Women, Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome

key:
Blundell: Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge (MA), 1995.
Carson: Anne Carson, If Not, Winter. Fragments of Sappho, New York, 2002.
D’Ambra: Roman Women, Cambridge, 2007.
Williamson: Margaret Williamson, Sappho’s Immortal Daughters, Cambridge (MA), 1995.
Plays translated in Classical Tragedy Greek and Roman, R. Corrigan, 1990.
* Reading provided on electronic reserve; see http://www.macalester.edu/library/resources/reserves/index.html.
# Reading available on World Wide Web; links provided below.

Wk	Date	Topic	Reading Assignment	Questions for Discussion
1	W 9/5	Welcome & Introduction
1	F 9/7	No Class Today. Please read Blundell, “Women in Myth,” 14-57. We will be reading literature filled with these characters all semester, so an introduction or refresher on names and associations is very useful. Come prepared on Monday with any questions, but we will not discuss this chapter directly together as a class. You may write a response paper on this reading.
2	M 9/10	Women, Gender and Classics	1.* M. Skinner, “Classical Studies, Patriarchy and Feminism” Women’s Studies International Forum 10 (1987) 181-6. 2. Selected Poetry (handout) 3. Blundell, “Introduction,” 9-12.	What has been the role of Classics in ‘Western’ society? Why is the field well suited to this role? Why are you taking this course? What does “Classics” mean to you? What specific changes did Skinner call for in the discipline in 1986?
	W 9/12	Archaic Greece	Blundell, “The Archaic Age,” 63-94.	What were the salient features of the archaic period in Greek history (economic, political, artistic, etc.)? What were the salient features of women’s lives in Archaic Greece? How do we know? What are the problems with the evidence we have?
	F 9/14	Sappho	Williamson, pp. 1-89.	What problems face us in interpreting the poetry of Sappho?
3	M 9/17		1. Browse through the Carson translation of Sappho’s poetry, reading closely at least fragments 1, 2, 16, 31, 51, 94, 96, 98A, 102, 105A, 105B, 110, 111, 114, 121, 130, 131, 132, and 148. 2. Read selected poetry of male contemporaries (email).	Do you perceive differences between Sappho’s poems and those of her male contemporaries? Consider poetic techniques, themes, characters, etc. How would you characterize Sappho herself based on her work?

	W 9/19	Sexuality and Ritual	Williamson, pp. 90-132. QUIZ on places, people and events in Greek history.	Are the terms ‘homosexual’ or ‘lesbian’ useful in discussing Sappho’s poetry or Sappho herself? What does it mean for sexuality to be part of one’s public rather than private life? How may this have been so for Sappho and her female contemporaries?
	F 9/21	Scholarship	# Ellen Greene, “Sappho, Foucault, and Women's Erotics” Arethusa 29.1 (1996) 1-14 Links to performances of Sappho's poetry online.	In your own words, describe Foucault’s conception of ancient Greek sexuality and the critique of it offered by Greene. What is poetic apostrophe? How does it illustrate Greene’s critique? Find another fragment which achieves the same effect.
4	M 9/24	Hymn to Demeter	# Hymn to Demeter	How do Demeter and Persephone’s experiences mirror those of archaic women as described by Blundell, Williamson and Sappho? How does the hymn reinforce dominant social hierarchies such as gender? How might it be seen to undermine or challenge them?
4	W 9/26	Case Study: the Athenian Democracy	Blundell, “The Classical Age,” 95-97, “Women in Athenian Law and Society,” and “The Lives of Women in Classical Athens,” 113-49.	What are the salient features of the Classical period in Greek history? How did the lives of women in Classical Athens differ from those in the archaic period? How do we know? What is the relationship between political systems and gender in Athens during this time?
	F 9/28	Tragedy	Euripides, Medea	What conceptual categories besides gender are at work in Euripides’ characterization of Medea? Does the play challenge or reinforce gender and other social categories? Why did the citizens of Athens spend time and money to produce such a play?
5	M 10/1	Comedy	Aristophanes, Lysistrata	What is meant to be funny here? What is mocked? Does the play challenge or reinforce gender or other social categories?
	W 10/3	Modern Responses	# Christopher A. Faraone, “Salvation and Female Heroics in the Parados of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata” Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997) 38-59.	What is Faraone’s thesis? How does he go about proving it? How does the picture he presents adjust our developing image of women in Classical Athens?
	F 10/5		Rita Dove, The Darker Face of the Earth	How does Dove reuse the story of Oedipus for her own purposes? Why does she use a classical myth and play? How can we understand her play as the product of, and helping to both produce and challenge, modern America?
6	M 10/8	Law & Oratory	# Demosthenes (?)/Apollodorus, Against Neaera (Notice that the speech is provided over three web pages -- don't just print first page and think you have the whole text.)	What are the precise charges in the case? What of the evidence presented is relevant to those charges? What can we learn about Neaera’s life from this material?
Tuesday, October 9: First Paper Due in Professor Severy-Hoven’s Office (Old Main 312) by 12 noon.

	W 10/10	Medicine	1. * Helen King, “Producing Woman: Hippocratic Gynaecology,” in L. Archer et al, Women in Ancient Societies, 102-14. New York, 1994. 2. Blundell, “Women’s Bodies,” 98-112.	What is King’s thesis? How do the notions of the body King and Blundell present resonate with or change our developing understanding of women, gender and sexuality in the Classical period? Do you think the relationship between culture and medicine is similar today?
	F 10/12		1.# Selections from the Hippocratic Corpus (Women’s Life in Greece and Rome#341, 343, 344, 346, 348, 349) 2. # Selections from Aristotle (Women’s Life in Greece and Rome # 339)	Find specific passages that illustrate King’s thesis. How might you explain certain symptoms differently from the Hippocratic doctors or Aristotle? How does Aristotle reason? How does he formulate and prove his theories, and how does this affect his analysis of women?
	M 10/15 - F 11/26	Beth Severy-Hoven on maternity leave. Special unit on visual and material culture with Professor Mireille Lee.
7	M 10/15	Introduction to Visual and Material Culture	* Stewart, “Perspectives”	What kinds of information can we learn from visual and material sources that are not recoverable from written sources? What is the relationship between art and ideology? Why is visual and material culture important for the construction of gender?
	W 10/17	Interpretive Approaches	* Beard, “Adopting an Approach II”	How can we recover the intended meanings of ancient images? What methods can be employed?
	F 10/19	Women on Greek Vases: Ideals	* Lewis, “The Women’s Room”	How are women portrayed on Classical vases? How do images of women on Greek vases compare to the literary and historical sources? To what degree to these images mirror “reality”?
8	M 10/22	Women on Greek Vases: Pornography?	1. * Sutton, “Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery” 2. * McNair, “Sexual Representation, from antiquity to the Internet: history, definition, regulation”	What is Sutton’s thesis? How do images of homosexuality differ from images of heterosexuality? Given the parameters suggested by McNair, should these images be considered pornographic?
	W 10/24	Women in Greek Sculpture: Korai	*Osborne, “Looking on — Greek style. Does the Sculpted Girl Speak to Women, too?”	What ideological messages are conveyed by the Archaic kore? Would female viewers have understood these images differently from male viewers?
	F 10/26	Fall Break – No class.
9	M 10/29	Women in Greek Sculpture: Grave Reliefs	* Stears, “Dead women’s society: constructing female gender in Classical Athenian funerary sculpture”	Why are grave reliefs a particularly good source for understanding Athenian women? How is the iconography of grave reliefs different from that of vase-painting? Korai?
	W 10/31	Naked or Nude: Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos	* Salomon, “Making a World of Difference: Gender, Asymmetry, and the Greek Nude”	According to Salomon, is the Knidian Aphrodite naked or nude? Do you agree?
	Th 11/1	Field trip to Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 6:00-8:00 pm
	F 11/2	No class.
10	M 11/5	Roman Women	Response Paper Due D’Ambra chapters 1 and 3	How can we know about Roman women? How are Roman constructions of femininity different from or similar to the Greek?
	W 11/7	Women in Pompeii	* Fantham et al, “The Women of Pompeii”	What information is recoverable from Pompeii that is absent or difficult to retrieve from other Roman sites? What can this information tell us about the actual lives of Roman women?
	F 11/9	No class.
	Sat 11/10	Field trip to Pompeii exhibit, Science Museum of Minnesota, 10am-noon.
11	M 11/12	Pompeii Discussion	Response Paper Due.
	W 11/14	Exam on Visual and Material Culture
	F 11/16	Special Guest Lecture: Andy Overman on Women in Judaism
12	M 11/19	Lysistrata discussion	Response Paper Due
	W 11/21	Special Guest Lecture: Andy Overman on Women in Early Christianity
	F 11/23	Thanksgiving Break - No class.
13	M 11/26	Severy-Hoven returns Rome	D’Ambra, “Public Life,” 142-80. Overview of Roman history	What challenges are associated with our surviving sources of information on the lives of real women who lived in ancient Rome?
	W 11/28	Literary Sources: Historians	# Livy, History of Rome, preface and book 1	How do females function in this story of how Rome came to be? Why does the monarchy begin and end with a rape? What information can we gather from this source about women in Rome?
	F 11/30	Biographers	* Plutarch, Life of Antony	What are Plutarch’s sources of information? Which social categories does Plutarch utilize in portraying Cleopatra? Can we use this as evidence about the life of Cleopatra?
14	M 12/3	Presentation in class on the Later Life of Cleopatra -- no preparation needed. QUIZ on places, people and events in Roman history.
	W 12/5	Epigraphic Sources	Mary Taliaferro Boatwright, “Plancia Magna of Perge: Women’s Roles and Status in Asia Minor,” in Sarah H. Pomeroy, ed., Women’s History and Ancient History*, 249-72, Chapel Hill, 1991.	What are some critical differences between the literary sources we have been reading and those used by Boatwright to reconstruct the social position of Plancia Magna? What are Boatwright’s suggestions as to why she could be so publicly prominent, and what do you make of them?
	F 12/7		# Epitaphs from Rome (Women’s Life in Greece & Rome 39, 40, 43, 47, 439)	How can we use these as historical sources? How are they problematic? What do they tell us about the women they commemorate?
15	M 12/10	Sexualities	1. * H. Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid” Roman Sexualities, 1997, pp. 47-65. 2. Sources (email).	How do Roman sexual categories differ from those of the modern US, and from those of archaic and classical Greece? How does Parker determine them? Although Parker does not address this, with what other social categories do Roman sexual categories intersect? How are these at play in the excerpts from Roman authors?
	W 12/12	Private Art & Identity	Presentation in class on the House of the Vettii in Pompeii. No preparation needed.
	F 12/14	Wrap Up	Second Paper Due in Class

Schedule of Assignments