Talk Description:

This talk explores how Luce Irigaray and other feminist theorists negotiate the ancient association of underground spaces with the control of (mostly young) female bodies. Following Irigaray, I focus especially on Plato's cave in the Republic and Antigone's in Sophocles' drama, assessing both the ancient scaffolding and feminist revisions of it. 

Biography:

Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Barnard College and Columbia University; focus on the body in performance, ancient and modern literary theory; publications include Virginia Woolf's Greek Tragedy and Tragic Bodies: Edges of the Human in Greek Drama.