Women Classical Scholars

Rosie Wyles has been a Lecturer in Classical History and Literature at the University of Kent since 2014, having previously held posts at the University of Oxford, the National University of Ireland Maynooth, the University of Nottingham, and King's College London. Her research interests include Greek and Roman performance arts, costume, reception studies within antiquity and beyond, and gender. Her monograph Costume in Greek Tragedy was published in 2011; she has also published chapters on ancient performance and its reception in several collected volumes and her study of Madame Dacier's translations of Aristophanes will be included in the forthcoming Brill's Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes.After holding posts at universities including Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, Edith Hall took up a chair in Classics at King's College London in 2012. She has published more than twenty books on diverse aspects of ancient Greek and Roman literature and its reception and is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio and consultant to professional theatre companies, including the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Her most recent book, Introducing the Ancient Greeks, was published by Bodley Head in 2015, in which year she was also awarded the 2015 Erasmus Prize of the European Academy for her contribution to international research.This book represents the editors' second collaboration, having previously co-edited the volume New Directions in Ancient Pantomime for Oxford University Press in 2008. The book was met with critical acclaim on publication and one essay was selected as Best Article for 2008 by the Women's Classical Caucus.

In summary, this is a positive, inclusive, wide-ranging collection which challenges the idea of the history of classical scholarship being inherently masculinised, and foregrounds the way in which women have contributed to the field. It sits alongside the ongoing feminist project of writing women back in history generally, and complements the exciting work on gender being done in Classics. Uncovering our 'foremothers' continues to authorise women's purchase on the field and serves as an act of both assimilation and inspiration.

• 1: Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles: Introduction: Approaches to the Fountain 2: Carmel McCallum-Barry: Learned Women of the Renaissance and Early Modern Period in Italy and England: the Relevance of their Scholarship 3: Sofia Frade: Hic sita Sigea est: satis hoc: Luisa Sigea and the Role of D. Maria, Infanta of Portugal, in Female Scholarship 4: Rosie Wyles: Ménage's Learned Ladies: Anne Dacier (1647-1720) and Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678) 5: Jacqueline Fabre-Serries: Anne Dacier (1681), Renée Vivien (1903), or What Does it Mean for a Woman to Translate Sapphoa 6: Edith Hall: Intellectual Pleasure and the Woman Translator in 17th and 18th-Century England 7: Jennifer Wallace: Confined and Exposed: Elizabeth Carter's Classical Translations 8: Liz Gloyn: This Is Not A Chapter About Jane Harrison: Teaching Classics at Newnham College, 1882-1922 9: Michele Valerie Ronnick: Classical Education and the Advancement of African American Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 10: Barbara F. McManus: Grace Harriet Macurdy (1866 1946): Redefining the Classical Scholar 11: Judith P. Hallett: Greek (and Roman) Ways and Thoroughfares: the Routing of Edith Hamilton's Classical Antiquity 12: Roland Mayer: Margaret Alford: a Cambridge Latinist (1868-1951) 13: Judith P. Hallett: Eli's Daughters: Female Classics Graduate Students at Yale, 1892-1941 14: Catharine Roth: 'Ada Sara Adler (1878-1946): "The greatest woman philologist who ever lived"' 15: Nina Braginskaya: Olga Freidenberg: a Creative Mind Incarcerated 16: Eleanor Irwin: An Unconventional Classicist: the Work and Life of Kathleen Freeman 17: Laetitia Parker: A.M. Dale 18: Rowena Fowler: Betty Radice (1912-1985) and the Survival of Classics 19: Barbara K. Gold: Simone Weil: Receiving the Iliad 20: Ruth Webb: Jacqueline de Romilly Afterword Bibliography