Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World

Front Cover
Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Lisa Auanger
University of Texas Press, Mar 15, 2002 - Social Science - 389 pages
Women's and men's worlds were largely separate in ancient Mediterranean societies, and, in consequence, many women's deepest personal relationships were with other women. Yet relatively little scholarly or popular attention has focused on women's relationships in antiquity, in contrast to recent interest in the relationships between men in Ancient Greece and Rome. The essays in this book seek to close this gap by exploring a wide variety of textual and archaeological evidence for women's homosocial and homoerotic relationships from prehistoric Greece to fifth-century CE Egypt.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Imagining a Womens World in Bronze Age Greece The Frescoes from Xeste 3 at Akrotiri Thera
34
Aphrodite Garlanded Eros and Poetic Creativity in Sappho and Nossis
60
Subjects Objects and Erotic Symmetry in Sapphos Fragments
82
Excavating Womens Homoeroticism in Ancient Greece The Evidence from Attic Vase Painting
106
Women in Relief Double Consciousness in Classical Attic Tombstones
167
Glimpses through a Window An Approach to Roman Female Homoeroticism through Art Historical and Literary Evidence
211
Ovids Iphis and Ianthe When Girls Wont Be Girls
256
Lucians Leaena and Clonarium Voyeurism or a Challenge to Assumptions?
286
Friendship and Physical Desire The Discourse of Female Homoeroticism in FifthCentury CE Egypt
304
Works Cited
331
Notes on Contributors
373
Index
375
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2002)

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College, where she also coordinates the Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture. Lisa Auanger is an editor of the Bibliography of the History of Art at the Getty Research Institute.

Bibliographic information