Women in Classical Antiquity

3 units

This course investigates the lives of women in antiquity by an examination of the surviving literary, archaeological, and iconographic sources. How do we access the lives of women when most of the art and literature was produced by men? To explore this question, we will reread canonical ancient texts from the standpoint of gender. Do these texts reflect social reality in any way at all? Can we ever get outside these texts to social reality? We will also try to debunk old scholarly myths about women in antiquity, and look at what these traditional interpretations have to say about the modern cultures which produced them.