Presenter(s): Daisy Burge—History
Faculty Mentor(s): Linni Mazurek
Session 1: Oh, the Humanities!
This project explores how Classical Greek philosophers and medical writers explained the female body and how their ideas affected perceptions of femaleness, gender, and sexual difference in classical antiquity . In several Classical Greek academic and artistic works, women are portrayed as “incomplete” versions of men, naturally servile and unable to exercise free will . Supposedly scientific understandings of female anatomy within antiquity justified and reified these ideas, creating justification for male exertions of control over women and rigid patriarchal mores in several regions through the Classical Mediterranean .
This project provides a critical gendered analysis of key medical and philosophical texts from Classical Greece which define sexual and gendered difference by casting women as inherently incomplete . This work primarily focuses on the treatment of the female body within the medical works of the Hippocratic Corpus and the biological works of Aristotle on regeneration, while incorporating political and philosophical passages of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon which discuss womanhood and femaleness . Examining the works of these Classical authors, this work seeks to understand how Classical Greek scholarship influenced and established gender norms throughout Mediterranean . In addition, this work seeks to incorporate the ideas and analysis feminist scholars on ancient philosophy and medicine, in particular focusing on the work of Hippocratic gynecological scholar Helen King and the theories of classicist feminist theorist Page DuBois in understanding how female identity was constructed and reinforced through ideas of biological determinism .