Myths of Masculinity

Catalog description

This course explores the shifting representations of masculinity from Homeric to Classical Greece and into the early Roman Empire. Using a genealogical approach, we will examine ancient mythoi – stories – of masculinity to see how notions of masculinity evolved within the ancient period as well as their impacts on present discourses. Mythoi of idealized masculinity permeate ancient philosophical, historical, legal, and dramatic texts, even though, more often than not, we find characters whose masculinity is porous, fragmented, and complex. Further, ancient sources indicate that gender was understood to be an ongoing process of self-fashioning independent from one's anatomy. Through what foundational stories were idealized masculinities constructed, and of what behaviors did they consist? What anxieties can we detect beneath the often hyperbolic displays of masculinity? How does gender intersect with other categories of difference such a ethnicity, citizenship, class, and language (and, in antiquity, is gender secondary to these categories)? In this course we will develop critical approaches for analyzing historical and social dynamics in which gendered and racialized violence are normalized. We will as well consider how engaging with the past can help us to develop ways of thinking about gender and masculinity beyond a binary framework.