Research Projects
- (C-4-1) Near and far: Space and Narrative in Assyrian Art
In textual and visual narratives space is often used to create a story or to convey a meaning. The art of the Middle and Neo-Assyrian Empire (ca. 1300-612 BC) offers an interesting case for studying the use of space in pictorial narratives as a firm element of the political propaganda. Hence, the aim of this research project was not to analyze space as an abstract compositional element of visual representations but as narrative element related to royal discourses and historical events.
- (C-4-2) Perspectivation – investigations of viewer construction, viewing directions and hierarchization strategies in the two-dimensional pictorial compositions of Greek and Roman culture
Johanna Fabricius aimed in this research project at developing an explanatory model for the representations of spatial objects and perspectival configurations within complex two-dimensional compositions in Greek and Roman pictorial art, i.e. vase paintings, mosaics, wall paintings, and reliefs.
Thanasis Georgakopoulos together with Johanna Fabricius investigated the different meanings associated with body part lexemes in Ancient Greek and Latin and analysed the underlying motivations for the observed associations. Greek and Roman art was taken into account for certain semantic connections in the semantic domain of body parts.
- (C-4-3) Books and Space in the (Early) Middle Ages
This research project analysed connections between illuminated manuscripts and real, pictorial, imagined and metaphorical spaces. These connections include pictorial construction and visual perception of space in book illumination, the book itself as a spatial construct, and the way in which books as objects determine the perception of their surroundings, influencing the actions of those who handle and employ them.
- (C-4-4) Imaginary space: Backround or protagonist?
This project has investigated spaces of action in ancient Greek and Roman fictional art, both in literature and in visual representations. Space found as a place of imagined action contributes both to fictionalization and to the construction of how space is perceived and presented in many ways, ranging from almost complete disappearance to personalized presence.
- (C-4-5) Diagrammatic representations of the Ancient Egyptian underworld
In this research project, Daniel Werning investigated the diagrammatic representation of the Ancient Egyptian underworld as attested in the Book of Caverns, an Egyptian Netherworld Book from the 13th century BCE.
Dissertations
- (C-4-4-1) Konzepte von Raum und Landschaft in der spätrepublikanischen und frühkaiserzeitlichen Bilderwelt
This Ph.D. project focusses on various genres of landscape depiction in late republican and early imperial Roman wall painting (and other pictorial media) with an emphasis on representations of gardens.
- (C-4-4-2) Räumliches Handeln im griechischen Roman
This Ph.D. project analyses form, structure and function of spatial representations in the Greek novels. These novels have long been regarded as a tightly knit generic corpus and been read as mere cosmetic recyclings of the same story. Yet recent research concentrated increasingly on the differences between the individual texts.