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How can we use material traces of past lives to understand sex and gender in the past?
Browsing All Posts filed under »art history«
Participation: Putting theory into practice
The fourth and final section of my course, “Archaeology of Sex and Gender”, which provided the opportunity to develop the book Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives, asks students to put the theoretical approaches to understanding sex/gender in the past into practice. Student groups will have already been formed following week 10, when each student is asked […]
Approaching sex through archaeology: celibacy and sex
May 8, 2010
By the last week of the third part of the course, students are finally ready to begin to address one of the major drawbacks of much of the archaeology of gender: the way it elides sexual practices and experiences. By juxtaposing archaeological, art historical, and documentary history approaches to sex work and celibacy, we leave […]
Approaching sex through archaeology: third genders and beyond
May 5, 2010
Returning to a theme from the previous week, third genders, I begin my discussion of method and theory and how they change what archaeologists think we can do with a reconsideration rooted in Sandra Hollimon’s work on Chumash society of California. In Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives, I describe what Hollimon sketches out in a series […]
Classic Maya: sexual bodies
May 1, 2010
In Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives, I draw on my own work on Classic Maya sex/gender in Chapter 3, which deals centrally with sexuality in hierarchical societies. In addition to asking students to read Chapter 3 in the book, I selected a group of articles that all explore the way idealized, sexualized bodies were represented in […]
Classical bodies
April 30, 2010
Classical studies are a rich source of potential material, and many students have some level of comfort with these societies. So I use this material to add to the previous contrast of archaeology/art history an additional dimension, documentary history. David Halperin’s article “Why is Diotima a Woman?” appears on many reading lists in history of […]
May 10, 2010
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