HST6084   Writing Late Antique Lives   (15 credits)

Description

Recent years have seen publication of several biographies examining the lives of prominent figures experiencing the end of the Roman empire. This attention to the individual is remarkable for a period usually studied from the perspective of large historical transformations. This module will explore the possibilities and challenges of life-writing as a form of late antique historiography. It will discuss methods to deal with fragmentary late antique sources and with the conventions of late antique biographical genres themselves. The module will also invite students to reflect on the potentially exclusionary nature of the biographical genre for the study of late antiquity.

Reading List