Introductory description

This module proposes to explore the relationship between the realms of sexuality and gender and Latin literature. Topics of sex and gender are present throughout Roman literature, from the scatological poetry of Catullus to Statian poems commissioned to celebrate same-sex relationships. In this module, students will focus on two major currents: 1) how sexual/gendered themes become evident in Latin poetry 2) the ways in which these themes construct, disturb, contribute to and problematise the poetics of Latin literature. These currents will be dealt with in term one and term two respectively. The module will introduce and develop students’ understanding of hermeneutic tools for Latin literature like queer theory, trans theory, feminism and psychoanalysis.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Each week will consist of a two-hour session, combining lecture and discussion elements in roughly equal measure.

Term one will cover encountering topics relating to sex, sexuality and gender in Latin literature. Topics on a weekly basis will include:
Heterosexuality? Deconstructing constructs;
Engendering genders: cis masculinity and cis femininity;
Changing genders: trans identities in the ancient world?;
Sexual deviants: tribas and cinaedus;
Teaching sex: Ovid’s erotodidaxis and its afterlives;
Fragile masculinity;
Sexuality and gender at the fringes;
Dirty Professions: Roman Sex Work in Literature.

Term two will cover the effect(s) of sex, sexuality and gender on Latin poetics, drawing attention to poetic (de)construction. Topics to include:
Verbalising sex: sexualised swearing;
Speaking the unspeakable: incest;
Showing sex: metaphor and material culture;
Warping narratives with bestiality;
Acrasis, sexuality and intertextuality;
Satire: drawing the lines of sex and gender;
Engendering genres;
Gay elegy: Ovid, Gallus and elegiac boys;
Queering Latin literature.

Those studying the module as a Latin text option will have an additional one-hour class per week discussing three texts: Seneca's Phaedra, Juvenal's Satire Six and excerpts from Book 9 of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Have a deeper understanding of Latin literary genre and poetic construction
• Have an appreciation of the conflicting and contradictory scholarship on matters sexual and gendered
• Have a deeper ability to engage critically with the ideas of secondary scholarship
• Have an increased awareness of the hermeneutic tools which scholars use to unpack Classical texts
• Be able to seek out appropriate secondary literature and show discernment in the types of primary evidence addressed.

Indicative reading list

Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Boehringer, S. (2014). “What Is Named by the Name ‘Philaenis’? Gender, Function and Authority of an Antonomastic Figure,” in Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World, eds. M. Masterson, N. Rabinowitz & J.E. Robson (New York, NY: Routledge): 374– 393.
Duncan, A. (2006). Performance and Identity in the Classical World. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Gold, B.K. (1998). “‘The House I Live in Is Not My Own’: Women’s Bodies in Juvenal’s Satires” Arethusa 31: 369-86
Greene, E. (1998). The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry. (Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press).
Greene, E. (2005). “Gender Identity and the Elegiac Hero in Propertius 2.1,” in Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry, ed. R. Ancona & E. Greene (Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press): 61-78.
Hallett, J.P. (1997). “Female Homoeroticism and the Denial of Roman Reality in Latin Literature,” in Roman Sexualities, ed. J.P. Hallett & M.B. Skinner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press): 255-73.
Harrison, S.J. (2004). “Altering Attis: Ethnicity, Gender and Genre in Catullus 63,” in Catullus’ Poem on Attis: Text and Contexts, ed. R.R. Nauta & A. Harder (Leiden: Brill): 11-24.
Haskins, S. (2014). “Bestial or Human Lusts? The Representation of the Matron and her Sexuality in Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10.19.3-22.5” Acta Classica. 57: 30–52.
Henderson, J. (2006). “In Ovid With Bed (Ars 2 and 3),” in The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris, ed. R. Gibson, E. Green & A. Sharrock (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 77-95.
Hinds, S.E. (2000). “Essential Epic: Genre and Gender from Macer to Statius,” in Matrices of Genre: Authors, Canons, and Society, ed. M. Depew & D. Obbink (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press): 221-44.
Ingleheart, J. (2021). “Amores Plural: Ovidian Homoerotics in the Elegies,” in Greek and Latin Love: The Poetic Connection, ed. T.S. Thorsen, I. Brecke & S. Harrison (Berlin: de Gruyter): 185-212.
Ingleheart, J. (2021). “The Ovidian Bedroom (Ars amatoria 2.703-34): The Place of Sex in Ovidian Erotic Elegy and Erotodidactic Verse” TAPA 151: 295-333.
James, S.L. (2008). “Women Reading Men: The Female Audience of the Ars amatoria” CCJ 54: 136–59.
Janan, M. (1991). “The Labyrinth and the Mirror: Incest and Influence in Metamorphoses 9” Arethusa 239-56.
Jenkins, T.E. (2000). “The Writing In (And Of) Ovid’s Byblis Episode” HSCPh 100: 439-51.
Lennon, J. (2022). Dirt and Denigration: Stigma and Marginalisation in Ancient Rome (Tübingen: Mohr Sieber).
Matzner, S. (2016). “Queer Unhistoricism: Scholars, Metalepsis and Interventions of the Unruly Past,” in Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception, ed. S. Butler (London: Bloomsbury): 179-202.
Nikoloutsos, K. (2011). “The Boy as Metaphor: The Hermeneutics of Homoerotic Desire in Tibullus 1.9” Helios 38: 27-57
Nugent, G. (2008). “Passion and Progress in Ovid's Metamorphoses,” in Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought, ed. J.T. Fitzgerald (Oxford: Routledge): 153-74.
O’Rourke, D. (2011). “‘Eastern’ Elegy and ‘Western’ Epic: reading ‘orientalism’ in Propertius 4 and Virgil’s Aeneid” Dictynna. 8.
Oliver, J.H. (2015). “Oscula iungit nec moderata satis nec sic a virgine danda: Ovid’s Callisto Episode, Female Homoeroticism, and the Study of Ancient Sexuality” AJPh 136: 281-312.
Ormand, K. (2005). “Impossible Lesbians in Ovid’s Metamorphoses” in Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry, ed. R. Ancona & E. Greene (Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press): 79-110
Ormand, K. (2018). Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. rev. ed. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press).
Pandey, N. (2018). “Caput mundi: Female hair as symbolic vehicle of domination in Ovidian love elegy” CJ 113: 454-88.
Rimell, V. (2006). Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Difference, and Poetic Imagination. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Sapsford, T. (2022). Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Man in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Segal, C. (1986). Language and Desire in Seneca’s Phaedra. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Sulprizio C. & Blake, S. (2020). Gender and Sexuality in Juvenal’s Rome: Satire 2 and Satire 6. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press).
Uden, J. (2007). “Impersonating Priapus” AJPh 128: 1-26.
Vincent, M. (1994). “Between Ovid and Barthes: Ekphrasis, Orality, Textuality in Ovid’s ‘Arachne’” Arethusa 27: 361-86.
Watson, J.L. (2021). “Reframing Iphis and Caeneus: Trans Narratives and Socio-Linguistic Gendering in Ovid’s Metamorphoses” Helios 48: 145-74.
Wray, D. (2001). Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Young, E. (2015). “Dicere Latine: The Art of Speaking Crudely in the Carmina Priapea,” in Ancient Obscenities: Their Nature and Use in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds, ed. D. Dutsch & A Suter (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press): 255-80.

Subject specific skills

By the end of the module, all students should have:

• A deeper understanding of Latin literary genre and poetic construction
• An appreciation of the conflicting and contradictory scholarship on matters sexual and gendered
• A deeper ability to engage critically with the ideas of secondary scholarship
• An increased awareness of the hermeneutic tools which scholars use to unpack Classical texts
• The ability to seek out appropriate secondary literature and show discernment in the types of primary evidence addressed.

In addition, final year students will

• Develop the ability to set their findings into a wider comparative context, drawing in other aspects of the study of the ancient world;
  Engage creatively with a wider range of secondary literature that includes discussion of classical literature within broader comparative, including critical-theoretical, frames

Q800 students and students taking the Latin text option should have:

• An increased facility in reading Latin literature
• An understanding of how topics of sex, sexuality and gender impact Latin literature on the linguistic level

Transferable skills

please keep:

• critical thinking
• problem solving
• active lifelong learning
• communication skills
• information literacy
• professionalism