IRIS SUMMER (AND FALL) READING LIST

II. General Recent Queer/Gender Studies

III. Selected Older Works

IV. Selected (Even) Older Titles

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I. GENDER/FEMINIST/QUEER STUDIES IN CLASSICS—NEW & RECENT

General

Skinner, Marilyn B., Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture. Series 'Ancient Cultures'. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-631-23234-6. From Scholia Review by Susan Haskins:

"In this book Skinner attempts to reconcile her own earlier ideas with those of Foucault, Winkler, Halperin, and Richlin. At the same time she tries to undo the work of some of these earlier authors who, on the one hand, have conflated ancient Greek and Roman cultures and drawn over-generalised conclusions, or who, on the other, have focused on a small area that has not lent itself at all to generalisation. The result is the first attempt to give a complete overview of ancient sexuality. ... Skinner limits (or perhaps more accurately expands) her project to seven periods of antiquity, tracing the early history of the construction of sexuality from Aphrodite and Eros, through the pederastic notions of the Greek elite and then the change from state to individual in the Hellenistic period and the anxiety of the Roman period. Her argument for viewing the sexuality of each of these different time periods as unique and separate entities, with different and distinctive constructions of sexuality, not to be conflated, is persuasive. Through each time period she traces the changes in the construction of such ancient societal constants as male and female homoerotic relations and marriage. Unlike her earlier work, she uses not only literary evidence but also archaeological evidence, ranging from pottery to philosophy, love poetry, theatre, and many other texts. ... " [footnotes omitted] (more)

Younger, John G., Sex in the Ancient World, from A to Z. London/New York: Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0-415-24252-5. New dictionary.

Roisman, Joseph, The Rhetoric of Manhood. Masculinity in the Attic Orators. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. ISBN 0-520-24192-4.

Simon Goldhill, Love, Sex, and Tragedy. How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ISBN 0-226-30117-6. Generalist study. Positive review by Catherine Conybeare in BMCR, with brief critical response by Alcock:

"The work is divided into five sections: 'Who do you think you are?' -- on body image and display, corporeal grooming as part of citizenship, and sexual mores (especially the homo-erotic); 'Where do you think you are going?' -- scanning the very different notions of the body and social bonds in early Christianity and the urgent Renaissance debates around the text of the Bible; 'What do you think should happen?' -- a rich reprise of the Athenian democratic leap and of criticism as a fundamental part of democracy; 'What do you want to do?' -- on the abiding power of Greek tragedy, the civic function of the Athenian dramatic festivals, and the all-too-familiar savagery of the gladiatorial games (with a rather surprising excursus on the Seder as close relation of the Greek symposium); and finally, 'Where do you think you come from?'- on the formation of both personal myths and national identities (especially those of Germany and the US) after the inspiration of classical models. ..." (more)

Daniel Mendelsohn, Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays, OUP 2005. ISBN: 0199278040

"This book is the first book-length study of Euripides' so-called 'political plays (Children of Herakles and Suppliant Women) to appear in half a century. Still disdained as the anomalously patriotic or propagandistic works of a playwright elsewhere famous for his subversive, ironic artistic ethos, the two works in question, notorious for their uncomfortable juxtaposition of political speeches and scenes of extreme feminine emotion, continue to be dismissed by scholars of tragedy as artistic failures unworthy of the author of Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae. The present study makes use of recent insights into classical Greek conceptions of gender (in real life and on stage) and Athenian notions of civic identity to demonstrate that the political plays are, in fact, intellectually subtle and structurally coherent exercises in political theorizing - works that use complex interactions between female and male characters to explore the advantages, and costs, of being a member of the polis."

Adriaan Rademaker, Sophrosyne and the Rhetoric of Self-Restraint: Polysemy and Persuasive Use of an Ancient Greek Value Term. Mnemosyne Suppl. 259. Leiden: Brill, 2005. ISBN 90-04-14251-7. Review by Brad Levett in BMCR.

Hawhee, Debra, Bodily Arts. Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005. Pp. 256; ills. 24. $40.00. ISBN 0-292-70584-0.

Mauerhofer, Kenneth, Der Hylas-Mythos in der antiken Literatur. BzA 208. M¸nchen/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2004. ISBN 3-598-77820-1.

Eleanor Winsor Leach, The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-82600-4. Special interest for discussion of gender scholarship in classics: Review by Jas' Elsner (and brief response by Leofranc Holford-Strevens) in BMCR.

"So if I have a response to the social construction agenda, as it reaches magisterial command in a book as complex and subtle as this, it is that we need perhaps to turn back to a world before Mau. ... The one sustained attempt to build a social picture out of pictorial subject matter has been in the study of Roman sex, fundamentally indebted to Kenneth Dover's explorations of Greek homosexuality from the evidential base of what was depicted on vases. If this is the model, one might argue that Leach has been wise to keep away ..." (more)

Schauer, Markus, Tragisches Klagen. Form und Funktion der Klagedarstellung bei Aischylos, Sophokles, und Euripides. Classica Monacensia, 26. T¸bingen: Gunter Narr, 2004. Pp. 381. §54.00 (pb). ISBN 3-8233-4885-X.

Cantarella, Eva, et al., Scritti in ricordo di Barbara Bonfiglio. Universit‡ degli Studi di Milano. Facolt‡ di Giurisprudenza. Pubblicazioni dell'istituto di diritto romano, 39. Milano: Dott. A. GiuffrË Editore, 2004. ISBN 88-14-10778-5.

Graham Zanker, Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. ISBN 0-299-19450-7. Important for recent studies of engagement of the viewer's "gaze" in ancient gender representations. From BMCR Review by James Clauss:

"In the next chapter, "An Eye for the New (Poetic Genres, Iconographical Traditions)," Zanker takes on the topic of "genre-crossing," the practice whereby Hellenistic artists and poets portray low subjects in high media and ascribe divine status to human beings. Here too I find the comparisons instructive. For instance, the severe hair style of the well-known Spinario, featured on the book's jacket, alludes to classical statues of the ephebe, and yet the subject, a young boy of no apparent social status pulling a thorn from his foot, is quotidian. ..." (more)

Minna Skafte Jensen, Friendship and Poetry: Studies in Danish Neo-Latin Literature. Edited by Marianne Pade, Keren Skovgaard-Petersen, and Peter Zeeberg. Renaessancestudier Series 12. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. ISBN 87-7289-961-1. Here's from the BMCR Review by Dana Sutton, but see also the tart and pertinent response by Jensen!

"As suggested by the title, a common denominator linking some but not all of these articles is the theme of friendship that appears in a number of the poems about which she writes. The editors observe in their short Preface (p. 8) that "[a] common thread is the sociological approach: throughout attention is paid to the social functions of Latin poetry within the academic world, both as a means of career-building and as a factor in shaping a group identity. Closely related to this topic is the theme of friendship between the young poets." This theme is most comprehensively studied in the article "Amicizia e amore nella poesia latina danese del Cinquecento" (pp. 185-201). The intertwined themes of male bonding and careerism will be thoroughly familiar to readers of the Neo-Latin literature of other nations, and it is interesting to see them recurring in a Danish context. ..." (more)

Thomas J. Figueira (ed.), Spartan Society. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2004. ISBN 0-9543845-7-1. From BMCR Review by Ibrahim Amin:

"I find it tempting to see Anton Powell's essay on the role of Greek women in combat situations as being the jewel in this collection. The image of the Spartan woman engaging in athletic training is something that popular documentaries and people with a casual interest in ancient history tend to make a great deal out of. And this is understandable, since it seems to indicate that Spartan women would be especially martial, ready for combat should the situation ever arise -- unlike the women of other poleis, who would spent their days indoors shunning such manly pursuits. However, Powell draws attention to the curious fact that when Sparta was attacked her women simply flew into a blind panic. ... In tandem with Powell's essay, Hodkinson's paper on female property rights in Sparta tackles the wider issue of the comparative roles of women in the Greek world. Here the author examines the extent to which Spartan women had true control over their property, what exactly this entailed, and how this affected their position within Spartan society. By comparisons with other law codes, most notably that of Gortyn, the author illustrates that Spartan women had greater rights to their property than their counterparts in other poleis. ..." (more)

Bruce W. Frier, Thomas A. J. McGinn, A Casebook on Roman Family Law. American Philological Association Classical Resources Series no. 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-19-516186-6. Co-authored by a Lambda member; BMCR Review by Charles Pazdernik:

"As an example selected very nearly at random, consider Case 8, "The ability to procreate" (29-30). Citing Justinian's Digest (D. 23.3.39.1, Ulpian in the thirty-third book on the Edict), the case examines whether a woman can validly marry a eunuch (spado, more generally a sterile or impotent male, as the authors point out on p. 363) and whether the latter may therefore receive a dowry. ... My own experiences in discussing this and comparable material with undergraduates suggest that the topic of deliberate castration in antiquity offers fodder for wide-ranging, if not always well-focused, discussions about cultural difference. F/M direct their reader instead to a topic of great cross-cultural interest and considerable contemporary political, legal, and social topicality: 'in the Roman world, as in many other past and present societies, a strong tradition linked marriage to the procreation of children[...]. Nonetheless, as this Case shows, inability to beget children was not in itself necessarily a bar to marriage.' To what extent does this concession undermine constructions of 'traditional' marriages and families? Granting that the sources cannot definitively answer the question one way or other, F/M invite their reader to consider how a proposal to recognize same-sex marriage might fare in the hands of the Roman jurists: 'are Roman policies linking marriage and procreation enough to make same-sex marriage impossible?' ..." (more)

Antonsen-Resch, Andrea, Von Gnathon zu Saturio. Die Parasitenfigur und das Verhúltnis der rˆmischen Komˆdie zur griechischen. Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, 74. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004. Pp. 262. §88.00. ISBN 3-11-018167-3.

Daniel Kah, Peter Scholz, Das hellenistische Gymnasion. Wissenskultur und gesellschaftlicher Wandel, 8. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-05-004078-5. Article on the Athenian ephebeia by Leonhardt Burckhardt and Stephen V. Tracy. BMCR Review by Signe Isager.

Hazewindus, Minke W., When Women Interfere. Studies in the Role of Women in Herodotus' Histories. Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology, 12. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 2004. ISBN 90-5063-449-4.

Heitman, Richard, Taking Her Seriously. Penelope and the Plot of Homer's Odyssey. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005. ISBN 0-472-11489-1.

Wright, Matthew, Euripides' Escape-Tragedies. A Study of Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the Taurians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-927451-7.

Leslie Brubaker, Julia M. H. Smith, Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-01327-5. From BMCR Review by Alexandra Cuffel:

"The construction of sexual difference in early medieval societies is precisely the topic of Gender in the Early Medieval World. [Smith] maintains that prior to this book, studies of gender for the post-classical period have tended to focus on the fourth to the fifth centuries. While Gender in the Early Medieval World includes this period, the articles chosen for the collection extend well beyond that point, and examine gender through relatively neglected written and art historical sources, or pose new questions about texts familiar to anyone in the field. Smith argues that, as a whole, the book demonstrates that contrary to post-Enlightenment interpretations, in the early Middle Ages morality and physiology were directly linked; that the idea of a "third gender" is not a modern construct since eunuchs, virile women, and virginal males were treated as separate genders in a variety of medieval societies; that clothing and other material artifacts whether worn in life or death were vital to establishing not only gender, but other types of social, ethnic, or moral status, even as the regulation of space marked individuals' religious, political and gendered status. All of these markers and their accompanying status were negotiable in practice, no matter how rigid the theory and rhetoric behind them. The need to constantly defend and define masculinity and masculine hegemony in counterpoint to women, eunuchs and other "marginals" points to its instability in these early medieval societies. ..." (more)

Religion

Ross Shepard Kraemer, Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook, Oxford Univ. Press (paperback 2004). From BMCR Review by Kathy Gaca:

"For scholars and students alike, Ross S. Kraemer's Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook is a welcome contribution primarily to the study of women's roles in Hellenistic Judaism and emergent Christianity, and only secondarily to the study of women's roles in the Greek and Roman polytheistic traditions. ... The collection contains a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and papyrological sources in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Coptic, with two selections from sources dating earlier than the fourth century B.C.E., the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and a selection from Euripides' Bacchae. ... (more)

Borgeaud, Philippe, Mother of the Gods. From Cybele to the Virgin Mary. Originally published as La MËre des dieux: De Cybele ‡ la Vierge Marie (1996). Translated by Lysa Hochroth. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8018-7985-X. From BMCR Review by Lynn Roller:

"The author himself states quite forthrightly that he is "a historian of the imaginary" (p. xiii), whose goal is to deconstruct two pervasive and tenacious modern myths of the ancient Mother, namely that she is a latter day representative of the cult of a Great Goddess, believed by some to be the original deity of all mankind, and that the worship of the Christian Virgin Mary is a direct descendant of the Graeco-Roman Mother goddess cult. Borgeaud, correctly in my opinion, rejects both of these claims. Instead, he offers a free ranging discussion of selected episodes in the goddess's "career" in Greek and Roman society, including the role of Meter in the Athenian Agora; the advent of the Magna Mater into Rome; the origin of Attis and the relationship of his cult to early Christianity. These events are known to us from highly variant, often conflicting narrative traditions, many of which lie at the intersection of history and myth. B's goal is to unpack the inconsistencies of the literary sources that record these traditions and to offer his own readings. ..." (more)

Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Pp. 390; ills. 47. $27.50. ISBN 0-520-23146-5.

Barbara Goff, Citizen Bacchae. Women's Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-23998-9. Somewhat patronizing BMCR Review by William Furley (who claims to be the "least patriarchal" of men, but hmm ...). From Goff's book (p. 20, quoted somewhat testily by Furley):

"It is my view that no one can afford to be post-feminist until the historical conditions that generated feminism have been eradicated, and women are no longer disproportionately subject to poverty, illiteracy, and violence. By the same token I do not think that the work of recovery of historical women's experiences is irrelevant until what we know about women is commensurable with what we know about men."

Martin, Dale B., and Patricia Cox Miller (edd.), The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies. Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8223-3422-4.

New Texts and Translations

Johnson, Marguerite, and Terry Ryan, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature. A Sourcebook. London/New York: Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0-415-17331-0.

Reardon, B.P. (ed.), Chariton. De Callirhoe narrationes amatoriae. Bibliotheca Teubneriana. M¸nchen/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2004. ISBN 3-598-71277-4.

Plato, Plato's Symposium, trans. Richard Hunter, Oxford Univ. Press 2004. BMCR Review by Joseph Almeida.

Kevin Corrigan, Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Plato's Dialectic at Play: Argument, Structure, and Myth in the Symposium. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-271-02462-3. BMCR Review by Zdravko Planinc:

"The main part of the book develops from an examination of the correlation between the eulogists' accounts of eros and the rungs on Diotima's ladder -- a trope more frequently and extensively discussed than one might gather from the footnotes-- but it does so within the context of the broader argument that an application of Mikhail Bakhtin's literary theory to the Symposium shows it to be the first novel. ..." [footnote omitted] (more)

Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae, ed. Colin Austin & S. Douglas Olson, OUP 2004. ISBN: 0199265275. Worth taking a look at... For those interested in the ongoing dispute between Olson and Katz, check out Olson's BMCR review (with the following heated responses by Katz and then Olson) of Katz's Penelope's Renown.

Amanda Kolson Hurley, Catullus. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2004. ISBN 1-85399-669-6. Watch out in this commentary for misleading representations of Catullus' male friendships—Juventius, Furius & Aurelius, et al. Good review with an eye to this in BMCR by Christopher Nappa.

Josephine Balmer (trans.), Catullus. Poems of Love and Hate. Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2004. ISBN 1-85224-645-6. BMCR Review by Daniel Garrison.

Stephen Bertman, Erotic Love Poems of Greece and Rome. A collection of new translations. New American Library. New York: Penguin Books (USA), 2005. Pp. xxiii, 132. ISBN 0-451-21480-3. From BMCR Review by Roger Rees:

"contemporary, perky translations ... his "attempt to spiritually 'inhabit' the poem" (p.xvi) is proved successful by the tone and idiom of his translation. ... B. does not shrink from obscenity; graphic heterosexual and pederastic terminology feature. This is as much a function of the selection of poems that B. makes as of his honest attempts to do them justice, so for those who wish to highlight varieties of stylistic register and sexual orientation in classical poetry, the book will provide suitable examples. ...Therefore, as an anthology of important classical erotic poetry in translation, the book should engage inexperienced students and readers with no scholastic ambition. It might well spark an interest that takes them on to further reading or enquiry, or at least provide them with a reliable appreciation of classical erotic poetry as a background for different interests. ..." (more)

Martina Hirschberger, GynaikÙn Katalogos und Megalai Ehoiai. Ein Kommentar zu den Fragmenten zweier hesiodeischer Epen. BzA 198. M¸nchen/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2004. ISBN 3-598-77810-4. "...first modern commentary on the Hesiodic Catalogues." BMCR Review by Giovan Battista D'Alessio.

Greene, Ellen (ed.), Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8061-3664-2.

Schiefsky, Mark J., Hippocrates. On Ancient Medicine. Translated with Introduction and Commentary. Studies in Ancient Medicine, 28. Leiden: Brill, 2005. ISBN 90-04-13758-0.

Audrey Cruse, Roman Medicine. Stroud: Tempus (available in US through the David Brown Book Co.), 2004. Pp. 256; ills. 95, pls. 34. ISBN 0-7524-1461-5. BMCR Review by John Scarborough.

Raia, Ann, Cecelia Luschnig, and Judith Lynn Sebesta (edd.), The Worlds of Roman Women. A Latin Reader. Focus Classical Commentary. Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2005. ISBN 1-58510-130-3.

II. GENERAL RECENT QUEER/GENDER STUDIES

Nichola Gray and Dominic Brazil, Blackstone's Guide to the Civil Partnerships Act 2004, OUP 2005 (due July 29). ISBN: 0199285705

"The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 is a ground-breaking piece of legislation which allows for the first time, adult same-sex couples to create a legal status similar to marriage, a "Civil Partnership". The Act received Royal Assent in November 2004 and is expected to come into force in late 2005/early 2006.

The purpose of the Act is to remedy the discrimination present in existing legislation, against gay and lesbian couples. It provides civil partners with the same rights and obligations as spouses and provides same sex couples who do not register as civil partners, with the same rights and obligations as unmarried opposite sex couples. It also amends a variety of existing statutes (including the Family Law Act 1996, the Children Act 1989 and the Inheritance Act 1975) and regulates: the registering and annulment of civil partnerships; the financial arrangements between civil partners; and property issues.

This Guide contains a copy of the Act and places it in context, explaining clearly how it fits with current arrangements for same sex partners. The Guide is extensively cross referenced to existing statues relating to married couples, to show how some of the provisions mirror or are comparable with the new Act. It contains step-by-step practical guides to aid understanding and is an ideal quick reference resource for practitioners in the field."

Nicholas Bamforth, ed., Sex Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2002, OUP 2005. ISBN: 0192805614

"These essays, based on the 2002 Oxford Amnesty Lectures, seek to explore some of the inter-connections between human rights, gender, and sexuality. Many difficult questions are considered. How do we understand and categorize human rights abuses related to a person's sex or sexual orientation, for example? Are these distinctive types of abuse, or are they both examples of the social enforcement of "traditional" gender roles? Does their inclusion within the remit of human rights abuses require us to refine what we mean by human rights? What weight, if any, should be given to demands made in the name of particular religious and cultural traditions which seek to restrict the rights of women and sexual minority groups? What role does the law have to play in combating these types of discrimination? And how far have we come, and how far have we left to go, in the quest for a world in which discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation is a thing of the past?"

Estella Tincknell, Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation, OUP 2005. ISBN: 0340740809

"...explores the ways in which struggles over sexuality, identity, gender and power have informed the conceptualization and representation of the family as an institution and as a site of discursive complexity."

Toril Moi, Sex, Gender and the Body: The Student Edition of What is a Woman?, OUP 2005. ISBN: 0199276226. Two of the most famous essays are included.

Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays, OUP 2005. ISBN: 0195161920.

"Written over a span of more than two decades, the essays by Iris Marion Young collected in this volume describe diverse aspects of women's lived body experience in modern Western societies. Drawing on the ideas of several twentieth century continental philosophers--including Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty--Young constructs rigorous analytic categories for interpreting embodied subjectivity. The essays combine theoretical description of experience with normative evaluation of the unjust constraints on their freedom and opportunity that continue to burden many women."

Hunter College Women's Collective, Women's Realities, Women's Choices: An Introduction to Women's Studies, 3^rd edition, OUP 2005. ISBN: 019515035X

Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, OUP 2005. 600 pp. ISBN: 0198185022

"Women Latin Poets addresses women's relationship to culture between the first century B.C. and the eighteenth century A.D. by studying women's poetry in Latin. Based entirely on original archival research in twelve countries, Stevenson recovers an aspect of history often deemed not to exist: women who achieved public recognition in their own time, sometimes to a startling extent. Presenting, often for the first time, the work of more than three hundred women Latin poets, all translated and included in a comprehensive finding guide, Women Latin Poets substantially revises received opinion on women's participation in, and relation to, Èlite culture. The sheer number of female Latin poets will require women's historians to completely re-evaluate the idea that all women had "no access to education" before the nineteenth century."

Olson, Linda, and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (edd.), Voices in Dialogue. Reading Women in the Middle Ages. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. ISBN 0-268-03717-5.

David Caplan, Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form, OUP 2004. ISBN: 0195169573

"By means of close attention to the sestina, ghazal, love sonnet, ballad, and heroic couplet, this study advances a new understanding of contemporary American poetry. Rather than pitting "closed" verse against "open" and "traditional" poetry against "experimental," Questions of Possibility explores how poets associated with different movements inspire and inform each other's work. Discussing a range of authors, from Charles Bernstein, Derek Walcott, and Marilyn Hacker to Agha Shahid Ali, David Caplan treats these poets as contemporaries who share the language, not as partisans assigned to rival camps. The most interesting contemporary poetry crosses the boundaries that literary criticism draws, synthesizing diverse influences and establishing surprising affinities. In a series of lively readings, Caplan charts the diverse characteristics and accomplishments of modern poetry, from the gay and lesbian love sonnet to the currently popular sestina." Includes discussion of Adrienne Rich, Anthony Hecht, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, others.

Mary Lyndon Shanley, Just Marriage, Edited by Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman, OUP 2004. ISBN: 0195176251

Robin Tolmach Lakoff, ed. Mary Bucholtz, Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries, OUP 2004. ISBN: 0195167570.

"The revised and expanded edition presents the full text of the original first edition [of 1975], along with an introduction and annotations by Lakoff in which she reflects on the text a quarter century later and expands on some of the most widely discussed issues it raises. The volume also brings together commentaries from twenty-six leading scholars of language, gender, and sexuality, within linguistics, anthropology, modern languages, education, information sciences, and other disciplines. The commentaries discuss the book's contribution to feminist research on language and explore its ongoing relevance for scholarship in the field."

Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society, Edited by Michael S. Kimmel and Rebecca F. Plante, OUP 2004. ISBN: 0195157605

Peter F. Murphy, ed., Feminism and Masculinities, OUP 2004. ISBN: 0199267243

Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Empire, OUP 2004. ISBN: 0199249512.

"Bringing together disparate fields - politics, medicine, sexuality, childhood, religion, migration, and many more topics - this new collection of essays demonstrates the richness of studying empire through the lens of gender. This more inclusive look at empire asks not only why the empire was dominated by men, but how that domination affected the conduct of imperial politics. The fresh, new interpretations of the British Empire offered here will interest readers across a wide range, and will demonstrate the vitality of this innovative approach and the new historical questions it raises."

Leona M. Anderson and Pamela Dickey Young, eds., Women and Religious Traditions, OUP 2004 (ppb). ISBN: 0195417542

"Women and Religious Traditions analyzes women and religion in the context of the major world religious traditions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Aboriginal religions, and new religions that focus on the concept of the Goddess. Each chapter is organized around the following common themes: history and the staus of women in the respective religions; texts and interpretations; symbols and gender; sexuality; social change; women's official and unofficial roles; fundamentalism; and unique features of each religion as it pertains to women. Examples have been drawn from both Canadian and United States contexts. The volume also includes two case studies which highlight the historical and contemporary experiences of religious women in North America. Students will be introduced to the contemporary issues that surround the study of women and religion and will also be introduced to feminist theory by the editors in their introductory chapter."

III. SELECTED OLDER WORKS

Jenny Strauss Clay, Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-82392-7. BMCR Review by Lambda's Cashman Kerr Prince.

Gideon Nisbet, Greek Epigram in the Roman Empire: Martial's Forgotten Rivals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-926377-X. See sympathetic but critical review by Kathryn Gutzwiller for BMCR, laying out importance of the skoptic tradition.

John R. Clarke, Roman Sex 100 BC - AD 250. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003. ISBN 0-8109-4263-1.

John R. Clarke, Art in the lives of ordinary Romans: visual representation and non-elite viewers in Italy, 100 B.C. - A.D. 315. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. BMCR Review by Matthew Roller.

Peter Stewart, Statues in Roman Society. Representation and Response. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-924094-9. Generally positive review by Gretchen Kreahling McKay in BMCR: "The book in its entirety presents an interesting and important discussion for graduate students and scholars by building on recent sociological and conceptual studies on ancient Rome."

G.O. Hutchinson, Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces (Alcman, Stesichorus, Sappho, Alcaeus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides, Bacchylides, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides), OUP 2003 (ppb; hb 2001). ISBN: 0199265828

Thomas A.J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality and the Law in Ancient Rome, OUP 2003 (ppb). ISBN: 0195161327

"This is a study of the legal rules affecting the practice of female prostitution at Rome approximately from 200 B.C. to A.D. 250. It examines the formation and precise content of the legal norms developed for prostitution and those engaged in this profession, with close attention to their social context. McGinn's unique study explores the "fit" between the law-system and the socio-economic reality while shedding light on important questions concerning marginal groups, marriage, sexual behavior, the family, slavery, and citizen status, particularly that of women."

Cheshire Calhoun, Feminism, The Family, and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement, OUP 2003. ISBN: 0199257663

James Grantham Turner, Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France, and England 1534-1685, OUP 2003. ISBN: 0199254265

"Schooling Sex is the first full history of early modern libertine literature and its reception, from Aretino and Tullia d'Aragona in 16th-century Italy to Pepys, Rochester, and Behn in late 17th-century England. James Turner explores the idea of sexual education, from the simple instructional dialogue to the advanced experiments of the philosophical libertine, analyzing the hard-core curriculum that defined sexuality centuries before the Marquis de Sade."

Susan Boyd, Child Custody, Law, and Women's Work, OUP 2003. ISBN: 0195409183

"Child Custody, Law, and Women's Work examines the transformation in custody law over the past two centuries. Focusing on the relationship between law and changing gender relations, it also shows that the debates for legislative changes expected in the near future are rooted in gender-based dynamics within the family and society. Boyd uses a framework that makes central the persisting power relations between women and men in the heterosexual family as well as dominant ideologies about motherhood, fatherhood, and family."

Effrossini Spentzou, Readers and Writers in Ovid's Heroides: Transgressions of Genre and Gender, OUP 2003. ISBN: 0199255687. Somewhat theoretically unconvinced and therefore skeptical BMCR review by Wilfried Lingenberg; see also Classical World (97.4, Summer 2004), review by Megan O. Drinkwater.

Joane Nagel, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers, OUP 2003. ISBN: 0195127471

"Through numerous examples from the U.S. and beyond-and from the past and the present-the book illustrates the power of sex to shape ideas and feelings about race, ethnicity, and the nation. It shows how sexual images, fears, and desires help form racial, ethnic, and national stereotypes, differences, and conflicts.

In this unique work, Joane Nagel demonstrates how ethnicity and sexuality join hands to fashion new, hybrid identities, communities, and cultures; how the volatile mixture of race and sex can spark ethnic violence; and how ethnosexual encounters can simultaneously resist and reinforce racial, ethnic, and national boundaries...."

IV. SELECTED (EVEN) OLDER TITLES

Grubbs, Judith Evans, Woman and the Law in the Roman Empire. A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce, and Widowhood. First published in 2002. London/New York: Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0-415-15241-0. Paperback edition. From 2005 BMCR Review by Marcus Sigismund:

"As Grubbs points out in the preface, the book is intended primarily for students and teachers in the fields of women's studies, classics, ancient and medieval history and history of the family. Regarding this, Grubbs did an excellent job. Also, contra Grubbs' opinion (cf. p. xiv), specialists in Roman law will derive benefit from the book, since the material is not only well arranged but the commentary and the annotations also contain many details which should be of interest even to some professional researchers. ..." (more)

Koenraad Verboven, The Economy of Friends. Economic Aspects of Amicitia and Patronage in the Late Republic. Bruxelles: Latomus, 2002. Pp. 399. ISBN 2-87031-210-5. BMCR Review by Lowell Bowditch.

All Our Families: New Policies for a New Century, Edited by Mary Ann Mason, Arlene Skolnick and Stephen D. Sugarman, 2^nd ed., ppb OUP 2002. ISBN: 0195148819. From publisher's blurb:

"All Our Families, a project of the Berkeley Forum on the Family, takes a hard look at contemporary families. Thoroughly revised and updated, this second edition includes chapters on divorcing families, single-parent families, step-families, dual-income families, adolescent-parent families, immigrant families, and gay and lesbian families. Distinguished by their exceptional reputations as family scholars, the Forum's interdisciplinary team of authors examines the challenges to existing public policies that are brought on by problems such as custody disputes, family poverty, parental kidnapping, fathers who aren't really fathers, abuse and neglect, and the special psychological conditions faced by today's couples with newborns. The contending claims of biological and psychological parents are also exposed and confronted."

Sarah Pomeroy, Spartan Women, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 2002. ISBN 0-19-513067-7. From Review in BMCR by Nicholas F. Jones:

"With Spartan Women, Sarah Pomeroy has given us the first full-length historical study of the subject (p. vii). But why not until now, a full half-century since the appearance of the English translation of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and a quarter-century after the initial publication of Pomeroy's own Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity? Perhaps the cause is the intractable difficulties posed by the source materials? ... Pomeroy also finds a contributing negative cause in the practice, and the influence upon his students, of a leading Anglo-American ancient historian, now deceased ... (more)

Annabel Robinson, The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison, OUP 2002. ISBN: 019924233X.

Mathilde Skoie, Reading Sulpicia: Commentaries 1475-1990, OUP 2002. ISBN: 0199245738.

A.B. Bosworth and E.J. Baynham, eds., Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction, OUP 2002. ISBN: 0199252750 (hb 2000, ISBN: 0198152876).

"This book collects together ten contributions by leading scholars in the field of Alexander studies which represent the most advanced scholarship in this area. They span the gamut between historical reconstruction and historiographical research, and, viewed as a whole, represent a wide spectrum of methodology. This first English collection of essays on Alexander includes a comparison of the Spanish conquest of Mexico with the Macedonians in the east which examines the attitudes towards the subject peoples and the justification of conquest, an analysis of the attested conspiracies at the Macedonian and Persian courts, and studies of panhellenic ideology and the concept of kingship. There is a radical new interpretation of the hunting fresco from Tomb II at Vergina, and a new date for the pamphlet on Alexander's death which ends the Alexander Romance. Three chapters on historiography address the problem of interpreting Alexander's attested behavior, the indirect source tradition used by Polybius, and the resonances of contemporary politics in the extant histories."

A Companion to Petronius, Edward Courtney, OUP 2002. ISBN: 0199245940

Maria Wyke, The Roman Mistress, OUP 2002. ISBN: 019815075X

Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, trans. Tim Whitmarsh, intr. Helen Morales, OUP 2002. ISBN: 0198152892. New translation with "detailed notes."

Diana Tietjens Meyers, Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery and Women's Agency, OUP 2002. ISBN: 0195140419.

"Diana Meyers invites her readers to reflect on, and devise ways of resisting, the ubiquitous yet varied imagery of 'woman' that saturates the social-political western world, thwarting women's efforts to achieve autonomous self-hood. Ranging widely across pronatalist messages, psychiatric practice, the health-beauty industry, and subtly conveyed inducements to remake the female body, she shows how women ingest normalizing images that they must struggle to expel if they are to affirm an authentic sense of self." (Lorraine Code, York University)

Thomas Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics, OUP 2002. ISBN: 0195149858

"Eros was, from one perspective, a major god of the gymnasium where homoerotic liaisons reinforced the traditional hierarchies of Greek culture. But Eros in the athletic sphere was also a symbol of life-affirming friendship and even of political freedom in the face of tyranny. Greek athletic culture was not so much a field of dreams as a field of desire, where fervent competition for honor was balanced by cooperation for common social goals.

Eros and Greek Athletics is the first in-depth study of Greek body culture as manifest in its athletics, sexuality, and gender formation."

Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914-1967, I Dream a World, Second Edition, OUP 2002 (ppb). ISBN: 0195146433

"The second volume in this masterful biography finds Hughes rooting himself in Harlem, receiving stimulation from his rich cultural surroundings. Here he rethought his view of art and radicalism, and cultivated relationships with younger, more militant writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Bakara. Rampersad's Afterword to volume two looks further into his influence and how it expanded beyond the literary as a result of his love of jazz and blues, his opera and musical theater collaborations, and his participation in radio and television. In addition, Rempersad explores the controversial matter of Hughes's sexuality and the possibility that, despite a lack of clear evidence, Hughes was homosexual."

Aeschines: Against Timarchos, trans. & comm. Nick Fisher, Oxford Univ. Press 2001. ISBN: 0199241562

Older But Still Interesting (included at request of author): Batya Weinbaum, Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities, U of Texas Press 1999.

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