About the Book

Explores how binary gender and behaviours of gender were actively challenged in classical antiquity

Provides a focus on gender on its own terms and outside the context of sex and sexuality Offers an interdisciplinary approach, appealing to Classicists, Ancient Historians, and Archaeologists, as well as audiences working outside the ancient world, in Gender Studies, Transgender Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, Anthropology, and Women's StudiesCoversa broad time period (6th c. BCE 3rd c. CE) and addresses both textual evidence and material culture (vases, sculpture, wall painting)Provides history of gender identities and behaviours previously ignored or suppressed by disciplinary practices
Gender identity and expression in ancient cultures are questioned in these 15 essays in light of our new understandings of sex and gender. Using contemporary theory and methodologies this book opens up a new history of gender diversity from the ancient world to our own, encouraging us to reconsider those very understandings of sex and gender identity.
New analyses of ancient Greek and Roman culture that reveal a history of gender diverse individuals that has not been recognised until recently.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach these essays will appeal to classicists, ancient historians, archaeologists as well as those working in gender studies, transgender studies, LGBTQ+ studies, anthropology and women's studies.

Table of Contents:
Notes on ContributorsAcknowledgments Introduction: Queering Classics - Allison Surtees and Jennifer Dyer Gender Construction 1. Gender Diversity in Classical Greek Thought - Walter Penrose, Jr. (San Diego State University) 2. Blending Bodies in Classical Greek Medicine - Tyson Sukava (University of Delaware) 3. Birth by Hammer: Pandora and the construction of bodies - Anna Uhlig (University of California, Davis) 4. Life After Transition: Spontaneous Sex Change and Its Aftermath in Ancient Literature - K.E. Shannon-Henderson (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa) Gender Fluidity 5. Neutrumque et Utrumque Videntur: Reappraising the gender-role(s) of Hermaphroditus in ancient art - Linnea Åshede (University of Gothenburg) 6. Intersex and Intertext: Ovid’s Hermaphroditus and the Early Universe - Peter Kelly (University of Oregon) 7. Qu(e)r(y)ing Iphis’ transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses - Rebecca Begum-Lees (University of Cambridge) 8. Ruling in the purpleY and wearing make-up: Gendered Adventures of Emperor Elagabalus as seen by Cassius Dio and Herodian - Jussi Rantala (University of Tampere) Transgender Identity 9. Allegorical Bodies: (trans)gendering Virtus in Statius’ Thebaid 10 and Silius Italicus’ Punica 15 - Dalida Agri (University of Manchester) 10. Performing Blurred Gender Lines: Revisiting Omphale and Hercules in Pompeian Dionysian Theatre Gardens - Lisa Hughes (University of Calgary) 11. The Politics of Transgender Representation in Apuleius’ Golden Ass and Loukios, or the Ass - Evelyn Adkins (Case Western Reserve University) 12. Wit, Conventional Wisdom, and Willful Blindness: Intersections between Sex, Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in the Fifth of Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans - Rowan Emily Ash (University of Western Ontario) Female Masculinity 13. Christianity Re-sexualised: Intertextuality and the Early Christian Novel - Brian Sowers (Brooklyn College) and Kimberly Passaro (University of Cincinnati) 14. Manly and Monstrous Women: (De-) Constructing Gender in Roman Oratory - Mary Deminion (University of Western Ontario) 15. The great escape: Reading Artemisia in Herodotus’ Histories and 300: Rise of an Empire - Denise Eileen McCoskey (Miami University, Ohio) Selected BibliographyIndex