A journey into the classical imaginary: between words, marbles, and brushes

Director: Mirella Romero Recio and Nerea Fernández Cadenas.

Location: Classroom 1.0.A01 (Miguel de Unamuno Building). Colmenarejo Campus.

Target audience

Undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and senior students. Also international students who wish to learn the fundamentals of classical culture and its reception in Western culture.

Speakers

Directors: Mirella Romero Recio (UC3M) and Nerea Fernández Cadenas (UC3M). Link to CV.
Speakers:

Mirella Romero Recio (Professor of Ancient History, UC3M).
Rosario Moreno Soldevila (Professor of Latin Philology, UPO).
Jaime Alvar Ezquerra (Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, UC3M).
Carolina Valenzuela Matus (César Nombela Researcher, UC3M).
Nerea Fernández Cadenas (Research staff, UC3M).
Ricardo del Molino García (Associate Professor of Ancient History, Universidad Externado de Colombia).
Jesús Salas Álvarez (Associate Professor of Archaeology, UCM).
Rosario López Gregoris (Associate Professor of Latin Philology, UAM).

Programme

Monday, June 29
10:00–12:00. From Ithaca to the 21st century: the many literary and artistic lives of the
Odyssey. Mirella Romero Recio (Professor of Ancient History, UC3M).
12:00–12:30. Break.
12:30–14:30. Classical reception and rewriting in contemporary women’s narrative. Rosario Moreno Soldevila (Professor of Latin Philology, UPO).

Tuesday, June 30
10:00–12:00. Cleopatra: loved, lived, dreamed. Jaime Alvar Ezquerra (Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, UC3M).
12:00–12:30. Break.
12:30–14:30. Goddesses and gods of the 21st century. Reception of Greco-Roman deities in contemporary sculpture, collage and painting. Ricardo del Molino García (Associate Professor of Ancient History, Universidad Externado de Colombia).

Wednesday, July 1
10:00–12:00. Ephemeral architecture in Ibero-America. Triumphal arches in the commemoration of military glories. Carolina Valenzuela Matus (César Nombela Researcher, UC3M).
12:00–12:30. Break.
12:30–14:30. The classical legacy in figures: reception and prestige of Roman numerals in marbles and words. Nerea Fernández Cadenas (Research staff, UC3M).

Thursday, July 2
10:00–12:00. Marble and nation: classicism, power and modernity in Spanish America (1870–1920), Ricardo del Molino García (Associate Professor of Ancient History, Universidad Externado de Colombia).
12:00–12:30. Break.
12:30–14:30. Classical Antiquity and Fine Arts in Germany between the Empire and the end of the Third Reich (1871–1945), Jesús Salas Álvarez (Associate Professor of Archaeology, UCM).

Friday, July 3
10:00–12:00. Being a detective and a womaniser: a bad combination. From classical Rome to the
postmodern screen. Suitable for boys and girls. Rosario López Gregoris (Associate Professor of Latin Philology, UAM).
12:00–12:30. Break.
12:30–13:30. Neither Athens is only in Greece nor Rome in Italy: a guide to classical imitations. Mirella Romero Recio (Professor of Ancient History, UC3M).
13:30–14:30. The end of classical civilisation: the fall of Rome in modern and contemporary painting. Nerea Fernández Cadenas (Research staff, UC3M).

Course objectives and motivations

The course “Journey into the classical imaginary: between words, marbles and brushes” explores the enduring presence of the Greco-Roman legacy as a symbol and foundation of Western culture. This critical journey is structured around three axes: words, which show how mythical or historical figures from Antiquity—reinterpreted time and again over the centuries—become literary models subject to new approaches and discourses, from the humanist tradition to contemporary readings such as feminist rewritings; marbles, which impose the classical canon of beauty and shape urban forms that become symbols of authority and civic stability; and brushes, which draw on Greco-Roman iconography and mythology not only as a traditional thematic repertoire, but also as a source of visual models that have been reworked and reinterpreted over time, giving rise to new aesthetic, political and symbolic readings. The aim is to offer a critical, well-grounded view of how the reception and legacy of the classical world continue to be an essential language for decoding our cultural, political and aesthetic present. In addition, the course offers a humanistic and accessible approach to Antiquity and its legacy, designed to be of interest both to the university community (undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral, senior) and to the general public and international students. Its multidisciplinary nature, encompassing literature, art, archaeology, cultural history and reception studies, makes it possible to understand the classical tradition from diverse and complementary perspectives. The proposal also incorporates innovative content by addressing contemporary rewritings, political uses of the classical world, recent visual reinterpretations and ephemeral manifestations inspired by Antiquity.

By the end of the course, students will be able to realise that the most emblematic value of the classical world is not the elitist nature of its education or a particular monumental aesthetic (to cite two typical categories of the interpretation given throughout the 19th century), but rather its ability to address every human problem, transforming it into a source of personal and collective learning—fruitful and always enriching. From this experience, capable of turning the intimate drama of existence into a rational theme (thus enabling the birth of philosophy and Attic tragedy), or the difficulties of communal life into political reflection, or the imitation of nature into art and technique, emerges that freedom of spirit that permeates all humanisms throughout history and remains one of the priority ideals of today’s world.

Moreover, the classical tradition is much closer to the paradigms of digital culture than one might imagine: if “digital humanities” constitute, in a way, a form of reimagining the traditional humanities, rethinking human development in relation to history and culture through new possibilities for creating and disseminating knowledge, it is well known that the legacy of Greco-Roman civilisation has been performing this same task for centuries, renewing itself in every era in line with the needs of societies that return to the study of Antiquity in order to find in it answers about their own time.

CV

Directors: Mirella Romero Recio and Nerea Fernández Cadenas.

Mirella Romero Recio is Professor of Ancient History at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Director of the Institute of Historiography “Julio Caro Baroja” at the same institution. She has been the principal investigator of several research projects, including “Reception and influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America” and “Modernised Antiquity: Greece and Rome in the service of the idea of civilisation, order and progress in Spain and Latin America”. She currently co-directs the project “Modernised Antiquity: classical reception and modernity in the arts, spaces and voices of Spain and Ibero-America (1850–1939)”. All these projects have been funded by the State Research Agency (MCIU) and the European Union. She has published several books and numerous articles and book chapters in leading journals and publishers. She is a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History.

Nerea Fernández Cadenas is a researcher at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Academic Secretary of the Institute of Historiography Julio Caro Baroja at the same institution. She has participated in several national projects on Antiquity and the classical legacy, such as ANTIMO “Modernised Antiquity: Greece and Rome in the service of the idea of civilisation, order and progress in Spain and Latin America”. She currently co-directs the project BADDO (Bringing AI to the Discovery of Historiografícal data to Overcome Traditional Barriers), funded by the Community of Madrid and UC3M. She has published numerous articles in internationally renowned journals. Her article “A critical review on the signs of the visigothic slates” was awarded as the best research published in the journal JMIS in 2021.

Teaching staff

The teaching team for the course “The classical world in the digital age: new challenges” consists of six people, including the Directors, with equal representation of men and women (3+3). Coming from different but complementary disciplines such as Philology, Law, Archaeology and History, they have been collaborating for many years, working together on the research lines of UC3M’s Institute of Classical Studies “Lucio Anneo Séneca”. This institute is at the forefront in Spain and internationally in the field of “digital humanities”, developing a series of projects for the online publication of databases and the digitisation of documents related to the classical world and its survival throughout history. With regard to teaching activity related to the promotion, updating and scholarly presentation of various aspects of the classical world, the six lecturers on the course have extensive teaching experience, among which the following activities are particularly noteworthy:

Francisco L. Lisi Bereterbide was for many years coordinator of the Classical Studies area in UC3M’s Department of Humanities and taught the undergraduate courses “Classical culture” and “Transmission of the classical legacy”, as well as the postgraduate course “The transmission of the classical legacy”. Founder and first director of the Institute of Classical Studies “Lucio Anneo Séneca”.

Rosa M. Carreño Sánchez has been teaching, in both Spanish and English, the Humanities course “Vida cotidiana y norma en Roma/Daily life and norms in Rome” for more than five years. This course is taught on the Getafe and Colmenarejo campuses and is offered to students of different nationalities and from a wide range of degree programmes (Law, Economics, Business Administration, Computer Engineering, etc.). She has experience in creating digital libraries and participated in the digitisation and publication of the historical legal collection “Antecessores” of the Library of the University of Girona.

Ana M. Rodríguez González was coordinator of the Conference on Greco-Roman criminal law: crimes and punishments in Antiquity, organised by the Institute of Classical Studies “Lucio Anneo Séneca” as early as 2008. Since then and to this day, one of the strands of her teaching activity has been devoted to disseminating how criminal justice was perceived and organised in ancient history. On this topic and others also related to Roman culture, society and law, she has taught numerous Humanities courses and has published several teaching works aimed at explaining these subjects based on a careful selection of texts. She has also participated in various research projects aimed at analysing the relationship between law and religion in the past of Greece and Rome.