Witches and Vixens: Nasty Women in Ancient Greece and Rome

Catalog description

What do video vixens and Foxy Brown have in common with "Witchy Woman"? These modern metaphors continue a long history of equating female sexual allure with dangers found in/or capable of subverting Nature. This course will use contemporary methodologies to make sense of similar descriptions of women found in Greco-Roman literature: how do the Greeks and Romans express a concern about gender, ethnicity, class, and/or politics using these metaphors? How do these same categories help distinguish what is "natural" from "unnatural"? To what end does this discourse about women and nature affect law, public space, or other aspects of "civilization"?