Professor: Lowell Bowditch
4 credits
This course will explore the construction of gender and norms of sexuality in Greco-Roman antiquity, with a focus on ancient Greece. We shall consider attitudes toward the body, homo-, bi-, and heterosexuality, the household, privacy, and religious ritual as it reflects issues of gender. Primary readings will include selections from Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Plato, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Lysias, Ovid, and Longus. Theoretical perspectives will acknowledge Foucault, psychoanalysis, and Marxist approaches to gender in antiquity, and their impact on feminist interpretations of the literary (including law, oratory and medical texts) and the archaeological evidence of the ancients.