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Conference: Power Women in the Old World - Searching for Traces between Orient/East and Occident/West
International Conference "(Selbst-)Darstellung und Wahrnehmung mächtiger Frauen in der antiken Welt / (Self-)Presentation and Perception of Powerful Women in the Ancient World".
Dr. Kerstin Droß-Krüpe (Kassel) & Dr. Sebastian Fink (Helsinki)
- January 31 & February 1, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Senate Hall (Mönchebergstraße 3, 3rd floor).
- January 31, 6 p.m., Gießhaus (Mönchebergstraße 5): Public evening lecture by Dr. Silke Hackenesch (University of Cologne): "A Taste of Power? Looking at the First Ladies of the United States" (in English).
all lectures are public; conference languages are German and English
An academic conference dedicated to ancient role models/role images
An international scientific conference, initiated by Dr. Kerstin Droß-Krüpe (University of Kassel) and Dr. Sebastian Fink (University of Helsinki), aims to survey research gaps on this topic and to exchange new findings. From January 31 to February 1, it invites participants to question images of powerful women in the ancient world. Twenty-five renowned scholars of antiquity from around the world will then present their research to the public in Kassel. A public evening lecture by the Americanist Dr. Silke Hackenesch (University of Cologne) will focus on the First Ladies of the USA - how do these women act, how do they shape their role, how are they perceived?
In the earlier Orient as well as in ancient Greece in the Roman Empire there were female figures who fascinate to this day. Often these women are portrayed as domineering, sexually permissive or cruel. What role does it play that these images were almost entirely handed down and shaped by men? Bathsheba, Cleopatra, Messalina, Zenobia - all these great women seem to have aroused much interest and also fear. How did they see themselves, how did the handed down image develop? Is there perhaps even a variety of different ideas about these women? And do images of powerful women differ in Greco-Roman antiquity and in the cuneiform texts of the ancient Near East? Current research is searching a wide variety of texts and pictorial representations from several millennia for clues that may broaden our view of the female heroines of the ancient world. Attempts are being made to identify patterns and stereotypes in the description of these powerful women and to compare how they were perceived by others with how they portrayed themselves.
A time only at first glance far away with its unforgotten women: it can perhaps show how women in the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East represented and enacted themselves when they had a space to develop their power.