This brings us near the conclusion of my mini-series on classical Roman sexuality and the bits and scraps it tells us about relationships between women. (Although I think I'll add another of my occasional primary source entries, with Iamblichos' Babylonaika and it's story of Berenike and Mesopotamia.) If you like the challenge of trying to reconstruct possible social systems from fragments, then there's both enough material to work from and enough empty canvas to paint on.
LHMP
Blog entry
I think it isn't a big secret that I have issues with the "strong Foucaultian" position, that is, that sexuality is never an "inherent" characteristic but that sexual identity is entirely shaped by how a particular culture structures sexual categories and their meanings. But conversely, I'm quite convinced of the "weak Foucaultian" position that individuals will tend to channel and understand their inherent emotions and responses through the lens of the prototypes that society offers them.
As I hinted in last month's On the Shelf podcast and will be announcing officially in tomorrow's episode, The Lesbian Historic Motif Project and Podcast will be repeating this year's exciting audio fiction series in 2019! Please publicize this to anyone you think might be interested in submitting. There's a lot of buzz out there from readers who are hungry for f/f historical fiction. I'd like to do my part to give readers what they're clamoring for.
Past-me wrote a promissory note for this introduction. Present-me needs to get in to the office and wants to get the blog up. So you'll have to be satisfied with the book summary itself.
Since I'm beginning a series of publications relating to classical Rome, it only makes sense to begin with a book that reviews the vocabulary of sex in Latin. It isn't a work that is of particularly direct use for the topic of love or sex between women, as the author gives away his attitude toward the topic with words like "abnormal." But especially given how difficult it is to extract reliable information about female homoeroticism from the surviving Latin texts, the need to understand Roman attitudes toward sex in general is unavoidable.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 74 (previously 27a) - On the Shelf for October 2018 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2018/10/06 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for October 2018.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 76 (previously 27c) - Sappho: The Translations (reprised) - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/10/20 - listen here)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 75 (previously 27b) - Sappho of Lesbos: The Woman and the Legend (reprised) - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/10/13 - listen here)
(Transcript posted 2018/09/26)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 10 - Sappho of Lesbos: The Woman and the Legend - transcript
(Originally aired 2017/06/03 - listen here)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 73 (previously 26e) - Peaceweaver by Jennifer Nestojko - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/09/29 - listen here)
Welcome to the third story in the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast original fiction series!
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