We are delighted to announce the start of our annual Classical Reception Seminar Series in collaboration with the Institute of Classical Studies, London. This year the Queer and the Classical collective are convening a series entitled…
‘Back To a Time Before I Had Form’: Ancient Origin Myth(s) of Queerness.
Classics as a discipline has historically positioned itself as a search for origins, drawing tenuous and often fictional connections between ancient cultures and modern ‘Western civilisation’. Origin stories of gender and sexuality have also contributed to this narrative: the classical past has played an integral part in forming categories and images of sexual difference and desire. Scholars and activists have then often turned to Graeco-Roman antiquity in order to advocate for the legal rights and social legitimation for LGBTQ+ identities. While ancient evidence of queer desire has been an important tool for combatting queerphobia, this attempt at legitimizing contemporary queerness through ‘the classical’ has also reinforced dangerous and exclusionary ideologies, facilitating strategies of pinkwashing, homonationalism, and the erasure of intersectional identities. What does it mean to look for the origin of queerness in the ancient world? Which forms of gender expressions, sexuality, and desire become excluded in doing so? What are the dangers of supporting such origin myths.
By probing at these and more questions, this seminar series will investigate the supposed utility of a straightforward search for origins, teasing out new connections from hostile sources through a fantastic line-up of speakers.
The series kicks off on 16 May with a paper by Vanessa Stovall (Columbia) entitled: ‘A Womb with a (Re)view: the Birth of Masculine Heterosexual Diversion in Greco-Roman Myth’.
The full programme and links to registration for individual seminars can be found here:
https://queerandtheclassical.org/seminar-series-2022
