Gender and Sexuality in Classical Antiquity

Catalog description

This course will analyze women in classical Greek and Roman society and literature. Using gender as a critical tool, we will examine Greek and Roman women in various sources, from Homeric epics and public inscriptions to scathing Roman satire. These sources show how the Greeks and Romans defined normative gender categories and how they used these categories as a vehicle for social and political criticism. We will cover both social history and gender discourse, focusing especially on the body and sexuality as a site for power. The limitations imposed by the source materials, both literary and non-literary, will be a topic of discussion throughout, as well as the relation of these ideas to contemporary constructions of gender.