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Boudica At The Intersection: Gender, Alterity, And Narrative In Imperial Roman Historiography, Adam Cummings May 2023

Boudica At The Intersection: Gender, Alterity, And Narrative In Imperial Roman Historiography, Adam Cummings

Honors Theses

Tacitus (fl. ~100 ᴄᴇ) and Cassius Dio (fl. ~200 ᴄᴇ) wrote, respectively, the Annales and the Historia Romana, both now fragmentary, both detailing imperial Roman expansion, and both displaying anxieties about the barbarian ‘Other.’ Their accounts of Boudica, who led the Iceni against Roman encroachment in Britannia in 62 CE, provide a view into these authors’ visions of colonization, ethnicity, and gender. Characterizing this woman as a barbarian leader of war, the authors reveal not only their foundational ideologies but also the political projects underpinning their histories. This thesis will proceed in the following manner: I will provide 1) a …


Sexual Objectification Of Women: What Can Ancient Rome And Modern Psychology Teach Us?, Noa Raskin Jun 2022

Sexual Objectification Of Women: What Can Ancient Rome And Modern Psychology Teach Us?, Noa Raskin

Honors Theses

Sexual objectification (SO) is an omnipresent experience for women that decreases their quality of life. Researching why SO occurs and is perpetuated can help us understand how to decrease the interpersonal, mental health, and safety consequences women face from being sexually objectified. This presentation looks at sexual objectification through the lenses of two different disciplines: psychology and classics. The psychology component involved an empirical study aimed at better comprehending women’s perceptions of their own SO and the connection SO has to Greek life. Nineteen men from Union College completed two scales to assess their direct and indirect SO of women, …


Weaving In Mythology: Women’S Agency And Portrayed Character, Molly Mcleod Jun 2022

Weaving In Mythology: Women’S Agency And Portrayed Character, Molly Mcleod

Honors Theses

Although weaving would have been a daily activity for many people in the ancient Greek world, the nature of the practice remains somewhat unknown to the modern view. The archaeological record contains loom weights and spindle whorls, but the looms and textiles themselves have almost entirely decomposed. Scholars have attempted to reconstruct what weaving looked like in the ancient world through a combination of literary sources, archaeological methods, and visual representations. Based on this research, and in order to better understand the process and difficulties of ancient weaving, I have constructed and woven fabric on a model of an ancient …


How Translations Affects Understanding In Euripides’ Medea, Alexis Nicole Candido Jun 2022

How Translations Affects Understanding In Euripides’ Medea, Alexis Nicole Candido

Honors Theses

This thesis considers Medea, from Euripides’ Medea, in her role as mother, wife, and a Woman of Corinth. Previous literature has considered the context within which Medea can be viewed as an icon for feminism in the modern world. Utilizing the translations from George Theodoridis, David Kovacs, Gilbert Murray, E. P. Coleridge, and Cecilia Luschnig, as well as my own translation, I investigated how Medea’s story can be viewed differently when carefully selecting words as a translation of the original Greek from her famous “Women of Corinth” speech. Each translation has similarities and differences, but they all portrayed a slightly …


Mercy Otis Warren’S Marcia(S) And Cornelia(S): A Case Study In Women’S Internalization Of Classicism In Early America, Brittany Ellis May 2022

Mercy Otis Warren’S Marcia(S) And Cornelia(S): A Case Study In Women’S Internalization Of Classicism In Early America, Brittany Ellis

Honors Theses

The connection between people in early America and classicism is a field of study that has been heavily documented, although it has remained a very male-focused field with little research done about how women in early America formed a relationship with antiquity. This thesis reveals that elite white women had a deep emotional and intellectual attachment with mothers and matrons from ancient Greece and Rome as a basis for expressing political thoughts and identity; classicism formed a common language that many women could relate to each other before, during, and after the American Revolution. This assessment is achieved through a …


The Impact Of Women On The Life And Legacy Of Mark Antony, Lauren E. Yaple Mar 2022

The Impact Of Women On The Life And Legacy Of Mark Antony, Lauren E. Yaple

Honors Theses

Throughout the life of Mark Antony, the women he became involved with had a large impact on his political career, life, and legacy. These women, such as Fulvia and Cleopatra, used Antony as a means to achieve their own political, economic, and personal goals and were able to gain power in a very anti-feminist society through their relationships with and manipulations of him, affecting the career of Antony in many ways including his politics and his actions as a military commander, as showcased by the examination of primary sources from the late Roman Republic and early Roman empire periods. This …


The Multifront Battle Waged Against Female Autonomy: A Comparative Study Of Ancient Medical And Literary Texts, Leah K. Montello Jan 2022

The Multifront Battle Waged Against Female Autonomy: A Comparative Study Of Ancient Medical And Literary Texts, Leah K. Montello

Honors Theses

Male authors have long waged a multifront campaign against female independence. In this thesis, I focus on two specific fronts: literary and medical texts of the Classical Greek period. This thesis intends to explore the varying strategies in a selection of works, employed to reinforce prescribed gender norms. I approach this with a feminist lens to critique attempts made by elite educated Greek men to define what a woman ought to be like. I do not, however, explore every single tactic a medical and literary writer has applied to uphold patriarchal norms. My two body chapters revolve respectively around two …


The Woman's Role In Human Reproduction And Generation According To Ancient Greek And Roman Philosophers, Olivia Miller Apr 2020

The Woman's Role In Human Reproduction And Generation According To Ancient Greek And Roman Philosophers, Olivia Miller

Honors Theses

From the Greek archaic period to the end of the Roman Empire, theories of reproduction and inheritance developed as new philosophers and medical practitioners tackled fundamental issues of generation and sex. Without tools to help them see the complex chemical and cellular processes of the body, ancient thinkers relied on their own observations and commonly-held beliefs about sex and gender to understand the human body. Until the Roman Empire, dissections and similar forms of clinical study were strictly taboo, with the result that the Greek philosophers could not conduct close investigations into human anatomy. Instead, they relied on their own …


An Experiment In Gendered Writing: Translation And Original Prose Composition, Julie Warren Jun 2015

An Experiment In Gendered Writing: Translation And Original Prose Composition, Julie Warren

Honors Theses

This thesis is a two-part project of translation and prose composition. In part one, I am translating two letters from Ovid’s Heroides, a collection of elegiac poems written from the female perspective of women in mythology to their male lovers. I chose the only two letters, Hypsipyle’s and Medea’s, in the collection that are both written to the same man, Jason. In part two, I am composing two letters in Latin from Jason’s perspective to Hypsipyle and Medea. As Ovid was a male writing from the female perspective and I am a female writing from the male perspective, my goal …


Gender Dynamics In Classical Athens, William Breitweiser Jun 2012

Gender Dynamics In Classical Athens, William Breitweiser

Honors Theses

To the modern reader, ancient Greece may seem like a highly male dominated culture. The writings that come from this period suggest that men had authority over the women in their lives and that women were subordinate to the men in their lives. However, there were many ways that women could gain a substantial amount of power in ancient Greece. In my thesis, I look particularly at the city of Athens during the classical period and discuss how strict gender inequality was implemented. The first section of my analysis deals with how young men and women were brought up in …