In its 11th edition, The OCCAS studio course Moving Monuments: Rome continues to uproot the monuments of Rome. Tracing a collection of Rome´s monuments through history, or rather history through its Roman incarnations, “moving” refers to the circulation and recreation of buildings in various media, materials, and metaphors across the ages. Through lectures, field trips and archival research, the course aims to show that a monument is anything but solid, but rather constantly in the act of becoming through exhibitions, publications, visualizations, canonizations and re-adaptions.

The OCCAS core members join forces to present a variety of perspectives on past monuments and a variety of methods that enable us to think, write and talk about them. The students are asked to select one monument each, related to Rome, and to work with it throughout the term, studying it from increasingly sophisticated historiographical perspectives. This fall the monuments include the Via Appia, Hadrian´s Mausoleum, The Sistine Chapel, Pirro Ligorio, Anteiquae Urbis Imago, Sangallo´s model of St. Peter´s, The Temple of Vesta in John Soane´s Collection, Freud´s Rome as metaphor of the mind, the Marconi Obelisk, and the Roman metro.

The field trip to Rome is realized in close collaboration with AHO´s partner institution, The Norwegian Institute in Rome, and offers exclusive visits to the National archive of prints and copper plates (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica) as well as to select sites. Guest speakers this year count Simon Malmberg, Giovanna Scaloni, Chris Siwicki, Mari Lending, Thomas McQuillan, and Eirik Bøhn.