BiCo Classics Senior Seminar – Page 4

Marion’s Research Questions

I am currently focusing on narrowing and developing my thesis ideas (link) related to St. Patrick’s Confessio and the later Lives/hagiographies about St. Patrick by Muirchu and Tirechan. I am particularly interested in looking at Christian conversion, Patrick’s portrayal of himself, and his portrayal in later writings. I’d like to use the similarities and contrasts between those latter two things to perhaps examine how later Irish Christian writers (Muirchu and Tirechan) viewed the history of conversion and how pre-Christian Irish traditions were understood, integrated, and/or rejected. Patrick’s qualities and “abilities” (for lack of better phrasing) change quite a bit between his own Confessio and the Lives that were written much later, and I am curious to investigate what those changes mean.

Research Questions:

How is conversion to Christianity represented in the Confessio, and how are pre-Christian Irish authorities, religious leaders, and traditions spoken (or not spoken) about?
What is Patrick’s relationship to Rome (both in his own writing and in later writing). and how does this relationship shape the way he sees his mission and how others view it?
How does Patrick portray himself and his relationship to God and miracles in the Confessio?
How do Muirchu and Tirechan (later Irish writers) portray Patrick’s relationship to God, miracles, and Irish authorities?

Claire’s research questions

My thesis topic is somewhat in flux since my last post about it (link here) but the main theme I’d like to investigate is how the divine are imagined as inhabiting bodies in Orphic literature. I’m interested in how the divine are described as embodied (symbolically or literally) and specifically how those bodies are gendered. I want to look at what distinguishes the divine and human body in Orphic texts, specifically the Hymns and another text or texts that I am still playing around with.

How is divine epiphany represented in the Orphic Hymns and other Orphic texts, and is the representation of divine embodiment necessarily reliant on moments of epiphany?
What is the difference between the divine and human body, and how does the imagined divine body rely on/subvert human embodied characteristics (gender, movement, senses)? What does the reliance/subversion of human embodied characteristics do for the god (for lack of a better way to phrase it)?
Is the divine body a true representation of the divine in Orphism, or is it a dilution of the truly divine? If so, why are they depicted as embodied anyways?

Rose’s Research Questions

In my original Thesis Idea post I knew I wanted to do something with mythology but wasn’t yet sure what, so I didn’t really have an actual topic at that point. Now I’m thinking about doing something with modern receptions of myths, possibly looking at the modern musical Hadestown and how it handles the myths of Hades & Persephone and Orpheus & Eurydice.

Here are a few research questions I’ve identified, though since it’s a pretty recent idea I don’t know for certain exactly where I’m going to focus:

How are the myths of Hades & Persephone and Orpheus & Eurydice changed or modified from their presentation in ancient texts so that the musical is able to present a sort of parallel between the two myths?
What is the role of Hades & Persephone in the retelling of the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice?
How does having the god Hermes as narrator but also active participant in the story impact this retelling?
What are some themes/motifs that show up in Hadestown that are also important in the ancient versions of the myths?

Laken’s Research Questions

My original thesis post is linked here, but I am planning to analyze how gendered depictions of grief via Xerxes in Aeschylus’ Persians fit into the political agenda of the tragedy as a means to “other” the Persian characters in front of an Athenian audience post-Persian War. I aim to discuss this in conversation with other tragedies and primary sources that deal with the grief of Greek men in contrast with non-Greek men, such as the Oresteia and the Iliad. Additionally, I plan to consult historical sources like Herodotus’ Histories and Xenophon’s Anabasis for more detailed information on Greek and Persian interactions in the context of war.

Questions I am using to frame this research include:

How can the language used to describe grief, particularly war-inspired grief, vary between Greek and non-Greek characters in tragedy, and what are the author’s intentions behind this distinction?
How may tragedy have been used as a tool of propaganda by politicians and tragedians, specifically one that dealt with lived history for a majority of Athenians, such as the Persians?
What is a productive way of considering authorial intent and historical context in tragedy without overshadowing the literary significance of the Persians and other tragedies?

George’s Research Questions

As can be read in my initial thesis idea (https://farmer.sites.haverford.edu/seniorsem22/assignments/thesis-idea/georges-thesis-idea-the-carmina-priapea-and-classical-roman-ideas-on-passivity-in-homosexual-sexual-relationships/), my plan is to talk about the negative attitude held by Ancient Romans towards being the passive partner in homosexual sexual relations. I plan to discuss the reasons behind this negative attitude, and, more importantly, the evidence of it in the Carmina Priapea, and what the presentation of the attitude in the Priapea says about wider Roman society.

From this, the main questions I will be investigating are:

What was the attitude towards homosexual relationships in Ancient Rome?
What does the presentation of masculinity and homosexual sex in the Carmina Priapea say about the attitude towards homosexual relationships in Ancient Rome?
What are the possible reasons that being the passive partner in homosexual sexual relationships was seen as a worse thing than being the active partner?
What evidence is there that the ideas about homosexual sex in the Carmina Priapea were seen widely across Roman society?

Celine’s Research Questions

My preliminary thesis proposal here described my plans to examine the notions and practices of motherhood in Euripides’ Elektra to produce a recuperative reading of Elektra and Clytemnestra within the text. In doing so, I’ll put the tragedy in conversation with primarily Third-World/intersectional and both second/third-wave feminists.

Following this thesis idea, I have come up with the following research questions so far:

What are the implications of Elektra’s pretense/acting of motherhood compared to Clytemnestra’s “real” status as a mother, especially given her status as simultaneously maiden and crone? Related: How are these three statuses available to women delineated throughout the play?
What is the quality of the political power held by each of the women, especially contrasted with the political power of Orestes?
Contemporary feminist theory asks us to look at the individuality of each identity and situation rather than make sweeping statements, yet putting them in communication with the past necessitates that I find common ground/a common thread. How do I approach this while keeping the principles of intersectional feminist theory?

Liam’s Thesis Idea: Conceptions of Foreignness and Cultural Exchange in Mythology

My primary interest for my thesis is broadly ideas of cultural exchange through movement and storytelling. I want to explore instances where art and mythology serve as a medium for this exchange, and relate it to the narratives we tell about ourselves today. Part of my interest in this topic comes from looking at the Early Bronze Age exchanges in the Mediterranean, and understanding how the mythology of that time period grows into later works of literature from the Odyssey to Athenian drama. What might be particularly interesting for this broad topic could be going in depth with Euripides’ Medea in order to explore some aspects of foreignness and immigration. The next part of this would involve using those understandings to look deeper at narratives of modern cultural exchange in an increasingly globalized world. How do we conceptualize our international relationships to each other through storytelling/visual art? How do traditional stories help this conceptualization, including when we look at similarities/differences in origin stories from different cultures/peoples?

Although I think there is a lot to look at here in terms of finding sources, I’m still unsure about a clear direction to go in (in terms of a clear thesis topic). I imagine that I will have the most success if I can narrow my scope to one or two primary pieces of evidence from the ancient world, although I am in many ways more interested in the reception side of things so I foresee that taking up a lot of the initial work for this.

I am really excited for this topic because I think it has broad reaching implications, particularly in, as I mentioned before an increasingly globalized world, but one that is experiencing a heightened interest in nationalism right now. I want to use the perspective of ancient Mediterranean peoples to reflect on and promote cultural exchange, particularly through literature and reception.

Eden’s Thesis Idea: The Fluid Gender and Sexuality of the Gods

I haven’t landed on something specific yet, but I have in the past thought about (and enjoyed studying) the way gender and sexuality are expressed by the Ancient Greek gods, and the complexities that come along with it. I’ve really enjoyed the Gender Studies courses I’ve taken so far, and even once did a project on the theme of vagina dentata (vaginas with teeth) in Ancient Greek literature, which was very fun to present in class. I also was interested to learn about how Athena and Ares mirror each other in that they are both aspects of war, one favorable and one unfavorable. I wondered if, since Athena represents Attic ideals of masculinity (stoicism, logic, cunning strategy, etc.), I could find ways that Ares represents femininity (of the time) through his intense emotions and reactivity. I did bring this idea up to a previous professor, though, and she warned me against blending all of Ancient Greece together into one idea of “Ancient Greek femininity.” I need to be sure I have more than just blanket statements about Ares representing a misogynist image of woman-ness. I do have the argument that, while Athena almost always takes the side of men, sponsoring Odysseus and defending Orestes for the killing of Clytemnestra, Ares once killed his daughter’s rapist and defended his actions in court as just. I think that, in a time when gender and sexuality are more flexible now than they have been in a long time, this is a really good opportunity to explore it in ancient texts, with an open perspective.

I also might be really interested in the ways people used magic to relate to the gods, if I can’t find enough evidence for the first idea. I’m sort of going back and forth between these two very broad concepts, either of gender, or magic.

I think I might like to focus on vagina dentata as a concept, expanding it to include genitalia as weaponry or as tools in general. I could add the statues of Priapus that people used to put in their farms and/or orchards to scare away potential thieves, using the oversized, permanently erect penis on the statue as a threat, and often including notes stuck to the statue that described in grotesque detail how it would be used on anyone who dared to steal from the owner of the farm. I could look at the seemingly unstoppable fertility of the gods as something dangerous, as Zeus has been prophesized multiple times to be one day overthrown by a child of his, yet he cannot seem to stop reproducing. He constantly has sex with both goddesses and mortal women, and every single encounter ends in the birth of a god or demi-god. In this way, Zeus’ genitals almost function as a Damoclean sword, constantly pointing in towards him, threatening to one day be the death of him. Aphrodite, goddess of love and sexuality (possibly connected to Ishtar, goddess of love and war), was supposedly born from the castrated testicles of Ouranos, aka Father Sky, father of Cronus and grandpa of Zeus. In other words, the deity most associated with sex in the Greek Pantheon was born from an act of sexual violence. Genitalia can also be tools, not just weapons. A big example of this would be the winged, stone phalluses found in archaeological digs, possibly carried as charms to ward away the evil eye. In this case, genitalia is protective. I could dig for more examples and work to construct an argument based just on this.

Other questions I have, should the genitalia argument not work out, are how to define the way Ancient Greeks defined masculinity and femininity, which is no small task. If I were to make the Athena vs. Ares each being a reflection of the other’s gender, where and how would I find evidence for this? I would need some examples of femininity as villainized in mythology, and these would need to overlap with descriptions of Ares in terms of his character and behavior. I already have information on the ways Athena was essentially the prodigal son of Zeus. Maybe I could talk about the way death and the primordial, which Ares stands for, are often described as feminine deities in Greek Tragedy, while order, society, and strategy (Athena’s domain) are more likely to be associated with male deities. Athena even sides with Orestes during his trial in the play Orestes, claiming that she had no mother and therefore is on the side of men, even if the women on the other side are the Erinyes avenging Clytemnestra’s death! Either way, I think most of these questions can be answered with research, or if not, abandoned and swapped for another set of questions.

Hannah’s Thesis: The Gods and their impact on human conduct?

Although I have a general idea of what I would like to focus my thesis on, I definitely am still unsure about the literature and authors I would like to highlight. In addition to Classics, I am concentrating in Gender and Sexuality Studies and will be using this specialization to narrow down my focus. I have always been interested in the study of gender and sexuality within Classics, and therefore know that I would like to continue to analyze their interaction. More specifically, I think I want to look at the relationship between how immortal figures are portrayed in mythological texts and their connection to the contemporary expectations of how mortals were expected to conduct themselves (especially regarding sexuality and romantic expression). I have always wondered how gods as the extremes of human nature and morality (or in some cases the lack thereof–aka Zeus) influenced the behavior of Ancient Greeks and the evolution of societal norms and expectations.

Because I am still in the process of choosing what exactly I would like to write about, it has been a challenge to start thinking about the evidence I will need to support my arguments. I have a few ideas that are relatively scattered across different pieces of literature, so I know a good first step will be figuring out which pieces are most relevant. I also am slightly concerned about finding and utilizing secondary sources that will remain focused and not let me thoughts wander too far from my analysis of primary sources, but I also know there is an abundance of work related to the study of gods and other immortals–especially in the context of gender and sexuality.

Outside of Thesis, I play on two club sports teams and have two on-campus jobs. Even during this first week of class, it is clear that I will have to stay on top of managing my time and ensuring that I block out enough time to just sit down and work on researching and writing. I am sure that this will become easier as the semester continues as I adjust to being back on campus and in an academic mindset.

I am excited to hear what everyone else is working on and to go through this process together! See you all in class.

Hannah’s Thesis Idea: Engaging with Landscape in (some work)

Until this week, I was planning to double major in Linguistics and classical languages. I spent last semester in that department’s equivalent of this class researching a topic that would have allowed me to combine theses: the role of particles in structuring discourse. Greek is famous for its heavy use of particles (and they’ve always given me trouble). Particles tend to delineate clauses and phrases, aligning with the mental divisions the speaker has made and illuminating syntactic complexities that might otherwise go unnoticed. I would have relied on cognitive linguistic theory and probably examined a text that had at least a basis in the spoken word. I was thinking Athenian legal speeches. I might scrap this topic because my research has become increasingly pedantic and boring, and I no longer need to write about Linguistics in my thesis.

I think I would like instead to do a project that allows me to engage with the ancient landscape. I’m thinking trees, rocks, rivers, the mythology around them, and the way people conceptualized their relation to their environment. Also, how do people understand the way human structures interact with nature? I haven’t really picked a text yet. I’ll probably engage with an author’s body of work, or maybe just a single longer work. I’d like it to be something that’s not primarily about landscape. I think there’s been quite a lot of literary theory written about landscape, so I am not too worried about finding secondary sources. The human relation to the environment is a hot topic in many disciplines now, for obvious reasons. I hope that this topic will allow me to reflect on the ways that relation has evolved over the last thousands of years, and to be more aware of my own conceptions of landscape and nature.

As far as challenges go, I was very worried about completing this work when I was trying to double major—but I’ve removed that obstacle, and now I feel much more confident and relaxed about it. Holding myself accountable is always hard, but I hope that finding real interest in this topic and being excited about the writing will make me less likely to procrastinate.