5-Week SASA Continuing Education Reading Group : Sexuality and Power in the Ancient World

This reading group will aim to discuss how Queer Theory has enabled a radical re-evaluation of the LGBTQIA+ community alongside other minority groups, through both the study and teaching of Ancient World History. This course will first introduce participants to the main concepts of Queer Theory, in particular the central contradictory approaches of Constructivism vs Essentialism, and Queer Theory’s discussions of the societal power imbalance. Subsequently, this will be applied to the Ancient World, taking the participants through diverse historical objects and literature, from Ancient Egypt tombs, to Ancient Greek pottery, and Near Eastern texts. 

Each session will focus on a specific aspect of Queerness found in the Ancient World, and will be discussed alongside diverse and potentially contradictory modern scholarship, ancient artefacts and literature, and supporting aspects of Queer Theory. While the study of evidence of LGBTQIA+ identities will remain the focus, the sessions will also look at the wide breadth of inclusive Queer Theories, including studies of ethnic and racial minorities, and disabled lives. Participants will approach key ancient artefacts, including sculpture, pottery, reliefs, and tombs, alongside ancient literature, and see how an original scholarly interpretation has been developed through employing alternative consideration from a Queer Theoretical perspective. In particular, the challenging of heteronormative and cis-normative assumptions of historical identities, and the development of our awareness of identities beyond the binary, which have since impacted how we view key artefacts from the past.

5-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group

Mondays at 11 am Eastern Time

Start date: June 17th

End date: July 15th

MUST RSVP TO GET THE LINK TO THE GOOGLE CLASSROOM. 

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