Mar 28, 2024  
2019-2020 Catalog 
    
2019-2020 Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

CLA 238 - War and Gender in the Ancient World


Instructor
Truetzel

This course explores the ways that warfare in ancient Greece and Rome both depended on and produced particular ideas about gender. We will consider not only the actual experiences of warfare by ancient men and women, but also the role of gender in ancient discourse about war and the influence of militarism more generally on ancient conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Topics include the representation of women as war’s cause, purpose, or medium; combat trauma and masculinity; women warriors; gendered divisions of wartime labor; sexual violence in war; gender and resistance to war; militarism and the socialization of young men; feminized depictions of “the enemy”; gender and war commemorations; and militarized representations of love and sex. For each topic, we will also explore the intersections of gender with other dimensions of social difference, such as social status and ethnicity.

We will examine literary and material evidence from Greco-Roman antiquity, including readings in Homer, Euripides, Vergil, Livy, and Ovid, and imagery on vase paintings, sculptural reliefs, coins, and ancient inscriptions. We will also read contemporary scholarship on gender and warfare and discuss recent film and literary adaptations of ancient sources on these topics, such as Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (2015) and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018).

Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
Counts as an elective toward the Classical Studies major and the Classical Languages and Literature major.
Counts as an elective toward the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Counts as a 300-level course and fulfills the pre-modern requirement in the History major.
Satisfies Historical Thought requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Students at all levels welcome. (Fall 2019)