Modules

Migration and the Migrant Through Ancient and Modern Eyes (CLAM105)

15 credits

The ancient world had very high rates of human mobility and times when ‘the foreigner in our midst’ was not a problem, while other periods are characterised by what on the surface appears to be xenophobia, yet even then movement continued both voluntary or forced, whether for trade, piracy, wars, festivals, escape or love interests. One of the problems of the ancient world was how to keep one’s own people in one place. The course will incorporate human mobility trends and the attitudes to them across a wide chronological and geographic spectrum. As its core case study it will use the ancient world centred on the Mediterranean, especially Italy before Empire, but it anticipates students from multiple disciplinary backgrounds who will be able to apply the concepts and problems discussed to their own time period and disciplinary interest. It will include approaches to the subject of mobility and the changing concepts of borders, place, citizenship and the foreigner. These issues will inform our understanding of how communities construct and use place and space, in relation to memory, identity and power.