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RITUALS OF A NATION’S IDENTITY:
ARCHAEOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN ANTIQUITIES MUSEUMS OF ROME
by
Patricia Ann Gilson
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY)
May 2009
Copyright 2009 Patricia Ann Gilson
Object Description
| Title | Rituals of a nation's identity: archaeology and genealogy in antiquities museums of Rome |
| Author | Gilson, Patricia Ann |
| Author email | triciagilson@gmail.com; pgilson@usc.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Anthropology |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-09-03 |
| Date submitted | 2009 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2009-03-24 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Lutkehaus, Nancy C. |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Simic, Andrei Habinek, Thomas N. |
| Abstract | For Italy, a primary trope for imagining the nation is Italy as inheritor and guardian of ancient Rome. Ancient Rome is always present in the myth of Italian origins, and that is surely the case not simply because of what ancient Rome achieved but also because antiquity was the only period during which the peninsula was unified politically by what could be construed as an indigenous group. This dissertation investigates how, at different moments of their nation's history, Italians, through the display of ancient Roman materials, have attempted to craft ancient Rome's meaning in order to narrate a myth of origin for the nation. A nation's origin myth offers its members an imagined community to which they belong while also positing a notion of descent and therefore of genealogy.; The field sites for my study are antiquities exhibitions and museums in Rome that were inaugurated during periods of crisis when new political systems, in search of legitimacy, attempted to redefine ancient Rome, using the museum experience as a ritual of shared identity. After an introductory chapter on antiquities museums pre-dating Italian unification (with a focus on the Capitoline Museums), I examine museums and exhibitions from four periods: the 1911 Mostra Archeologica, an exhibition celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification; the 1937/8 Mostra Augustea della Romanità, a Fascist-period exhibition promoting the link between Imperial Rome and Fascist Italy; the Museo della Civiltà Romana, the post-war, permanent installation of the materials from the Mostra Archeologica and Mostra Augustea; and the Crypta Balbi Museum, a twenty-first century museum documenting two thousand years of the urban history of Rome.; Recent work in museum studies has focused on what may be described as the museum's "product" that is, what is imagined by visitors; less attention has been paid to the process of imagining, that is, how visitors imagine. Building on the work of Carol Duncan who, drawing from Victor Turner's writing on ritual, argues that the museum-going experience is a civilizing ritual, I investigate how visitors imagine community to become citizens of a nation. Written critically as an experimental and experiential ethnography, my narrative is a guided tour of the exhibition or museum identifying the components of ritual. My analysis is contextualized with respect to Italian social-political history as well as Italian archaeological and museological practices. |
| Keyword | museum studies; Italian archaeology; museology; ritual; national identity; ancient Rome; Capitoline museums; 1911 Mostra archeologica; Mostra augustea della romanità; Museo della civiltà romana; Crypta Balbi; Italy; Rome |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Rome |
| Geographic subject (country) | Italy |
| Coverage date | after 1911 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m2022 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Gilson, Patricia Ann |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@dots.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Gilson-2537 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume51/etd-Gilson-2537.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@dots.usc.edu |
| Full text | RITUALS OF A NATION’S IDENTITY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN ANTIQUITIES MUSEUMS OF ROME by Patricia Ann Gilson A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY) May 2009 Copyright 2009 Patricia Ann Gilson |
