Gender: Antiquity & Its Legacy (Ancients & Moderns)

Gender has now become a pervasive topic in the humanities and social sciences. Yet despite its familiarity within universities and colleges, some have argued that the radical debates which first characterized gender studies have become ghettoized or marginalized—so that gender no longer makes the impact on creative thinking and ideas that it once did. Holmes argues that much writing on gender in the classical age fails to place those ancient ideas within their proper historical contexts. By reexamining ancient notions of sexual difference, bodies, culture, and identity, Holmes shows that Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicureans, and others force us to reassess what is at stake in present-day discussions about gender.