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Last semester, Assistant Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand unveiled
a new course, Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Although at face
value the subject may seem too risqué for the classroom, Ormand
maintains that its study can help students form a more complete picture
of the ancient world.
"Homosexuality, as we know it today, did not exist in the
ancient world," he
says. "It was normal for older men to have sexual relationships with women
as well as with younger men. The ancient Greeks and Romans did not take erotic
attachments into account when constructing their individual identities. These
societies were governed by a different set of rules than our modern society,
and it's important to understand what these rules were and how they worked."
Interest in sexuality is part of a larger academic movement–social history–that
has been gaining momentum over the past 40 years, says Ormand. Scholars are no
longer satisfied to study history as a chronological record of wars and politics;
instead, they want to understand the social and cultural institutions that affected
the daily lives of people living in the ancient world.
"This trend has resulted in an explosion of research into the family, slavery,
women's lives, children, the elderly, religion, and the social function of art," says
Ormand. "Sexuality is just one aspect of this trend. If we want to understand
what it really was like to live in Athens in 451 B.C. or Rome in 33 A.D., we
need to understand how people thought about and organized the sexual side of
their private lives."
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