The Real Housewives of Classical Athens by Dr Katherine Backler

Have you ever wondered what the daily lives of the women of Classical Athens was like?

Much scholarship follows the men in their lives, at the forum, socialising about town, at war and in sport, but the lives of women are far less well known.

In this talk, Dr Katherine Backler aims to illuminate what the women of Athens were up to based on the research in her new book: Athena's Sisters: Reclaiming the Women of Classical Athens. This book aims to transform our understanding of Classical Athenian culture and society by approaching its institutions—kinship, slavery, the economy, social organisation—from women's perspectives.

Dr Backler is a lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Leeds, previously a departmental lecturer in Ancient Greek History at Oxford. Her research interests are at the intersection of history and literature, has two related strands: recovering the perspectives and experiences of ancient women—and reconsidering how we might access those perspectives—and working outwards from the study of individual relationships to re-examine larger-scale social structures. She is particularly interested in the complexities of emotional and bodily intimacy in exploitative relationships, and in the potential for approaching epigraphic texts commissioned by women as instances of women's self-writing