Believing Ancient Women: Feminist Epistemologies for Greece and Rome (Intersectionality in Classical Antiquity)

h4Deploys recent philosophical scholarship on feminist epistemology as an interpretive lens/h4ulliDevelops recent feminist epistemological views as a literary-critical theory for the interpretation of classical sources/liliExplores how identities intersect with constructions of epistemic concepts (e.g., knowledge, belief, rationality, objectivity, testimony, evidence) in Greco-Roman antiquity/liliContributes to reinterpreting and recovering underrepresented voices and ideas in classical sources and their interpretation/li/ulpThis volume deploys recent feminist epistemological frameworks to analyze how concepts like knowledge, authority, rationality, objectivity and testimony were constructed in Greece and Rome. The introduction serves as a field guide to feminist epistemological interpretations of classical sources, and the following sixteen chapters treat a variety of genres and time periods, from Greek poetry, tragedy, philosophy, oratory, historiography and material culture to Roman comedy, epic, oratory, letters, law and their reception. By using an intersectional approach to demonstrate how epistemic systems exclude and pathologize the experiences of ancient women and other oppressed groups, these contributions aid in the recovery of non-dominant narratives and reveal issues of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, religion, age, class, familial status and citizenship in the ancient and modern world. The volume contributes to a more inclusive and equitable study of classical antiquity and builds transhistorical connections capable of exposing similar injustices in our own time./p List of Illustrations 8 Acknowledgements 9 List of Contributors 11 1. Believing Ancient Women: An Introduction and Feminist Epistemological Field Guide 16 2. ‘For you know how we cared for you’: Sappho and Queer Epistemology 45 3. En-gendering Knowledge with the Oceanids in Prometheus Bound 63 4. Women’s Complaints about Violence at Athens: Zobia and Aristogeiton 83 5. Bodies of Knowledge: Diotima’s Reproductive Expertise in the Symposium 97 6. Monumental Presence and Absence: Approaching the Material Traces of Historical Women in the Classical World 117 7. Plautus’s Truculentus and Terence’s Hecyra: Patriarchal Authority and Women’s Credibility 136 8. Incidental Women in the Letters of Cicero 153 9. Signifying Dido: Constructs of Race and Gender in Augustan Rome 171 10. But She Didn’t Complain: Ovid’s Leucothoe, Rape Myths and Hermeneutical Injustice 184 11. ‘Feebly fighting back’: Stuprum in Eumolpus’s Pergamene Boy 200 12. The Viability of Feminist Stoicism: On the Compatibility of Stoic and Feminist Epistemology 217 13. What Everyone Knows: Hermeneutical Injustice in the Medieval Iphis 236 14. Religious Authority and Classical Reception in Baroque Rome: Martha Marchina’s Musa Posthuma and Feminist Epistemologies of Care 257 15. ‘Grey’ Rape on the Silver Screen: Rapes of Enslaved People in Mass Media about the Ancient World 277 Selected Bibliography 295 Index 334