On the Season 1 finale we talk with Dr. Deborah Lyons about ancient Greek myths, breaking cultural boxes, and why we should all strive to be killjoys. Pandora's box, Penelope's gifts, Helen's beauty in Sappho's poetry, and more. Why does it matter that Pandora didn't actually have a box in the earliest versions of the myth? How were objects and the practice of gift-giving gendered in Classical Greece? What rituals did ancient Greek women participate in, and what did they produce? As we study ancient women, what strategies can we turn to for unearthing hope? Shownotes: https://www.womenwhowen ..read more

In the penultimate episode of season 1, “In Her Own Words: Ancient Women Authors,” we talk with historian and classicist Dr. Kate Cooper about gatekeeping, the privilege of individualism, and those rare surviving moments when women wrote for themselves. The famous Greek poet Sappho, who wrote of love and loss. Faltonia Betitia Proba, the elite Roman woman who adapted Virgil to tell Christian history. The pilgrim Egeria who described her tour of the Holy Lands to her circle of female friends back home. And of course we revisit Perpetua, the martyr from Carthage we first met in Episode 0. Show ..read more

In Episode 8 our hosts talk with Dr. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander about whether women can keep track of their own periods, religious law as a boys’ club, and why ancient rabbis cared about witchery.   Episode show notes: https://womenwhowentbefore.com/suffering-witches-to-live. Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh. The music is composed and produced by Moses Sun. Sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, and the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University Views ..read more

Dr. Caryn Tamber-Rosenau explains how two lethal women perform gender in the Hebrew Bible. Judith and Jael were talented Jewish heroines who skillfully played their hands (and bodies) to save their people from invading armies. How might the stories about Clytemnestra and the Ugaritic goddess Anat have shaped these biblical narratives? How does the book of Judith intersect with Judas Maccabee and the Maccabean Revolt? How is virginity a sexual orientation? Gender performance, queer theory, and femmes fatales join with Agatha Christie's murder mysteries and the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gen ..read more

Dr. Solange Ashby teaches us about Nubian warrior queens, Hollywood stereotypes about Egyptian women, and why you shouldn’t trust Wikipedia. Meet the powerful, voluptuous queens of Meroe—Amanirenas, Amanitore, Amanishakheto. While Roman noblewomen were supposed to stay hidden at home, these queens were ruling and leading their troops into battle.  Hear how Nubian families tracked filiation through their mothers. Learn about color consciousness in the biblical story of Moses' Kushite wife. And along the way, discover what Cleopatra and Wonder Woman have in common. Show notes and sources ..read more

We interview  Dr. Thomas A. J. McGinn about Roman prostitution, marriage laws, and a strange Cinderella story. What was a paterfamilias and how did they determine a woman’s life? Were prostitutes merely doing their civic duty? Why did early Christians call the Roman government the pimp-in-chief? Autonomy and agency are the overarching themes of this episode. We explore them in laws governing Roman women, how prostitution was legislated and profited from in Ancient Rome, why sex work isn’t the right term for the Roman world, and why even empresses weren’t immune from slander. Imperial Ja ..read more

We talk to Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey about how gender shaped ancient thinking about God, women's church choirs, and the complex web of metaphors for the divine within Syriac Christianity. Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Rebekah Haigh and Emily Chesley. The music is composed and produced by Moses Sun. This episode was fact-checked by Jillian Marcantonio and George Kiraz. Show notes: womenwhowentbefore.com/two-breasts-of-the-father/ Sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, and the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Helleni ..read more

MacArthur Fellow and NYT bestselling author Dr. Elaine Pagels joins us to talk about manic pixie dream girls, lost Gnostic texts, and why being a heretic might not be so bad. Stereotypes about women aren't solely a modern phenomenon. Two pervasive archetypes in early Christian writings were the devil's gateway and bride of Christ . Where did these labels come from? And what were some alternative perspectives found in gnostic texts like the Gospel of Mary and Thunder, Perfect Mind? We also ask, where did Eve go wrong? Who were the leaders Eustochium, Junia, and Marcellina? And how do the Pauli ..read more

We explore ancient Jewish fan fiction, why makeup made the angels fall, and the ever-present problem of ghostwriting with Dr. Annette Yoshiko Reed in Season 1 Episode 2, "Ghostwriting the Daughters of Men: Whose Writing Is it Anyway?" You've heard of the human fall story in Genesis 3, but what about the angelic fall stories in Genesis 6, 1 Enoch, and the Testament of Reuben? How did the Third Sibylline Oracle try to one-up Homer? Does the male gaze operate the same way in ancient texts as in our modern world? And is the misogyny we find in ancient texts always misogyny? These questions and mo ..read more

We talk to Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz about history’s nameless faces, the news negativity bias, and how to raid ancient texts to find women. How were women named and anonymized in Jewish and Christian texts? When did bene Yisra’el mean "sons of Israel" in the Hebrew Bible, and when did it include the daughters too? What do we know about female scribes in antiquity?  Who was Rav Hisda's daughter? And how do biases shape what scholars find? Episode show notes: womenwhowentbefore.com/invisible-women Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Hai ..read more