Alex Stern
19 November, 2019
Acta III
This past week I had the opportunity to hear Professor Nandini Pandey speak on the subject of “Dominance and diversity in Roman space and psychology.” I really enjoyed her talk– I’m always impressed when presenters are able to speak to an audience of differing levels of expertise without alienating either end of the spectrum, and I thought Professor Pandey did an excellent job at this.
My undergraduate work has tended to focus more on ancient material culture than on ancient textual sources, so I was especially intrigued by Professor Pandey’s point about the power of “collections” within the aesthetics of diversity. I’ve been thinking a lot about affect theory in relation to ancient material culture, and I wonder if this is a point where it might be fruitful to draw out the ways in which an object functions beyond that which it is intended to do.
My other favorite moment of the presentation came in the form of a background slide– although she did not talk about it in depth, Professor Pandey used an image of one of my favorite garden frescoes from Pompeii as a background for one of her slides on intercultural exchange and the diversity of products available within Rome for consumers. I have always found these garden frescoes fascinating, both aesthetically and in their function as an extension of the physical garden space, allowing homeowners to “own” gardens more spectacular than that which would be physically possible. I’m left wondering if this sort of “owning” and “collecting,” through the use of images or abstractions, is more or less net “good” than owning physical objects from the periphery of the Empire, especially since the latter has the potential (established by some, including, from my perspective at least, Professor Pandey) to slide into the troubling world of owning people.