WFQS 383 - Queering the Classics

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as GRST 383) Sapphic. Lesbian. “Greek love.” Greco-Roman antiquity is foundational to so much of the language of queerness. In this course, we trace how people have constructed modern queer identities through and in relation to ideas about (what we might call) queerness in the ancient world. We examine both homoeroticism and gender variance in ancient Greece and Rome and its afterlives in queer art and discourse to the present day, pairing, for example, The Song of Achilles with Homer’s Iliad, Hedwig and the Angry Inch with Plato’s Symposium, Anne Lister’s diaries with the poems of Martial. We pay careful attention to the use of classical antiquity in circumscribing more-inclusive queer communities, as well as in gatekeeping and excluding those who, for example, had limited access to the study of Greek and Latin. We also explore how studying other cultures’ attitudes and assumptions about gender and sexuality can reframe or complicate our own; what it means to look to the past for queer origins, affinities, or ancestry; and how to make sense of the myriad ways that people have used “the classics” as a way of talking about and around queerness throughout history. Rachel Morrison.

Prerequisite(s): One course in GRST or WFQS or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS