2011 was a productive year for the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. We (co)organized ten conferences and symposia in the past year, on topics that cover a wide range of periods and disciplines, from social dynamics in Early Iron Age Southern Italy to the correspondence of Rome's emperors and popes, and from Michelangelo's art of painting to the international impact of Italian unification. The Institute also housed six book presentations, four books being co-authored by staff members of the Institute. The staff participated in numerous academic events in Italy and the Netherlands, and presented the results of their research at conferences from Istanbul to Warwick and from Lisbon to Vienna. Teaching also intensified over the past months, with an increasing number of Dutch and international students participating in the BA and MA courses organized by the Institute. Meanwhile over forty students received KNIR scholarships to conduct research in Rome and to participate in the academic program of the Institute.

In 2012, we will continue on this dynamic path. During the next semester the Institute organizes nothing less than ten courses at BA and MA level, while it offers accommodation and expertise to another ten courses organized by partner institutions. The staff will continue to develop its new research project in critical heritage studies, Challenging Eternity. At the same time, our new fellows and the thirty-five students with KNIR scholarships will ensure that the Institute remains also next semester a vibrant centre of Dutch academic life abroad.

This newsletter offers an overview of all these activities:

1. Teaching program Winter-Spring 2012
2. New critical heritage studies program Challenging Eternity
3. New KNIR fellows and visiting researchers
4. Recent publications
5. Upcoming events
   
   

1. Teaching program Winter-Spring 2012

Between January and June 2012, the Institute organizes a wide array of courses for BA and MA students in various diciplines:

• The BA course Roma Caput Mundi, the cornerstone of the Institute's teaching at undergraduate level, is organized three times this semester, twice in January and once in April.
  
  
• February 13-19: Masterclass Egypt in Rome. Ancient Egypt is omnipresent in Rome. There are more obelisks in the Eternal City than in the Nile estuary and under the surface of many Roman buildings are the remnants of a temple dedicated to Isis. The Roman fascination with Egypt is not limited to Classical Antiquity: conceptions of Egypt returned in Roman literature, art and architecture during the Renaissance, the Baroque and also in modern times. This masterclass is organized in collaboration with the VIDI Research Project Cultural Innovation in a Globalising Society: Egypt in the Roman World chaired by Dr. Miguel John Versluys (Leiden University).
  
  
• March 2-11, the Institute hosts an intensive course for MA and PhD students on Latin epigraphy, directed by Dr. A.J.M (Ton) Derks (Amsterdam VU) and Bernard Stolte. This new initiative is parallel to a successful similar course on Greek epigraphy at the Netherlands Institute in Athens. Participants will be prepared by two days of seminars in Amsterdam.
  
  
• March 12-25, KNIR fellow Dr. Thijs Weststeijn organizes the MA course Grand Tour: Dutch Artists and Scientists in Rome, 1400-2012. The city of Rome has fascinated travellers from the Netherlands from the Middle Ages onwards. Participants in this course will follow in the steps of artists (from Maarten van Heemskerck to Rem Koolhaas) and writers (from Erasmus tot Harry Mulisch) and analyze works and places that testify to the Dutch presence.
  
  
• May 7-19: MA course Multitalent Michelangelo. This course is organized jointly by the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence (NIKI) and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. It will focus on Michelangelo’s multifaceted mastery of the arts and the cross-fertilization between the various forms of art in which Michelangelo was proficient.
  
  
• May 23-31, the Institute launches a new initiative with the Summerschool Europa quo vadis? This summerschool, addressing recent political, economic, and legal developments in the European Union from a combined Dutch-Italian perspective, aims to broaden the Institute's academic profile. The course is open to MA students in law, political science, economics, European studies and related disciplines.
  
  
• The Institute's International MA course in heritage studies takes place from 3-17 June. As in earlier years, the course, with the new title Challenging eternity, is organized in collaboration with the Swedish Institute in Rome, the Faculty of Architecture of the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, the Department of Conservation of Gothenburg University and the VU Amsterdam.
  
  
• Also in June, the Institute continues its new excavations in Rome: the Porticus Aemilia Project. The Porticus was one of the most important facilities of the late Republican commercial riverport constructed in the area later known as Testaccio. The first digs have been very succesfull in uncovering parts of rooms and even a cemetery at a depth of several meters below the present ground level. The aim of these excavations is to establish the dates and functions of the successive phases of this building, which is variously identified as a gigantic warehouse or as shipyard. The excavations, carried out jointly with the Soprintendenza Speciale of Rome, under the direction of Renato Sebastiani (Soprintendenza) and Gert-Jan Burgers (KNIR), will be continued in June 2012 with, again, student participants from a range of Dutch and Italian universities.
  
  
• During the coming semester, the staff of the Institute also participates in ten courses organized in Rome by partner institutions, such as the Roosevelt Academy, Delft Technical University, the OIKOS Research School in Classical Studies, and the Faculty of Law of Nijmegen University.

2. New critical heritage studies program Challenging Eternity

Several of the courses organized by the Institute are related to the new critical heritage studies program launched in the Autumn of 2011 under the title Challenging Eternity. The program, designed for the period between 2011 and 2014, includes two research projects, a lecture series, several conferences and student courses. On the one hand, it aims to investigate how Rome, the Eternal City, throughout its history has challenged and inspired the western world, and in particular fellow Dutchmen. On the other hand, the program wishes to challenge the modern city of Rome and in particular its relationship with the built heritage and the stigma of eternity that is attached to it. The major components of the programme are:

• The project Hadrianus. History of Dutch Art & Culture in Rome. This project, directed by Marieke van den Doel and Arthur Weststeijn in close collaboration with KNIR-fellow Thijs Weststeijn, aims to provide a digital gateway to the material traces of Dutchmen in Rome throughout the ages. Placing these traces in a comprehensive context and making them accessible to a large public, the project will discuss to what extent we can speak of a Dutch contribution to Rome's cultural heritage, and to what extent the confrontation with Rome fashioned a Dutch cultural identity. The first result of the project, an interactive website, will go online within a few weeks.
  
• The project World Heritage in the Working Class Neighbourhood of Testaccio. This project, directed by Gert-Jan Burgers, is carried out in close collaboration with the Museo Diffuso di Testaccio, directed by the Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Roma. Major questions asked in the Testaccio-project are: How can the tensions between heritage management and urban renewal be resolved? Can the built heritage be brought to contribute to sustainable social and economic development? And how does the global appeal of Rome’s heritage relate to local claims to that same heritage?
  
• A lecture series on Metropolitan growth and the built heritage of Rome, to be started in the spring of 2012. The series’ aim is to offer a forum for debate on the above questions, considering a range of different approaches from academics and policy makers. In order to stimulate discussion, specifically Roman issues are alternated by case studies from other European cities.
  
  

3. New KNIR fellows and visiting researchers

The Institute is pleased to welcome two new research fellows, both in Rome for a prolongued stay.

Prof. Natasja Sojc holds the Byvanck Chair of Classical Archaeology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on the urban setting of the palace area on the Palatine, and on non-figurative symbols and their significance for identity constructions in the settlements of ancient Greek and indigenous peoples in Sicily.

Dr. Giulia Saltini Semerari is a post-doc fellow at the Faculty of Arts of the VU University Amsterdam. In 2005 she completed a Masters of Studies in Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford and completed a PhD at the same university in 2010. Her PhD concerned long-distance connections between Greece and Italy from the late Bronze Age to the Greek colonisation, with a focus on how internal societal structures in each area influenced interregional contact patterns. Giulia is in Rome in the context of a new research project which she will carry out together with KNIR archaeologist Gert-Jan Burgers. This project, entitled Beyond colonisation: social dynamics and cultural interaction in southern Italy at the dawn of the Classical world aims to study the social dynamics of southern Italian indigenous societies at the dawn of Greek colonisation.

The next semester the Institute also offers accommodation to thirty-five students who have received KNIR scholarships for research in Rome. Special mention goes to this year's prize winners: Raphael Hunsucker, who has received the Ted Meijer scholarship in recognition of his excellent MA thesis on Foundational Myths and Memory in Ancient Rome; and Léon Coret, recipient of the Hugenholtz scholarship awarded by the Friends of the Institute Foundation.

4. Recent publications

Greci e Indigeni a l’Amastuola

In November 2011, Jan Paul Crielaard and Gert-Jan Burgers published a monograph on the results of the archaeological field work which they carried out between 2003 and 2010 in and around the hill top of L’Amastuola, located in the hinterland of southern Italian Taranto. The book sheds important new light not only on the character of the site, but also, more generally, on the current debate on ancient Greek colonization and on modes of interactions between indigenes and Greeks. The fieldwork was carried out on behalf of the VU University Amsterdam and, during the last two years, also of the KNIR and the Universita’ degli Studi di Salerno. VU and KNIR co-financed the publication of the book, together with the wine producing company Kikau S.p.A, the owner of the fields investigated.


Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age

In January 2012, Arthur Weststeijn published a monograph on the development of republican ideology in the Dutch seventeenth century, focusing on the radical theorists Johan & Pieter de la Court. The book, published by Brill at Leiden, is the first comprehensive study of their political thought and reveals the international significance of Dutch republicanism at the threshold of the Enlightenment. It is available in open-access via this link.

5. Upcoming events

• January-February: exhibition Obiettivi obiettività, Officine Fotografiche, Rome. With work of former KNIR-artists Emily Bates, Krien Clevis and Rob Johannesma.
  
  
• 17 February: symposium Beyond Egyptomania. Appropriations of Egypt in Rome. Speakers include Miguel John Versluys, Brian Curran and Ingrid Rowland.
  
  
• 26 February: concert Netherlands Student Orchestra, Auditorium Parco della Musica.
  
  
• 5 March: The KNIR hosts a workshop of the Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica.
  
  
• 1-2 June: Conference on Gender in Antiquity.
  
  
• 5-8 June: Conference Carrara Marble and the Low Countries, Late Middle Ages-2012 (in collaboration with the Academia Belgica in Rome)
  
• 21-23 June: Conference on Early Greek colonisation in Italy.
  
  
• 5-7 July: Conference Der päpstliche Hof und sein Umfeld in epigrafischen Zeugnissen (700-1700) (in collaboration with the German Historical Institute and the Swiss Institute in Rome)
  
  
• 1-3 November: Conference The Making of the Humanities III. See the call for papers here.
  
  

Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut Rome

Via Omero, 10-12 00197 Roma

tel. +39 063269621

www.knir.it

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