APA 2009 Philadelphia Annual Meeting
Panel Sponsored by the Women's Classical Caucus

Women, Power and Leadership in the Ancient World

Ruby Blondell, Susanna Morton Braund, Elizabeth Langridge-Noti, Organizers
Friday 9 January 2009, 8:30 - 11 a.m.
Independence I, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown

 

Ancient social formations excluded women from the exercise of political or military power almost entirely; yet our sources provide surprisingly numerous glimpses of powerful women, both real and imagined. This panel explores both overt and covert female interventions in the "masculine" arenas of political and/or military power, addressing various problems involved in identifying and defining female power and leadership, recovering the traces of powerful women in the historical record, and exploring ways in which the representation of female power is inflected by historical period, social class, sexual and/or marital status, medium of representation, and literary genre.

Elizabeth Langridge-Noti, The American College of Greece
Introduction (5 min)

  1. Elizabeth Carney, Clemson University
    Royal Women as Succession Advocates (20 min)
  2. Margaret Woodhull, University of Colorado, Denver
    Women Building Rome: Reconsidering the Porticus Liviae and Gender in Rome's Cityscape (20 min)
  3. Sanjay Thakur, University of Michigan
    Ulixes stolatus? Ovid's Livia Reconsidered (20 min)
  4. Kathryn Chew, California State University, Long Beach
    Pulcheria's Paradigm: A Woman's Power in the Eastern Roman Empire (20 min)
  5. Suzanne Lye, University of California, Los Angeles
    The Empress Theodora: The Power in Front of the Throne (20 min)