AH302: GENDER IN ANCIENT SOCIAL LIFE
School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester
Lin Foxhall (lf4@le.ac.uk), Autumn term, 1995/6
Final year undergraduate (3rd year for us in England) course

'Male' and 'female' are natural categories. Or are they? This course will focus on the way in which gender is 'naturalised' in ancient societies, that is, the ways in which it is woven into belief systems as a hierarchical principle. Being a man or a woman doesn't always mean the same thing in changing social and cultural contexts, and maleness and femaleness are themselves negotiable. Here we shall explore some of the contexts in ancient societies in which gender gives meaning to social situations in order to understand the specific ways in which gender was an important, possibly the most important, organisational principle. The course is both theoretical and comparative. Archaeological as well as historical sources will be explored. Reading will centre on ancient Greece, but some material from other ancient societies will also be covered. Other comparative material will be introduced as appropriate.

The course will be assessed on the basis of one SEEN-QUESTION written examination (2 questions, 2 hours, 40%), one essay (word-processed and properly referenced, maximum 5000 words, 50%) and one book report (short - around 1000 words maximum, 10%). Essay topics will be negotiated between teacher and student and must have the teacher's approval. Examination answers must not overlap substantially with the essay topic.

Classes will be a mixture of informal lecture, discussion and student presentations.

Preliminary Course Outline

1. Introduction. Problems imposed by the sources.
2. Households, kinship and life cycles.
3. The gendered construction of time.
4. Gender and the use of space: public and private.
5. Problematising public and private I: politics and law.
6. Problematising public and private II: control of resources and the marketplace.
7. Gender and religious life: festivals, rituals and rites of passage.
8. Controlling the human body: ideologies of gender and ancient medicine.
9. Masculinity, femininity and sexuality.
10. Social theory and antiquity: a summary.

• Aeschines 1 (Against Timarchos).
• Antiphon 1.
• Demosthenes 27-30, 41, 59 (Against Neaira).
• Xenophon, Oikonomikos.
• Cameron, A. and A. Kuhrt (eds.) 1983: Images of women in antiquity. (You might want to consider buying this, it's pretty cheap.)
• *Fantham, E., et al. 1994: Women in the Classical World.
• *Foucault, M. 1978-1986: A history of sexuality, vols. 1-3. (Volume 2, 'The uses of pleasure', is particularly worth buying.)
• Humphreys, S.C. 1983: The family, women and death.
• Pomeroy, S. (ed.) 1991: Women's history and ancient history. (Another useful anthology, worth buying but probably expensive).
• Schaps, D. 1979: The economic rights of women in ancient Greece. (Cf. Foxhall CQ 1989).
• Vidal Naquet, P. 1981: The black hunter.
• Winkler, J. 1990: The constraints of desire.

1. Introduction. Problems imposed by the sources.

• Fant, E. et al. 1994: Women in the Classical World.
• Scott, J. 1986: Gender: a useful category of historical analysis, American Historical Review 91, 1053-1075.
• J. Dubisch (ed.) 1986: Gender and power in rural Greece, introduction.
• Clark, G. 1989: Women in antiquity (review article), JACT.
• Kuhrt, A. 1989: Non-royal women in the late Babylonian period: a survey, on B. Lesko (ed.), Women's earliest records from ancient Egypt and western Asia, (Brown Judaic Studies 166), 215-39.
• Clark, G. 1981: Roman Women, Greece and Rome 28, 201 ff.
• Gould, J. 1980: Law, custom and myth: aspects of the social position of women in classical Athens', Journal of Hellenic Studies 100, 38-59.
• Finley, M.I. 1977: The silent women of Rome, in Aspects of Antiquity.
• Schmitt-Pantal, M. 1992: The difference between the sexes: history, anthropology and the Greek city, in M. Perrot, Writing Women's History,70-89. [see also, for general reading vol. 1 of The History of Women in the West, edited by M. Schmitt-Pantal]
• Gero, J. and M. Conkey 1991: Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, part 1.
• Keuls, E. 1985: The Reign of the Phallus.
• Goldhill, S. 1994: Foucault's Virginity.

2. Households, kinship and life cycles.

• Kertzer, D. and R. Saller (eds.) 1991: The family in Italy from antiquty to the present.
• Rawson, B. (ed.) 1986: The family in ancient Rome.
• duBoulay, J. 1980: Portrait of a Greek mountain village, ch 1.
• Gallant, T. 1991: Risk and Survival in ancient Greece, ch 2, Ancient households and their life cycle, 11-33.
• Foxhall L. 1989: Household, gender and property in classical Athens, Classical Quarterly 39, 22-44.
• Meyers, C. 1989: Women and the domestic economy of early Israel, in B. Lesko Women's earliest records from ancient Egypt and western Asia (Brown Judaic Studies 166), 265-278.
• Wallace-Hadrill, A. 1981: Family and inheritance in the Augustan marriage laws, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 207, 58-80.
• Hallett, J. 1984: Fathers and daughters in Roman society.
• Dixon, S. 1988: The Roman mother.
• Hopkins, K. 1980: Brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt, Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, 303-55.
• Vernant, J.P. 1982: from Oedipus to Periander: lameness, tyranny and incest..., Arethusa 15, 19-38.
• Saller, R. 1994: Patriarchy, Preoperty and Death in the Roman Family.
• Treggiari, S. Roman Marriage.

3. The gendered construction of time.

• Bloch, M. 1977: The present and the past in the present, Man 12. Also in Ritual, History and Power (1989).
• Pina-Cabral, J. 1987: Paved roads and enchanted mooresses: the perception of the past among the peasant population of the Alto Minho, Man 22, 715-35.
• Davis, J. 1991: Times and identities, (inaugural lecture, Oxford University)
• Rowlands 1991: The transmission of culture: memory, tradition and space (Prehistoric Society lecture).
• Vernant, J.P. 1983: Myth and thought among the Greeks, Routledge, London, 'Mythical aspects of memory'.
• Vidal-Naquet, P. Divine time and human time, in The black hunter, ch. 2.
• Foxhall, L., Pandora unbound, in N. Lindisfarne and A. Cornwall, Dislocating masculinity.
• Boymel Kampen, N. 1991: Between public and private: women as historical subjects in Roman art, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women's history and ancient history, 219-48.

4. Gender and the use of space: public and private.

• Douglas, M. 1991: The idea of home: a kind of space, Social research 58.1, 287-307.
• Herzfeld, M. 1992: A place in history: social and monumental time in a Cretan town, ch. 7.
• Walker, S. 1983: Women and housing in classical Greece, the archaeological evidence, in A.Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of women in antiquity, 81-91.
• Jameson, M. 1990: Domestic space in the Greek city-state, in S. Kent (ed.), Domestic architecture and the use of space.
• Jameson, M. 1990: Private space in the Greek city, in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.) The Greek City.
• Nevett, L. 1994: Separation or seclusion..., in M. Parker-Pearson and C. Richards, Architecture and Order.
• Wallace Hadrill, A. 1989: The Roman house, Papers of the British School at Rome.
• Wallace-Hadrill, A. 1991: Houses and households: sampling Pompeii and Herculaneum, in B. Rawson (ed.) Marriage, divorce and children in ancient Rome.
• Wallace-Hadrill, A. 1994: The Roman household.
• Gero and Conkey 1991:part 2
• Thbert, Y. 1987: Private life and domestic architecture in Roman Africa, in P. Veyne (ed.), A history of private life I, 319-409.

5. Problematising public and private I: politics and law.

• Gardner, J. 1986: Women in Roman Law and Society.
• Cohen, D. 1991: Law, sexuality and society.
• Delia, D. 1991: Fulvia reconsidered, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women's history and ancient history, 197-217.
• Carney, E. 1991: What's in a name? The emergence of a title for royal women in the hellenistic period, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women's history and ancient history, 154-174.
• Taliaferro Boatwright, M. 1991: Plancia Magna of Perge: women's roles and status in Roman Asia Minor, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women's history and ancient history, 249-272.
• Foxhall, L. 1996: The Law and the lady, in L. Foxhall and A.D.E. Lewis, Greek Law in its Political Setting: Justifications not Justice, OUP
• Dalley, S. 1984: Mari and Karana, ch. 5.
• Robins, G. 1983: The God's wife of Amun in the 18th dynasty in Egypt, in A.Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of women in antiquity, 65-78.

6. Problematising public and private II: control of resources and the marketplace.

• Dalley, S. 1984: Mari and Karana, ch. 3.
• van Bremen, R. 1983: Women and wealth, in A.Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of women in antiquity, 223-242.
• Grosz, K. 1983: Bridewealth and dowry in Nuzi, in A.Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of women in antiquity, 193-206.
• Schaps, D. 1979: The economic rights of women in ancient Greece. (Cf. Foxhall CQ 1989)
• Gero and Conkey 1991:parts 3 and 4..
• Weiner, A. and Schneider J. (eds.) 1989: Cloth.

7. Controlling the human body: ideologies of gender and ancient medicine.

• Dean-Jones, L. 1994: Greek medicine and the cultural construction of the female body. (see also her article in Pomeroy 1991.)
• King, H. Bound to bleed, in Cameron and Kuhrt 1981
• Ellis Hanson, A., in Pomeroy 1991.
• Clark 1993, ch. 3.
• Fantham et al 1994: ch. 6

8. Gender and religious life: festivals, rituals and rites of passage.

• Humphreys, S.C. 1983: The family, women and death.
• Archer, L.J. 1983: The role of Jewish women in the religion, ritual and cult of Graeco-Roman Palestine, in A.Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of women in antiquity, 273-87.
• Patterson, C. 1991: Marriage and the married woman in Athenian law, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women's history and ancient history, 48-72.
• duBoulay, J. 1991: Cosmos and gender in village Greece, in P. Loizos and E. Papataxiarchis (eds.), Contested identities, 47-78.
• Vidal Naquet, P. 1981: The black hunter and the origin of the Athenian ephebia, in The black hunter.
• Herdt, G. 1987: The Sambia, ch. 5.
• Foley, H.P. (ed.) 1994: The Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
• Brumfield, A. C. 1981: The Attic Festivals of Demeter and Their Relation to the Agricultural Year,
• Detienne, M. 1977: The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology, trans. J. Lloyd.
• Detienne, M. 1989: The violence of wellborn ladies: women in the Thesmophoria, in M. Detienne and J-P. Vernant, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks,
• Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1987: Studies in Girls' Transitions: Aspects of the Arkteia and Age Representation in Attic Iconography.
• Winkler, J. 1990: The Constraints of Desire, ch. 4(?), The laughter of the oppressed.
• Zeitlin, F. 1982: Cultic models of the female: Rites of Dionysos and Demeter, Arethusa, 15.1 and 2, 129- 157.

9. Masculinity, femininity and sexuality.

• Winkler, J. 1990: The constraints of desire.
• McIntosh Snyder, J. 1991: Public occasion and private passion in the lyrics of Sappho of Lesbos, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women's history and ancient history, 1-19.
• Halperin, D. 1990: One hundred years of homosexuality.
• Herdt, G. 1987: The Sambia, ch. 4, 6, 7.
• Foucault, M. , A history of sexuality, selections from vols. 1-3.
• Caplan, P. 1986: The cultural construction of sexuality, introduction, 1-30.
• Halperin, D., J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin 1990: Before Sexuality.
• Richlin, A. 1992: Pornography in the Ancient World.

10. Social theory and antiquity: a summary.

• Bourdieu, P. Outline of a theory of practice, ch. 2.
• Strathern, M. 1988: The gender of the gift, ch. 1
• MacCormack, C. 1980: Nature, culture and gender: a critique, in C. MacCormack and M. Strathern (eds.), Nature, Culture and Gender.
• Irigaray, L. 1985: This sex which is not one, tr. C. Porter with C. Burke. (selections. See also M. Whitford, Luce Irigaray's critique of rationality).
• Rabinowitz, N. and A. Richlin 1993: Feminism and the classics.
• ...and much more!

www.stoa.org/diotima