Have you ever wondered in what contexts did women in Classical antiquity feel empowered and secure? Which were the environments that enhanced or impeded their creativity? What are the media that reveal the most about the lived experience of being female in the Classical world?
This module digs deep into male-dominated narratives (literature, material culture, and documentary evidence (epigraphy, and papyrology) to unearth the female agents and the complex ways in which they were portrayed in our sources. It looks at women as active agents in the wider societal nexus across an extended timeframe, from the Archaic to the Late Imperial Era, and beyond, thus also covering a selected number of female agents acting in the Byzantine Empire. The lived experience of being a woman in a largely androcentric world across the whole of the ancient Mediterranean is the focus of this module.
Naturally, socio-religious contexts in which female agency is either securely shaped or severely tested (e.g. familial, financial, and religious festivals settings) are foregrounded in this course. As a whole, this module offers a truly unique, interdisciplinary and intermedial approach to female lived experience in a variety of socio-political and cultural settings brought to life via the close engagement with an extremely large and diverse number of ancient sources (literary, material, and documentary).