Women Classical Scholars

La 4e de couverture indique : "the first written history of the pioneering women born between the Renaissance and 1913 who played significant roles in the history of classical scholarship."

Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly is the first written history of the pioneering women born between the Renaissance and 1913 who played significant roles in the history of classical scholarship. Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles from patriarchal social systems and educational institutions - from learning Latin and Greek as a marginalized minority, to being excluded from institutional support, denigrated for being lightweight or over-ambitious, and working in the shadows of husbands, fathers, and brothers - they nevertheless continued to teach, edit, translate, analyse, and elucidate the texts left to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans. In this volume twenty essays by international leaders in the field chronicle the lives of women from around the globe who have shaped the discipline over more than five hundred years. Arranged in broadly chronological order from the Italian, Iberian, and Portuguese Renaissance through to the Stalinist Soviet Union and occupied France, they synthesize illuminating overviews of the evolution of classical scholarship with incisive case-studies into often overlooked key figures: some, like Madame Anne Dacier, were already famous in their home countries but have been neglected in previous, male-centred accounts, while others have been almost completely lost to the mainstream cultural memory. This book identifies and celebrates them - their frustrations, achievements, and lasting records; in so doing it provides the classical scholars of today, regardless of gender, with the female intellectual ancestors they did not know they had.

Drawing on historical records of women’s varying experiences as litigants, accused criminals, or witnesses, this book offers critical insight into women’s legal status in nineteenth-century Canada. In an effort to recover the social and political conditions under which women lobbied, rebelled, and in some cases influenced change, Petticoats and Prejudice weaves together forgotten stories of achievement and defeat in the Canadian legal system. Expanding the concept of “heroism” beyond its traditional limitations, this text gives life to some of Canada’s lost heroines. Euphemia Rabbitt, who resisted an attempted rape, and Clara Brett Martin, who valiantly secured entry into the all-male legal profession, were admired by their contemporaries for their successful pursuits of justice. But Ellen Rogers, a prostitute who believed all women should be legally protected against sexual assault, and Nellie Armstrong, a battered wife and mother who sought child custody, were ostracized for their ideas and demands. Well aware of the limitations placed upon women advocating for reform in a patriarchal legal system, Constance Backhouse recreates vivid and textured snapshots of these and other women’s courageous struggles against gender discrimination and oppression. Employing social history to illuminate the reproductive, sexual, racial, and occupational inequalities that continue to shape women’s encounters with the law, Petticoats and Prejudice is an essential entry point into the gendered treatment of feminized bodies in Canadian legal institutions. This book was co-published with The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

Because the history of classics has been so deeply implicated in androcentric structures of knowledge and patriarchal social patterns, it illustrates with exceptional clarity many issues endemic to academic feminism as a whole.

Provides the first broad introduction to feminist work in classical studies. Including lesbian theory, black feminist theory, American and French feminist theory, classics will never be the same again.

The World of Women in the Ancient and Classical Near East, written by scholars working in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Israel, makes important contributions to our knowledge of the lives of ancient women. Its articles employ archaeology, biblical and other textual studies, ethnographic comparanda and more to investigate women in Egypt and western Asia from the Predynastic to the Byzantine Periods, as well as in England in the Victorian Era. They combat modern scholarshipâ (TM)s marginalization of women in antiquity, proving beyond all doubt that womenâ (TM)s roles in the home, in the workplace and in society at-large were essential for the survival of the family and the community. Locating women within the domestic sphere can no longer be seen to diminish appreciation of their extensive responsibilities and accomplishments. To the contrary, womenâ (TM)s domestic contributions are proven to be essential components of human survival, as are their contributions elsewhere throughout society, in elite royal, religious, and funerary contexts. The nine articles in this book highlight the fact that the traditional scholarly reliance upon dichotomization and compartmentalization must be resisted, and new paradigms developed and adopted. The World of Women in the Ancient and Classical Near East takes important steps in that direction.

Information about women is scattered throughout the fragmented mosaic of ancient history: the vivid poetry of Sappho survived antiquity on remnants of damaged papyrus; the inscription on a beautiful fourth century B.C.E. grave praises the virtues of Mnesarete, an Athenian woman who died young; a great number of Roman wives were found guilty of poisoning their husbands, but was it accidental food poisoning, or disease, or something more sinister. Apart from the legends of Cleopatra, Dido and Lucretia, and images of graceful maidens dancing on urns, the evidence about the lives of women of the classical world--visual, archaeological, and written--has remained uncollected and uninterpreted. Now, the lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched Women in the Classical World lifts the curtain on the women of ancient Greece and Rome, exploring the lives of slaves and prostitutes, Athenian housewives, and Rome's imperial family. The first book on classical women to give equal weight to written texts and artistic representations, it brings together a great wealth of materials--poetry, vase painting, legislation, medical treatises, architecture, religious and funerary art, women's ornaments, historical epics, political speeches, even ancient coins--to present women in the historical and cultural context of their time. Written by leading experts in the fields of ancient history and art history, women's studies, and Greek and Roman literature, the book's chronological arrangement allows the changing roles of women to unfold over a thousand-year period, beginning in the eighth century B.C.E. Both the art and the literature highlight women's creativity, sexuality and coming of age, marriage and childrearing, religious and public roles, and other themes. Fascinating chapters report on the wild behavior of Spartan and Etruscan women and the mythical Amazons; the changing views of the female body presented in male-authored gynecological treatises; the "new woman" represented by the love poetry of the late Republic and Augustan Age; and the traces of upper- and lower-class life in Pompeii, miraculously preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. Provocative and surprising, Women in the Classical World is a masterly foray into the past, and a definitive statement on the lives of women in ancient Greece and Rome.

Over 2,600 entries identify the women of classical mythology.