Feminist Retellings from Sappho to Circe

Catalog description

In this seminar, we will study feminist retellings of myths, figures, and tropes from ancient Greek and Roman literature. Situating contemporary retellings alongside ancient sources, we will ask: what makes a retelling “feminist”? What kinds of feminism(s) do these retellings model? Are these feminist retellings purely a modern phenomenon, or do certain ancient genres (e.g., lyric and choral poetry, Greek tragedy) generate feminist potential? Texts may include: Sappho’s fragments, Euripides’ Trojan Women and Bacchae, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Fran Ross’ Oreo, Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad; Madeleine Miller’s Circe.