The OCCAS studio course Moving Monuments: Rome offers a study of historical monuments. It traces a selection of monuments through history – as well as history through its many mediations. “Moving” may refer to the actual transportation of architecture but also to the circulation and recreation of monuments in various media and materials, from print to plaster, across the ages. Through lectures, field trips and archival research, the course aims to show that a monument is anything but a solid structure. Rather, it forms along the way and becomes what it is through exhibitions, publications, interpretations, canonizations and re-adaptions.

The OCCAS core members join forces to present a variety of perspectives on past monuments and on the variety of methods that enable us to think, write and talk about them. The students are asked to select one monument related to Rome and to work with his or her selected building throughout the term, studying it from increasingly sophisticated historiographical perspectives. Besides offering an introduction to academic research, the course aims to train students in presentation techniques on various levels. The final assignment is a half-hour auditorium lecture on the chosen monument complete with visual presentation and an audience.