Women's & gender studies

Romulus et Rémus naissent d’une vierge vestale (Ilia ou Rhéa Silvia) ou d’une esclave qui s’accouple avec un phallus divin. Après avoir été soustraits à leur mère ils sont allaités par la louve une bête qui malgré son caractère de prédateur se comporte comme une nourrice pleine d’attention et d’affection. L’abris pour cet allaitement interspécifique est offert par le figuier Ruminalis qui dérive son nom comme la déesse Rumina de la mamelle allaitante. Cette enfance sauvage se conclut quand les jumeaux sont accueillis par Acca Larentia femme de renommée redoutable qui les allaite et les fait grandir dans un milieu pastoral. Comme la louve dont elle est l’alter-ego Acca Larentia s’affiche pour sa remarquable générosité qui est à l’origine d’une fête publique les Larentalia célébrée en décembre. Un fil rouge se dénoue entre ces figures primordiales : le lait nourricier que la mère n’a pas pu donner à ses fils et que les autres figures offrent à sa place.

En suivant les traces de ce fluide cette enquête anthropologique historique et philologique analyse les valeurs culturelles et religieux de ces présences féminines devenues des piliers de la mémoire collective des Romains.

Gandhāran art developed around the first century BCE till the fourth century CE in parts of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been the focus of intense scholarly debates in both Classical and South Asian Studies for many decades. In this book Ashwini Lakshminarayan offers for the first time a specialized study on gender using Gandharan material culture and convincingly proposes new readings of visual culture beyond Eurocentric and postcolonial interpretations.

This book sets the stage with a detailed overview of the contexts in which Gandhāran art was located in Buddhist sites by analysing the gendered use of space and the gender and activities of donors and administrators. At its core the book gives prominence to the stone reliefs of Gandhāra and examines how male and female bodies are represented how they interact and how gender symbolised ideals and values.

With an important comparative overview of the Gandhāran artistic production and new illustrations this work is indispensable for all those interested in the study of gender in ancient art the interaction between Graeco-Roman and Indic cultures and the development of the early Buddhist artistic tradition in South and Central Asia that also shaped Buddhist visual culture eastwards in China.

The roles played by women in history and even the very idea of what it is to be female have always been in flux changing over centuries between cultures and in response to diverse social and economic parameters. Even today women’s roles and women’s rights continue to face changes and pressures. In establishing the series Women of the Past: Testimonies from Archaeology and History the ambition is to build on the profound theoretical and empirical developments that have taken place over the last fifty years of gender-focused research and to explore them in a contemporary context.

The aim of this series is to shed light on not just the outstanding and extraordinary women who were trendsetters of their time but also the not quite so outstanding women often overshadowed by outstanding men and the ordinary women those who simply went about their everyday life and kept their world turning in their own quiet way. This edited volume Women of the Past Issues for the Present is the inaugural volume of the series and shows the wide span of the series chronologically geographically and socially in terms of the research presented. From Roman slaves to Viking women and from medieval wet-nurses to the nineteenth-century wives who supported their archaeologist husbands on excavation this groundbreaking volume opens a new vista in our understanding of the past.

This innovative volume of cultural history offers a unique exploration of how gender and status competition have intersected across different periods and places. The contributions collected here focus on the role of women and the practice of masculinity in settings as varied as ancient Rome China Iran and Arabia medieval and early modern England and early modern Italy France and Scandinavia as well as exploring issues that affected people of all social rank from raillery and pranks to shaming male boasting about sexual conquests court rituals violence and the use and display of wealth. Particular attention is paid to the performance of such issues with chapters examining status and gender through cultural practices especially specific (re)presentations of women. These include Roman priestesses early Christian virgin martyrs flirtation in seventh-century Arabia and the attempt by an early modern French woman to take her place among the immortals. Together this wide-ranging and fascinating array of studies from renowned scholars offers new insights into how and why different cultures responded to the drive for status and the complications of gender within that drive.