituent parts. The metaphor conveys the perfect wholeness and completeness of the treatise as well as its harmonious proportions. What it does not readily seem to provide, however, is a natural ordo, a principle of arrangement. This is delivered instead by the process of city construction. The relation between the metaphor of the body and the more subtle, implicit metaphoricity of city construction lies at the core of Vitruvian architectural theory. The two source domains melt seamlessly into one another, since the city is both the result of human design and like a natural organism which grows and develops in accordance with nature – an ideal expressed, for example, in the famous Dinocrates-anecdote (2.praef).
For Vitruvius, the city offered a natural ordo for a book on architecture, but I propose that the macrostructure of city-building also stands at the beginning of a larger trend in early Augustan literature, which relates to the contemporary concerns of colony foundation, as well as to the Augustan project of ‘re-founding’ Rome. The parallel between city and text appeals to a group of authors writing at the same time as or just after Vitruvius, who set up their projects and textual foundations explicitly to parallel or rival Augustus’ own building of a new Rome. For example, Propertius (4.1A) and Manilius (Astronomica 2.772-87) explicitly compare their literary undertaking to the construction of a city in order to make a point about literary ambition and prestige as well as (in the case of Manilius) arrangement (Fantham, Welch 25-7, Schindler 252-72). Their poetic cities even display the same combination of organic growth and human construction as Vitruvius’ macro-city. Analysis of the macrostructure of the De Architectura thus not only offers important insights into Vitruvian conceptions of architecture and literary ambition, but also throws new light on Vitruvius’ position within the literary environment of early Augustan Rome.
Callebat, L. (1989), ‘Organisation et structures du De architectura de Vitruve’, in Geertman, H. and de Jong, J. J. (1989) (eds.), Munus non ingratum : proceedings of the international symposium on Vitruvius' De architectura and the hellenistic and republican architecture, Leiden 20-23 January 1987, Leiden, 34-8.
Fantham, E. (1997), ‘Images of the city: Propertius’ new-old Rome’, in Habinek, T. and Schiesaro, A. (eds.), The Roman Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, 122-35.
Fritz, H.-J. (1995), Vitruv: Architekturtheorie und Machtpolitik in der römischen Antike, Münster.
Gros, P. (1992), Vitruve. De L’Architecture. Livre IV, Paris.
Gros, P. (1994) (ed.), Le Projet de Vitruve: Objet, destinataires et reception du De Architectura, Rome.
McEwen, I. K. (2003), Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge MA.
Oksanish, J. M. (2011), Building the Principate: A Literary Study of Vitruvius’ “de Architectura”, diss. New Haven.
Schindler, C. (2000), Untersuchungen zu den Gleichnissen im römischen Lehrgedicht, Göttingen.
Welch, T. S. (2005), The elegiac cityscape: Propertius and the meaning of Roman monuments, Ohio.
Research Master students are expected to submit a paper of 3000-4000 words and PhD students a paper of 5000-6000 words. These papers will circulate among the participants and are to be submitted before 14 January 2020. During the Master Class participants will present their paper, followed by a response and discussion under the expert guidance of Professor Bielfeldt. The Master Class is an OIKOS and ARCHON activity and students will earn 2 ECTS by active participation.
For more information, send an e-mail to crasis.aws@rug.nl or see: http://www.rug.nl/crasis.
Deadline for contributions: 1 March 2017
embedding and legitimising changes in every sphere of life through an appeal to a
supposedly shared Roman heritage. In this article, we scrutinise these Fascist dynamics
of anchoring through an analysis of the Mussolini obelisk in Rome and the
Latin text hidden below it: Aurelio Amatucci’s Codex Fori Mussolini. We focus
especially on the Fascist manipulation of the obelisk tradition, the significance of
Amatucci’s choice of language, and his use of ancient authors within the Codex.
We argue that the ‘ground’ in which monument and text are anchored is fundamentally
unstable: the Roman past itself is a dynamic and adaptable construction.
Obelisk and Codex selectively evoke and (re-)combine a multiplicity of elements
– from antiquity to the twentieth century, from the Renaissance to the Risorgimento.
In doing so, obelisk and text shape the very tradition in which they anchor.
On the lexical level, the dominant metaphor Vitruvius uses to describe his own text is not the city (or any type of architecture) but the body. The implications of the corpus-metaphor have been explored in detail (Callebat 1989, McEwen 2003, Oksanish 2011). By using it, Vitruvius suggests that unlike his predecessors’ smaller projects, his own work is an organic whole, made up of its membra, its constituent parts. The metaphor conveys the perfect wholeness and completeness of the treatise as well as its harmonious proportions. What it does not readily seem to provide, however, is a natural ordo, a principle of arrangement. This is delivered instead by the process of city construction. The relation between the metaphor of the body and the more subtle, implicit metaphoricity of city construction lies at the core of Vitruvian architectural theory. The two source domains melt seamlessly into one another, since the city is both the result of human design and like a natural organism which grows and develops in accordance with nature – an ideal expressed, for example, in the famous Dinocrates-anecdote (2.praef).
For Vitruvius, the city offered a natural ordo for a book on architecture, but I propose that the macrostructure of city-building also stands at the beginning of a larger trend in early Augustan literature, which relates to the contemporary concerns of colony foundation, as well as to the Augustan project of ‘re-founding’ Rome. The parallel between city and text appeals to a group of authors writing at the same time as or just after Vitruvius, who set up their projects and textual foundations explicitly to parallel or rival Augustus’ own building of a new Rome. For example, Propertius (4.1A) and Manilius (Astronomica 2.772-87) explicitly compare their literary undertaking to the construction of a city in order to make a point about literary ambition and prestige as well as (in the case of Manilius) arrangement (Fantham, Welch 25-7, Schindler 252-72). Their poetic cities even display the same combination of organic growth and human construction as Vitruvius’ macro-city. Analysis of the macrostructure of the De Architectura thus not only offers important insights into Vitruvian conceptions of architecture and literary ambition, but also throws new light on Vitruvius’ position within the literary environment of early Augustan Rome.
Callebat, L. (1989), ‘Organisation et structures du De architectura de Vitruve’, in Geertman, H. and de Jong, J. J. (1989) (eds.), Munus non ingratum : proceedings of the international symposium on Vitruvius' De architectura and the hellenistic and republican architecture, Leiden 20-23 January 1987, Leiden, 34-8.
Fantham, E. (1997), ‘Images of the city: Propertius’ new-old Rome’, in Habinek, T. and Schiesaro, A. (eds.), The Roman Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, 122-35.
Fritz, H.-J. (1995), Vitruv: Architekturtheorie und Machtpolitik in der römischen Antike, Münster.
Gros, P. (1992), Vitruve. De L’Architecture. Livre IV, Paris.
Gros, P. (1994) (ed.), Le Projet de Vitruve: Objet, destinataires et reception du De Architectura, Rome.
McEwen, I. K. (2003), Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge MA.
Oksanish, J. M. (2011), Building the Principate: A Literary Study of Vitruvius’ “de Architectura”, diss. New Haven.
Schindler, C. (2000), Untersuchungen zu den Gleichnissen im römischen Lehrgedicht, Göttingen.
Welch, T. S. (2005), The elegiac cityscape: Propertius and the meaning of Roman monuments, Ohio.
Research Master students are expected to submit a paper of 3000-4000 words and PhD students a paper of 5000-6000 words. These papers will circulate among the participants and are to be submitted before 14 January 2020. During the Master Class participants will present their paper, followed by a response and discussion under the expert guidance of Professor Bielfeldt. The Master Class is an OIKOS and ARCHON activity and students will earn 2 ECTS by active participation.
For more information, send an e-mail to crasis.aws@rug.nl or see: http://www.rug.nl/crasis.
Deadline for contributions: 1 March 2017