[LCC] Call for Papers: Ancient “Unspeakable Vice” and Modern Pedagogy: Talking about Homosexuality in Classical Antiquity in the 21st Century Academy

[John Wood]

Please distribute widely. Thank you.

Call for Papers:
Lambda Classical Caucus Panel 2011
Ancient “Unspeakable Vice” and Modern Pedagogy: Talking about
Homosexuality in Classical Antiquity in the 21st Century Academy
San Antonio, TX, January 6-9, 2011
Organized by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Berea College) and John P.
Wood (University of North Carolina, Greensboro)

In E. M. Forster’s novel Maurice, published posthumously in 1971 and
turned into a film in 1987, two young men in early 20th century
England, strongly attracted to each other, attend a class at Cambridge
University during which they translate Plato’s Symposium. When a
student reaches a passage on same-sex love, the instructor says in a
flat toneless voice: “Omit: a reference to the unspeakable vice of the
Greeks.”
Although a century later the picture has changed and ancient accounts
of homosexuality are more freely discussed in academia, prejudice
against and misinformation on the sexual practices of the Greeks and
Romans continue to persist. The 2011 LCC panel is soliciting papers
that discuss the challenges of teaching such texts at university level
and provide feedback on the responses they provoke among students.
Questions that individual papers may address include but are not
limited to the following:
• What pedagogical methods and interpretive tools (e.g., social
theory, feminist theory, queer theory, psychoanalytical theory) do we
employ in teaching what is nowadays considered to be non-normative
sexuality?
• What are the sources that we regularly use to demonstrate the sexual
plurality of the ancient world and increase awareness about the
non-universality of modern sexual practices? Are some texts less
suitable than others? What are the criteria for creating a textual
canon, if any (e.g., the content of the piece, the complexity of ideas
expressed in it, its author and genre, the familiarity of the students
with it, or simply a personal fondness of the instructor for a
particular text)?
• What are the benefits of exposing students to ancient texts that are
critical of same-sex desire?
• How do we effectively teach the transition (in terms of both
similarity and difference) from Greek and Roman sexual ethics to that
of late antiquity described in the texts of the Church Fathers? How do
we incorporate Greek and Roman accounts in a syllabus on homosexuality
throughout the ages?
• How can we draw on ancient attitudes to homosexuality to inform
modern debates on homophobia, xenophobia, racism, and same-sex
marriage?

Abstracts of one page in length are due by February 1, 2010. Please do
not send abstracts to the panel organizers.
Email them to Nancy Rabinowitz at nrabinow at hamilton.edu.
All abstracts will be refereed anonymously.
Questions can be addressed to Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos at
Konstantinos_Nikoloutsos at berea.edu.