Andy's Proposal

Alexander the Great: A Leader by Any Other Name
Or
How Many Faces for Alexander?

Abstract

Like I’ve said before, I’m exploring the many historical interpretations of Alexander the Great because I am trying to find out how ancient historians as well as other writers over the centuries have looked at him and interpreted him. Now this isn’t going to be only limited to writers (imagine how dry that would be!) but also sculptors, painters, and other artists as well. The goal of the project is to help whoever is experiencing the project understand how one of the most dynamic leaders in world history did what he did and was later seen. Moreover, there has even been recent work in the field of Alexandrian studies which calls into question many of the ancient sources and their interpretation of certain aspects of his life i.e. his mother, Olympias, interpretation of battles, the burning of the Persian royal palace of Persepolis, etc.. Simply stated, I want to produce a multi-perspectival project aimed for the academic reader (or any lover of history for that matter) that will have several elements of the documentary style as well. This would more than likely take shape as a DVD (much like what we saw with the Labyrinth project on Bobby Kennedy) which would engross the participant with information and different interpretations of the man, the world he lived in, what he did, how he was seen then, now, and so on ad infinitum. Ultimately this will force people to see how the sources are not in concordance and how even the simplest facts cannot be agreed upon. Moreover, while experiencing the project, people will learn what different scholars (ancient and modern) claim about Alexander, because, in the end, all that can be known about one of the most dynamic leaders in history is what we can glean from several contradictory authors.

Methodology

As I stated above, and I believe this is worth repeating, Alexandrian studies are a paradox because nothing can truly be known about the man himself despite the corpus of works concerning him. Many of the sources disagree; what I would like to do is allow a participant to see what they disagree on and how little moments of disharmony add up over the course of the main narratives. I'd like to focus my project on answering what we, as scholars, can truly know about Alexander, and what are the different ways he has been re-interpreted through the years. Can we only know, as most academics believe, that all we can take from the histories are what the author says Alexander did, or can we say with any degree of certainty that he acted in that manner. The modern scholarship that does exist about Alexander is quite fascinating, and is worth contemplating alongside the ancient scholarship as well. I feel that the modern scholarship will give the project the extra component that will aid people in seeing just how many ways something can be reinterpreted, which is a major portion of what I'm attempting to do.

Media Presentation & Justification
First and foremost, I find that most people can't make their way through the ancient corpus of works about Alexander, much less make the distinctions between the different traditions that they hail from. Even academics find actively keeping that information in mind to be a challenge. Trying to guide most people through the visual representations is easier by far. I believe that combining the two elements would bolster interest in the subject. Moreover, by making the sources painfully obvious via tabs or citations of some sort, people could literally see the discrepancies side by side. I haven't decided how much of certain movies deserve to be spliced into the project proper, but some (like Oliver Stone's Alexander) do capture certain moments which are in concordance between sources. As I said before, I want to do this on a DVD somewhere in the same comprehensive, exhaustive method as the Labyrinth project we saw on Kennedy. I truly believe that this could be a fascinating experience that the viewer could learn a great deal from. Keep in mind though, that this knowledge wouldn't be presented as "this is what Alexander did"; it would be "this is what Arrian or Curtius said Alexander did". This needs to be done in a multimedia format because flipping through books to try and find events becomes tiresome and still doesn't let the scholar SEE the things side by side. I would attempt to arrange the project so that the person experiencing it would be able to guide their learning in fields that interest them.