Gender, Sexualities and Love in the Hell

In this seminar, we will examine the elements of a history of gender and sexuality in the
Hellenistic period. The topic of gender and history has been extensively studied for Archaic
and Classical Greece, but not for the Hellenistic: symptomatic (and influential) is the way M.
Foucault moves from Plato to Plutarch, erasing the intervening four centuries. We will
examine the consolidation and evolution of a particular “normal” form of sexuality (centred
on the structural opposition between marriage and “queer spaces”), then examine a particular
region (Ptolemaic Egypt) to try to reconceive in terms of gender familiar themes such as
monarchy, colonization, and Hellenization.