Prologue

With the help of Claremont Colleges librarian Jennifer Beamer, this Pressbook is being created by and for the faculty and students of the fall 2020 Pomona College seminar, Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Rome. 

This semester, we will be creating our learning community beyond the pomerium of Pomona.  As we conduct our inquiry into case studies ranging from how gendered violence looms large in Rome’s origin story to the question of Cleopatra’s Blackness, we will be deliberately engaging with the past with an awareness of our circumstances (and who we are) in the present. 

In this course, we will aim to bring both critical reflection and creative exuberance to our inquiry, acknowledging that our experiences this semester will be, in many ways, unlike anything before, or anything we imagined.   This book is being created with the intention of supporting our efforts to become a community of scholars separated physically, but connected by our shared interest and collective work.

Our course materials — images, maps, videos, ancient texts, theoretical essays, etc. — will be organized here.  This book will develop together with the course.  As we move into each of our thematic modules, our readings, images, and workshops will be added to this book, which can be read online, collaboratively annotated via hypothes.is, downloaded, and printed. 

At the end of the semester, student essays will also be uploaded here.  All participants in this course will be able to keep — and share — the finalized form of this book.

—Jody Valentine

August 7, 2020