Please put your topic selections here:

E.g.

Richard Teverson

• Topic: Coinage
• Theme: The portraits of emperors on gold coinage from the Roman West
• Hoped for outcome: I’m hoping that I’ll be able to track how exposed populations in the West were to the imperial portrait as it appeared on coins. I expect that as the period goes on, larger numbers of people no longer saw the emperor’s face on coins, or if they did, it was of a long dead emperor, and not the current nominal ruler
• Stretch goal: Ideally I’d love to be able to map the quality of these portraits as well as simply their presence
• Main anticipated problem and response: There will be lots of coins to find and map. I may need to cut down the region I look at, or find a way to narrow down within gold coins.

Ariella Ibroci

• Topic: Religious Life
• Theme: Church building/architecture
• Hoped for outcome: I look to map the different styles of churches in the East and the varying materials used between regions. By studying the church architecture, I will get a better understanding of how Christianity and faith helped shape these specific regions.
• Stretch goal: I would like to map the church style, the material(s) used, and whether the structure is still standing today.
• Main anticipated problem and response: There are a lot of different churches around the Eastern Mediterranean basin, so I may need to narrow the scope of my research to specific regions or sects.

Rebecca Slaman

• Topic: Epigraphy

• Theme: What can epigraphs tell us about the changes in life in the Roman Empire during its "fall"?

• Hoped for outcome: I'd like to use epigraphs to learn about daily life and culture in the Roman Empire during its most tumultuous conflicts and eventual "fall." Locations of the "epigraphic habit" can inform us how the culture moved and changed through these years.

• Stretch goal: Ideally I’d like to analyze the language of epigraphs as well as where they may be found.

• Main anticipated problem and response: Language changed throughout the hundreds of years we will be studying, so I may have to do additional research into dialects and etymology.

Sabrina White

• Topic: Paintings

• Theme: What type of narratives are portrayed in wall paintings in homes?

• Hoped for outcome: I am hoping to find out what types of stories and figures were portrayed in wall paintings. I am hoping I will be able to see a shift in religious ideologies within the homes of Roman citizens.

• Stretch goal: Ideally I would love to see paintings that are somewhat intact today and where they were located.

• Main anticipated problem and response: I anticipate that I may not be able to find a large number of paintings to research and I may need to expand the areas I consider part of the empire.

Emma Kolakowski

• Topic: Sculpture
• Theme: Honorific Sculpture
• Hoped for outcome: I'm hoping to see where honorific sculptures were placed in relation to populations of people, cities, cultural activity and religious sites.
• Stretch goal: I'd like to be able to map the specific style of representation of the subject in relation to their popularity/art style of the time etc.
• Main anticipated problem and response: I'm concerned at the varying types of sculptures which might make it difficult to draw one cohesive conclusion about

Julia Boron

• Topic: City plans
• Theme: How do the larger and more populated city plans differ from the smaller towns?
• Hoped for outcome: I'd like to see what types of buildings and plans would be seen among the different towns compared to their size, population, etc.
• Stretch goal: I'd hope that this could be a good comparison for how these cities operated.
• Main anticipated problem and response: I think it may be difficult to see varying public buildings other than baths, so my topic may need to be altered.

Miles Farren

• Topic: City Plans/Religious Life
• Theme: As the Roman Empire becomes increasingly Christian, how do domes go from civic/pagan buildings to Christian ones?
• Hoped for outcome: My goal is to track the changing religious and political themes of late antiquity through the construction of domes, and what those domes mean in relation to the larger architectural work that they are placed on.
• Stretch goal: Ideally I'll further understand the context of that dome within the city/town at the time of its construction, whether it is occupied by barbarians, Romans, etc.
• Main anticipated problem and response: My main problem will be determining the larger effect of the dome (ie. what it means to the city around it). By contextualizing the purpose of each dome and comparing them to the others throughout my studies, I should be able to at least hypothesize the larger implication of that dome (and subsequently, building) within the context of civic life.

Phoebe Ellman

• Topic: Religious Life
• Theme: Descriptions of religiously motivated violence against the Jews of the Roman Empire
• Hoped for outcome: I’m hoping to see what life for Roman Jews looked like as the empire "collapsed" and whether violence against them increased or decreased under certain emperors or barbarian rulers.
• Stretch goal: I'd love to be able to see how the population spread out as Rome fell and whether the mentions of violence/discrimination can also be used as a means of tracking where the Jewish populations fled to or remained in.
• Main anticipated problem and response: There's often not a lot of information available on this topic and so I know I'll really have to work hard to find enough data. I also anticipate maybe needing to get more creative about my sources and really trying to dig through primary documents to find the information that I need. As part of this, I'd like to expand some of my data points to include not just violence but the passage of discriminatory laws (as these can be used to indicate both the presence of the population but also of the level of tolerance at the time).

Name: Felicity Richards

• Topic: Christian Churches
• Theme: The locations of Churches and the meaning of those locations
• Hoped for outcome: I would like to hopefully compare the locations of the maps to wealth distribution through examining agriculture. By investigating the proximity of Christian churches to wealthy areas in addition to their spread across both the Eastern and the Western Empire I hope to understand the areas with the most churches and the reasons why. I am wondering if the areas populated by Roman Citizens versus those areas which were integrated into the Empire were more Christian. I would also take into account the churches which are still currently standing and those which are ruined.
• Stretch goal: I would like to form a complete picture of the spread of Christianity throughout the empire and see which areas were most Christian in comparison to the wealth of the areas.
• Main anticipated problem and response: Pinpointing the exact locations of the churches and determining the wealth of the area.

Name: Josh Anthony

• Topic: Politics
• Theme: Battles in the Roman Empire: Romans Against Barbarians and Romans Against Romans
• Hoped for outcome: I want to track three things on my map-Roman victories against barbarians, Roman losses against barbarians, and Roman battles against other Romans. I want to include multiple sets of data points corresponding to different eras. I want my map to show the correlation between Roman civil wars and Rome's inability to subjugate barbarian tribes, and how that correlation has played out across space in the Empire.
• Stretch goal: Perhaps my map might be able to speak to causation as well, but I'm not sure-my feeling is that Roman losses to barbarians contributed to Roman infighting, just as Roman infighting contributed to their inability to defend themselves from barbarians. I'm also curious to see how much Rome's defense from barbarians is related to civil war in other areas of the empire-does a civil war in Gaul affect Rome's ability to defend itself from the Huns in Illyria, for instance? In that way we might be able to see how united the Roman Empire truly was.
• Main anticipated problem and response: I fear it will be hard to distinguish Roman armies from barbarian ones, especially in the later period. For instance, one way to describe the Battle of Frigidus is as a battles between the forces of the Eastern emperor Theodosius against the forces of Western emperor Eugenius, but it seems just as valid to describe it as a battle between the Gothic Alaric (fighting on behalf of Theodosius) against the Frankish Argobast (fighting on behalf of Eugenius). I'm worried my map might not acknowledge the complicated nature of the politics of the region by dividing everyone into Romans and barbarians, and that as time went on the line separating those two identities was more cultural than political.

Name: Simon Fedotov

Topic: Sculpture

Theme: Free-standing sculpture throughout the empire

Hoped for outcome: I'd like to track the sculptures of different rulers as well as religious figures in the empire.

Stretch goal: I want to map the presence of these sculptures and compare them with the places they were standing in/around with the final class map.

Main anticipated problem and response: Tracking the actual sculpture shouldn't be too much of a problem with enough sources, however, gathering relevant info for the spreadsheet might pose a problem.

Name: Katrina Arutunyan

• Topic: Jewelry
• Theme: The movement of wealth and dispersing of luxurious items during the “decline” of the empire
• Hoped for outcome: I’d like to be able to track the movement of jewelry and other luxurious possessions that may have been sold by or brought away with wealthy families, or taken as spoils during times and areas of crisis. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find a pattern in where the items ended up, and why they were brought there. Were they brought to trade cities, or to cities where mostly other wealthy people lived? Were they bought by religious figures, and what was it that made them so special that, for example, the Pope wanted them?
• Stretch goal: Ideally I would like to be able to map how far these pieces moved, whether it was to the Vatican or to another city in the Roman Empire, and if their movement was interrupted/stopped, what by.
• Main anticipated problem and response: I anticipate that a lot of the items I will find will be part of a larger burial, or a larger purchase by religious institutions. Thus I’ll have to come up with my own approximate latitudes/longitudes by studying the histories of the individual items rather than the burial site itself.

Honor Sargent

• Topic: Painting and Sculpture
• Theme: The decline of naturalism in favor of story line
• Hoped for outcome: I’m hoping that I’ll be able to clearly identify pieces that pinpoint when the emphasis on naturalism became less integral to the creative process.
• Stretch goal: I hope to be able to identify many pieces from years before the “decline” as well as pieces from long after the decline that help to support my point.
• Main anticipated problem and response: There will be lots of pieces that prove my point wrong.

Katie Christ

• Topic: Luxury goods
• Theme: Did the very upper echelons of society lose their ability to commission fine goods? How did taste change?
• Hoped for Outcome: I’m hoping to track how fluctuation of wealth may have influenced change in taste among wealthy Romans and how this contributed to the greater Roman society.
• Stretch goal: I would like to find out what types of goods were most sought-after among the wealthy at different points in time in relation to fluctuations with the economy. I’d also like to rank the items I track based on level of cultural significance if possible.
• Main anticipated problem and response: I think that it might be difficult to track the purchases of the wealthy in order to determine what may have been popular or sought-after. I think I will also have choose only certain items to track.

Olivia Herrera

• Topic: Sculpture (in the round)
• Theme: Important figures – religious and political
• Hoped for outcome: I would like to find links between female figures compared to male figures – physical (nude/naked, clothed/armored, size), numeral representation, and how women are represented (religious vs political). I would also like to find the frequency of religious vs political figures in statues and their potential overlap (statues that represent emperors as divine figures, for example).
• Stretch Goal: I would like to find out the general style and frequency of commission of statues of women, whether they be empresses or religious figures and how they differ from those commissioned of men.
• Main Anticipated Problem and Response: There are a lot of statues and ground to cover so I will potentially need to narrow my scope of land, maybe to either the Western or Eastern territories, or make it a more derivative thesis in regards to the statistics in comparison to male political and religious figures, as there may not be enough statues of women to build a thesis.