Classics 127/Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies: Women, Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome Fall 2007, Macalester College Professors Beth Severy-Hoven and Mireille Lee

Course Description

            In this course we will investigate contemporary approaches to studying women, gender and sexuality in history, and the particular challenges of studying these issues in classical antiquity. By reading ancient writings in translation, analyzing art and other material culture, and working through significant modern research, we will address the following questions: How did ancient Greek and Roman societies understand and use the categories of male and female? Into what sexual categories did different cultures group people? How did these gender and sexual categories intersect with notions of slave and free status, citizenship and ethnicity? How should we interpret the actions and representations of women in surviving literature, myth, art, law, philosophy, politics and medicine in this light? Finally, how have gendered classical images been deployed in the modern U.S. – from scholarship to art and poetry?

            Unusually, two professors will be leading the class through an exploration of these issues. As you will have noticed the first few moments of the first day, Professor Severy-Hoven will be in need of a maternity leave in the middle of October. While she is away, Professor Lee will bring to the class her considerable expertise on visual and material culture. In the period before fall break and after Thanksgiving, Professor Severy-Hoven will focus on literary and epigraphic sources of information for the construction of gender and sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome.

Beth Severy-Hoven, Macalester College
9/3/7