Zoe Stamatopoulou

In this course, we will explore ancient Greek and Roman approaches to gender and sexuality. We will consider questions such as: which traits and behaviors did the Greeks and the Romans associate with masculinity and which with femininity? What can we tell from our sources about those who did not fit neatly in this binary? What do we know about trans lives in antiquity? How did the Greeks and the Romans think about male and female physiology and psychology? How did they construct sexuality and how did they approach homosexual and heterosexual relationships? How did they think about desire and sexual pleasure? How did ancient laws and institutions circumscribe the lives of women and men, and how did they contribute to the construction of gender and sexuality? How did class and ethnicity intersect with ideas about gender and sexuality in antiquity? In our search for answers, we will read a broad selection of ancient texts in translation, and we will consider various theoretical viewpoints. This course will help you gain a better understanding of how gender and sexuality were constructed in antiquity, but it will also prompt you to reflect on how the exploration of ancient ideas can enrich the ways in which we think about these issues and experiences today.

Students enrolled in this course engage in close and sustained reading of a set of texts that are indispensable for an understanding of the European literary tradition, texts that continue to offer invaluable insights into humanity and the world around us. Homer's Iliad is the foundation of our class. We then go on to trace ways in which later poets and dramatists engage the work of predecessors who inspire and challenge them. Readings move from translations of Greek, Latin, and Italian, to poetry and drama composed in English. In addition to Homer, we will read works of Sappho, a Greek tragedian, Plato, Vergil, Ovid, Petrarch, and Shakespeare.

This course explores the history, archaeology, material culture, and sociology of the symposion in ancient Greece. While we will focus mainly on the archaic and classical Greek symposion, we will also examine its reception in the Roman world. In this context, we will study art and literature produced for the symposion, as well as representations of the symposion in literature, especially in lyric poetry, drama, and philosophical prose.