Hollywood has long had a love affair with Rome. From Ben-Hur to Spartacus to Gladiator, directors have struggled to capture on film such titanic historical figures as Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Caesar Augustus, and Nero. Join us as we survey the rise and fall of the Roman Empire as depicted on the silver screen and as embodied in the lives and actions of the makers and destroyers of Rome.

Pompeii was the first historical disaster that could be seen as fact as opposed to legend or myth. Join us as we listen to David Brauer unfold the enduring legacy of Pompeii by introducing the nature of Roman art and life found in its ruins.

Contrary to popular belief, "the Roman Empire, being neither up nor down, did not fall." Instead, the Roman World, circling the Mediterranean, gradually broke up into its component, divergent parts. Rome, like the United States, was a cosmopolitan blend of many incorporated cultures which flourished in the first and second centuries AD. But in the third century, that successful blend began to disintegrate in a process in which the various component parts began to rise to prominence; one of these was Christianity, and, in Europe, one was Germanic culture. Medieval Italy, like other diverse parts of the Empire, separated itself out from that original unity, and progressed to a new, vibrant and creative identity uniting its strong Roman heritage and its Christian faith, bound together by German migrants who had wandered into Italy to fill the vacuum created by Rome's internal conflicts.

I like to think of Claudio Monteverdi, the late Rennaissance phenom, as the mother, rather than father, of Italian opera in that he nurtured so many composers who would follow him. His style inevitably lead us to the greatest bel canto traditions of Donizetti and Bellini, his inventiveness to the compexity and dramatic tension of Verdi or Mascagni, and his love for the voice to an adoration we associate with Puccini. More than that, his great affection for and use of dissonance places him squarely 400 years ahead of his time.

Called "the Garden of the World" and "the most beautiful city in Italy," seventeenth-century Naples was also a city in turmoil, suffering political oppression, revolt, an eruption of Vesuvius, and a devastating plague. But it also produced one of the most brilliant schools of painting in Europe, from the profound naturalism of Caravaggio and Ribera to the glorious celestial visions of Giordano and Solimena. This lecture introduces the artists, their sometimes violently competitive personalities, and their masterpieces of Baroque painting.

Aliza Wong will examine the ways in which the southern question and the formulation of a racial theory, based on perceived geographical and cultural divides, informed discussions of nationalism as Italy became increasingly aware of its place in Europe, its role as a nation and an imperial power, and experienced the struggles of a citizenry defining a national identity. The permeability of the vocabulary of the Southern Question allowed for it to be appropriated to describe many types of Otherness - the use of gender to describe the south, the pathologicization of the south in relation to the science of physiognomy, the debates over internal and external colonization, preoccupations on creating a sense of Italianness within and without national borders.

Dr. Louis Markos is a tenured professor of English for Houston Baptist University Professor in English in the College of Arts and Humanities, where he teaches courses in Classics, Literary Theory, Poetry and Prose; C. S. Lewis; Mythology; Epic; and Film. In addition to presenting several papers at scholarly conferences, Dr. Markos speaks widely all over the United States, generally on topics related to C. S. Lewis, but embracing more widely science, the arts, education, the new age, and apologetics. He also speaks frequently on Ancient Greece and Rome and on Dante. In the publishing arena, Dr. Markos is the author of Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis can Train us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World (Broadman & Holman, 2003). He has also produced two lecture series with the Teaching Company: From Plato to Postmodernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author; The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis. He is also a popular speaker in the Houston area and has written ten as yet unpublished books.

David Brauer is Senior Lecturer of the History of Art Department of the Glassell School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A native of Scotland, he was educated in England at the Sir Christopher Wren School and St. Martin’s School of art from which he received his degree. Since moving to Houston, he has curated numerous art exhibits and taught extensively nationally and internationally.

Dr. Vaughn is a scholar of Medieval history. She is the co-founder and first director of the Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Houston, and the cofounder, first Vice President and Conference Director of the Charles Homer Haskins Society for Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Angevin History, which met at the University of Houston for its first fifteen years (1981-1996). Dr. Vaughn regularly teaches a course on the transformation of Rome into the culture of Early Europe; the great Norman Conquests of England and Southern Italy and the First Crusade; and The Flowering of the Middle Ages, an exploration of the magnificent cultural achievements of the Medieval Renaissance. Dr. Vaughn is the author of four books and more than fifteen articles that have appeared in scholarly journals. Dr. Vaughn is currently working on her next book manuscript titled "Prudent Pilots and Spiritual Charioteers: Lanfranc, Anselm and the School and Students of Bec."

Peter Jacoby is the Music Director for the Edythe Bates Old Moores Opera Center at the University of Houston. Mr. Jacoby received his B.M. magna cum laude, University of Wyoming; his Diploma in Orchestral Conducting, Akademie fur Musik und darstellende Kunst, Vienna, Austria, 1975; and performed studies with Victor Babin, Arthur Loesser, Fernando Valenti, and Eleanor Steber, Cleveland Institute of Music, 1966-67. Mr. Jacoby has held the following positions: Coach, Vienna Statsoper Studio (Swarovsky), 1974-75; Opera coach/conductor, AIMS, Graz, Austria, 1975; Coach/ conductor, Zurich Opera Studio, Zurich, Switzerland, 1976-77; General Manager, Pocket Opera Company, San Francisco, 1977-81; Music Director, Open Stage Opera, Ft. Collins, CO, 1981-88; Music Director, Moores Opera Center, Moores School of Music, Univesity of Houston, Houston, TX, 1991-present.

Dr. James Clifton is a Curator of European Painting at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation. His expertise in Renaissance and Baroque art has been recognized with a Metropolitan Museum of Art Theodore Rousseau Fellowship and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in Italy, among other honors. In addition to authoring hundreds of articles, essays, book reviews and lectures, Dr. Clifton wrote the script for the public television special "The Body of Christ in Art".

Dr. Aliza Wong is assistant professor in the Department of History and Director of European Studies at Texas Tech University. Dr. Wong is a specialist in modern Italian history with a concentration on southern question discourse, race, nationalism, and identity. Dr. Wong is known for her recent book, Race and Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861-1911: Meriodionalism, Empire, and Diaspora", articles and reviews, and presentations worldwide. Dr. Wong has received several awards for teaching. Most recently, Dr. Wong has been the recipient of several national and international research awards among these is a recent Fulbright Junior Scholar Award to Italy.

Anne Wilkes-Tucker is the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of photography at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts where she founded the photography department in 1976. The museum’s collection now houses more than 22,000 photographs. She has been curator for more than forty exhibition most of which were accompanied by publications. She has also published many articles and lectured throughout the world. Ms. Tucker has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Getty Center, and significant achievement awards including America’s Best Curator in a 2001 Time Magazine issue devoted to America’s Best.

Marian Luntz is the film program director and curator of film and video at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Since 1990 the film series developed by Ms. Luntz showcase a broad range of classis and contemporary Hollywood films, foreign language films, and premiers of independent films. She has successfully attracted scholars, critics and filmmakers to the showings as visiting speakers to give audiences a deeper understanding of film and filmmaking.