A discussion of Ann Marie Yasin's new book, Rebuilding Histories in the Roman World: Architectural Restoration and Temporality from Augustus to Justinian (Cambridge University Press, 2025). The author will be joined in conversation by Darlene Brooks Hedstrom (Brandeis University) and Felipe Rojas Silva (Brown University), moderated by Frederic Clark (USC). Organized in partnership with the Department of Art History. Registration is required. REGISTER HERE

About the Book: In Rebuilding Histories in the Roman World, Ann Marie Yasin reveals the savvy and subtle ways in which Roman and late Roman patrons across the Mediterranean modulated connections to the past and expectations for the future through their material investments in old architecture. Then as now, reactivation and modification of previously built structures required direct engagement with issues of tradition and novelty, longevity and ephemerality, security and precarity – in short, with how time is perceived in the built environment. The book argues that Roman patrons and audiences were keenly sensitive to all of these issues. It traces spatial and decorative configurations of rebuilt structures, including temples and churches, civic and entertainment buildings, roads and aqueducts, as well as theways such projects were marked and celebrated through ritual and monumental text. In doing so, Yasin charts how local communities engaged with the time of their buildings at a material, experiential level over the course of the first six centuries CE.

About the Author: Ann Marie Yasin is an Associate Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Southern California specializing in Roman and late antique architecture and material culture. She is the author of Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and more recent studies on memory and sacred landscapes, spatiality and perception of devotional graffiti, and architectural frameworks of early Christian relic installations.

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. 

This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.