Nearly 50 years ago, former Hunter College and Graduate Center Distinguished Professor Sarah Pomeroy published Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, a landmark study of women in classical antiquity that firmly placed women’s studies within classical scholarship. In their new co-edited volume, New Directions in the Study of Women in the Greco-Roman World, Ronnie Ancona, a professor of classics at Hunter and the Graduate Center, and Georgia Tsouvala ‘99, an alumna of Hunter and the Graduate Center and a professor of history at Illinois State University, build on that work. Featuring contributions by major scholars, the book includes essays that focus on subjects as far-ranging as women’s roles in activism and legislation, the social power of non-elite women, and women’s achievements in athletics.
Ancona recently spoke to the Graduate Center about the inspiration behind the new book.