In the weeks leading up to the 2017 Flexner Lectures, we're highlighting the many engaging courses being offered in conjunction with Brown University Professor Bonnie Honig's residency and lectures. "Feminism in Classics" is taught by Professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies Catherine Conybeare.
We shall start by considering the relation of feminism to classics; we shall then look at the responses of feminist philosophers and theorists to a range of classical texts that may be read as resisting or refusing the master narratives of a patriarchal culture. These texts will comprise the poetry of Sappho, Sophocles’ play Antigone, Plato’s philosophical dialogue Symposium, Euripides’ play Bacchae, and selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We shall close with a reading of a fundamental text of refusal, the prison diary of Perpetua written in Carthage in 203 CE while she awaited her martyrdom in the arena.
Established in honor of Mary Flexner, a Bryn Mawr graduate of the class of 1895, the Flexner Lectureship has brought some of the world’s best-known humanists to campus for a brief residency. In addition to their public lectures, holders of the Mary Flexner Lectureship often lead seminars or discussions with undergraduate and graduate students. By agreement with Bryn Mawr, the Flexner Lectures are subsequently published by Harvard University Press.