The Little Torch of Cypris: Gender and Sexuality in Hellenistic Alexandria and Beyond
The workshop aims to investigate the definitions of gender and sexuality in Hellenistic Alexandria and its major impact on Latin literature as well as later genres of European literature that viewed the city as a symbol of cosmopolitan self-expression. Alexandria provided the setting for the development of a new definition of Greekness emanating from the city’s multi-cultural basis. In addition, Alexandrian poetry seems to project a new sense of the individual as a sexual being. From Meleager, the author of bold love epigrams, to Sotades, the writer of obscene satirical poems, a number of less known and less studied Hellenistic poets that have, nevertheless, excited the imagination of Latin and later Europeans authors and sealed their understanding of the Greek cultural produce.
The crux of our investigation is double on both ends: to untangle the tensions between the classical Athenian definitions of gender and the emerging sexual identities that are shaped at Alexandria and, regarding the reception of Hellenistic literature, to highlight which of these descriptions were understood to represent classical Greece or the Hellenistic period. We warmly invite papers that examine:
The definition of gender in Hellenistic Alexandria and the numerous traditions that shaped it (i.e. perceptions of Egyptian/ Jewish sexualities).
The reception of Alexandrian homosexuality in Latin literature.
The relationship between ancient Alexandria and modern European histories of gender and sexuality.
Programme:
Monday, 2 Sept. 2013 (Monash Prato Centre, Room 20 Terrace)
6:00-8:00pm Welcome to Tuscany Reception
Tuesday, 3 Sept. 2013 (Monash Prato Centre, Salone Grollo)
9:15-10:00 Thomas Sapsford, University of South California
The Wages of Effeminacy?: kinaidoi in Egyptian Documentary Sources
10:00-10:45 Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Ohio State University
The breast of Antinous – the male body as erotic object in
Hellenistic image and
text
10:45-11:15 Morning Tea (Room 8 Sala Biliardo)
11:15-12:00 Georgios Kazantzidis, University of Oxford
Callimachus and Hippocratic Gynaecology: Absent Desire and the Female
Body
in the Acontius and Cydippe Story (Aetia III fr.75 Harder)
12:00-12:45 Damien Nelis, Univesity of Zurich
Eros in Apollonius Rhodius, Vergil and Valerius Flaccus
12:45-1:45 Lunch (Room 7, Main Catering Area)
1:45-2:30 Jennifer Ingleheart, Durham University
Hellenistic ‘Greek’ love at Rome: Propertius 1.20’s reception of
Theocritus and
Apollonius
2:30-3:15 Alexandra Neagu, University of Bucharest
Constructions of masculinity in the Alexandrian poetry and
in Catullus
3:15-3:45 Afternoon Tea (Room 8 Sala Biliardo)
3:45-4:30 Aldo Settaioli, University of Perugia
The Kiss and the Soul
7:00pm Dinner Antica Fiaschetteria ‘trattoria’
Wednesday 4 Sept. 2013
9:15-10:00 Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Monash University
Hellenistic love in Silver Latin Epic and early Christian
Writers
10:00-10:45 Iarla Manny University of Oxford
‘Take Me to Alexandria and Let Me Taste of the Seven Sins’:
The Ancient City in the Work
of Oscar Wilde
10:45-11:15 Morning Tea
11:15-12:00 Round Table Discussion
12:00 Workshop Ends
N.B. Myrto-Maria Malamou, University of Athens promised to send a copy of
her paper The poetics of suffering: Body and scripture in Cavafy’s poetry
Important Notice:
To help the committee with catering arrangements, prospective attendees are kindly requested to email Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides at [email protected] with the title I WILL ATTEND as their subject.