A Coalition of Queer Classicists and Allies
Queerness at the Margins
LCC Panel, 2027 Annual Meeting of the SCS, Boston
Scholarship in the past twenty or so years has deepened our understanding of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality, illuminating (for example) erotic activity outside of penetration and gender diversity (e.g., Oliver 2015; Sapsford 2022; Surtees and Dyer 2020). Our understanding of ancient sexuality, however, is almost always derived from sources emanating from an urban context (especially Athens and Rome), written by free male authors for an audience of the same. This panel seeks to explore sexualities at the margins of Greek and Roman society.
Possible questions this panel will consider include:
- How did queerness differ outside of urban centers, or in provinces?
- How did queerness manifest in the Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, or Late Antiquity?
- What did queerness look like among enslaved populations?
- How did Greeks or Romans depict queerness in other cultures?
- How did non-Greco-Roman cultures depict Greco-Roman queerness?
- What are the “margins” or edges of queerness as an analytical category?
We welcome literary, archaeological, art-historical, historical, and reception-studies approaches to this topic
Please send anonymized abstracts that follow the guidelines for individual abstracts (see the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts) by email to Deborah Kamen, University of Washington, at dkamen@uw.edu by February 15.
See the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts and ensure that the abstracts are anonymous. The organizer and one other scholar will review all submissions anonymously, and their decision will be communicated to the authors of abstracts by March 15, with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting.
The organizers will review all submissions anonymously, and their decision will be communicated to the authors of abstracts by March 1 with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting.
Bibliography:
Oliver, Jay. 2015. “Oscula iungit nec moderata satis nec sic a virgine danda: Ovid’s Callisto Episode, Female Homoeroticism, and the Study of Ancient Sexuality.” American Journal of Philology 136: 281-312.
Sapsford, Tom. 2022. Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Surtees, Allison and Jennifer Dyer, eds. 2020. Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.