WCC UK at the 2022 Classical Association
by lizgloyn
We are delighted that the WCC UK will be well-represented at the upcoming Classical Association conference in Swansea and on-line. As well as two panels, we also intend to run our mentoring scheme for members – stay tuned for more details!
Saturday 9th April 11.30am-1pm – Session 2, Panel 5
#WCCWiki Workshop
This workshop has been organised by Victoria Leonard, Anna Judson, Katie Shields and Kate Cook on behalf of the WCC UK, and represents the continuing activity of the #WCCWiki project.
Following the success of #WCCWiki’s workshop at the FIEC/Classical Association in 2019, the Women’s Classical Committee (UK) will hold a Wikipedia editathon at the CA in 2022 to improve the online representation of classicists who identify as women or non-binary. Classicists are broadly conceived, to include archaeologists, ancient historians, religious studies experts, theorists, and art historians, and others who work on the ancient world.
The workshop seeks to improve the representation of classicists who identify as women or non-binary on Wikipedia, with a particular focus on overlooked Welsh women or non-binary classicists, such as Kathleen Freeman, Käthe Bosse-Griffiths, Jacqui Mulville and Juliette Wood, or those whose research focuses on Wales’s culture and history, such as Catherine Clarke. Of those six women historians who are Fellows of the Learned Society of Wales, an important notability criterion for Wikipedia, five need their pages improving and one lacks a page entirely. The workshop will be an important starting point to addressing this imbalance and promoting the online visibility of Welsh classicists (broadly conceived) who identify as women or non-binary.
The workshop welcomes people of all genders, and it is aimed at those who have never edited Wikipedia before, as well as more experienced contributors. Training will be provided for the first 30 minutes, followed by a supported editing session.
For more information about #WCCWiki, see here, and see #WCCWiki on Twitter.
Sunday 10th April 2pm-4pm – Panel 7, Session 7
Politicising Women in the Ancient World
This panel has been organised by Ellie Mackin Roberts, Claire Stocks, Penny Coombe and Thea Lawrence on behalf of the WCC UK and in conjunction with Assemblywomen: The Video-Journal of the WCC UK.
This panel seeks to investigate the ways that women and girls (broadly defined) were politicised in the Greek and Roman worlds. Politicisation, whether imposed internally or externally, is a lens through which we can interrogate the lives of women in a world that is patriarchal and socially constructed. Women’s lives are not simply about the production of new generations of citizens, but they are integral to the political, economic, and social fabric of the ancient past. By looking at several cases from Greece and Rome the papers of this panel will trace the lives of distinct women, and then men and societies that frame them as political.
Elena Duce Pastor (Universidad de Zaragoza) – Peisistratos and the politicisation of marriage
Briana King (University of St Andrews)- “Brides of Disaster”: Homeric Heroines and the Ideology of Male Victory
Laura Fontana (Università degli Studi di Milano) – Politicising matrons’ mourning in the early Roman Republic
Caitlin C. Gillespie (Brandeis University) – Death Becomes Her: Poppaea Sabina’s Political Beauty