Abstract
Since Pomeroy’s 1975 seminal book, scholarship on women in ancient Greece has been growing steadily, but no comprehensive work explores the role of women intellectuals. By introducing this category, WInGS aims to launch a Greek “intellectual history of women” based on female intellectual activities, independent from male paradigms. WInGS challenges and qualifies the master narrative that depicts ancient Greece as a quintessentially chauvinist society. It does so by showing that female paradigms inform the Platonic tradition, something that, in turn, offers a vantage point to explore the social patterns shared by poetesses, priestesses and women philosophers. In addition to the traditional tools of classical philology and the history of philosophy, with a particular focus on linguistic analysis, intertextuality and historical sociology, WInGS relies on novel approaches such as what is currently referred to as the “intellectual history of women” as well as, in terms of potential scientific impact, intervisuality, a methodology that the unit-leaders are currently applying to Classics. Three main research questions are expected to bring about research advances: 1) Who were women intellectuals? 2) What was their social/family context? 3) What was their audience? Answering these questions will result in a fresh understanding of women poets as well as in a model of what may be called an anti-Aristotelian history of Greek philosophy, one in which women play a surprisingly influential role. On one hand, this amounts to challenging and qualifying the boundaries between the history of philosophy and literature, in a way that has momentous consequences for our assessment of women’s roles in Greek society. On the other, it entails a careful negotiation between the boundaries between orality and literacy as well as between fictional and “real” voices. Such a framework paves the way for a historically informed history of women intellectuals in Greece. In turn, this can result in a significant impact on related fields and historical periods and favourably influence the current debate on the relevance of classics. In terms of social and economic impact, the project can help increase a shared awareness on gender issues in the market of intellectual work. Outreach initiatives are integral to the team’s objectives, and the project’s afterlife includes a database designed as a repository for the team’s work as well as a way to encourage active citizenship in the study of the modern reception of, and creative writing about, Greek intellectual women. A clear area of strength is an exceptionally tight-knit team of like-minded unit-leaders working on complementary areas. As well as producing their own first-order outputs in terms of publications and international gatherings, the three unit-leaders will hire three early-career scholars, who will both contribute to and benefit from WInGS. Hopefully, they will take flight along with the project.
Results achieved
The Bologna Research Unit, in joint collaboration with the Universities of Milano and Bergamo, made a substantial contribution to the objectives of the PRIN project WInGS – Women Intellectuals in Greek Society through an interdisciplinary investigation of learned women’s roles, literary production, and modes of representation in Greek culture, with a particular focus on the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. By combining philology, epigraphy, literary criticism, cultural history, iconography, and gender studies, the Unit contributed to reshaping current understandings of women’s participation in ancient intellectual life, challenging long-standing assumptions about the relationship between women, education, and authorship. The research addressed one of the project’s central questions: who were women intellectuals, how they gained access to intellectual culture, and how their learning and literary production were represented, negotiated, or obscured in ancient sources. Rather than treating women exclusively as objects of literary representation, the project investigated them as active producers, mediators, and consumers of knowledge. A distinctive feature of the Unit’s research was the systematic integration of literary and epigraphic evidence. Greek inscriptions, especially funerary and honorific epigrams, were examined both as documentary sources and literary texts which provided space for cultivated women and their poetic composition. This approach significantly expanded the available evidence for female education, poetic production, patronage, and public recognition, demonstrating that inscriptions constitute an essential source for reconstructing women’s intellectual history. Particular attention was devoted to the relationship between paideia, sophia, and female social identity. The research demonstrated that educated women were frequently represented through a complex interplay between traditional domestic virtues and intellectual accomplishments. Rather than presenting these dimensions as mutually exclusive, many inscriptions and literary texts negotiate their coexistence, revealing sophisticated strategies through which female learning could be celebrated while remaining compatible with prevailing social expectations. Another major outcome concerned the study of female authorship and literary self-representation. The Bologna Unit investigated the attribution of poetic texts to women, the phenomenon of female-authored inscriptions, and the broader dynamics through which women’s voices were either acknowledged, appropriated, or silenced within the literary tradition. This research contributed to a reassessment of authorial practices in Greek literature, also highlighting the dynamics of (mis)attributions that shaped the transmission of women’s writings across antiquity and later periods – including modern scholarship. The dialectic between voice and silence emerged as one of the main interpretative frameworks developed throughout the project. By examining female figures across different literary genres – including epic, historiography, epigram, and Imperial prose – the research explored how women’s speech could become a site of recognition or exclusion. Numerous learned women documented in literary and epigraphic sources were analysed as case studies illustrating the diverse ways in which female voices were constructed, suppressed, recovered, or reinterpreted throughout the Greek tradition as well as modern scholarship. The project also generated important methodological advances. The combination of philological close reading, epigraphic analysis, linguistic investigation, iconography, and literary criticism enabled the Unit to reassess well-known texts while bringing previously overlooked evidence into scholarly discussion. This integrated methodology proved particularly productive for reconstructing fragmented profiles of intellectual women and for identifying patterns of female cultural participation that would remain invisible if literary or documentary sources were considered separately. The scientific outcomes of the project are reflected in an extensive body of publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and forthcoming international publications. The Bologna Unit also played a major role in promoting scientific exchange within the international scholarly community. It organised workshops, invited lectures, and the international conference Ἐν Μούσῃσι ἔξοχος. Greek Intellectual Women in Hellenistic and Imperial Age (June 2025) creating opportunities for dialogue among specialists in Greek literature and culture, while strengthening the collaborative dimension of the project and supporting the training of early-career scholars working on related topics. The conference will result in the edited volume Greek Learned Women in the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Ages (Routledge, forthcoming), which brings together many of the project’s principal results and will constitute a significant reference work for future research in the field. Dissemination and public engagement formed another important component of the Unit’s activities. Research findings were presented not only through academic conferences but also in public lectures, cultural festivals, secondary schools, book presentations, and outreach initiatives addressing broader audiences. These initiatives contributed to increasing public awareness of women’s intellectual history while reinforcing the societal impact of research in the humanities. Overall, the Bologna Research Unit achieved the objectives originally envisaged within the WInGS project and made a significant contribution to advancing international scholarship on women intellectuals in Greek society. By integrating literary, epigraphic, and historical evidence within a coherent interdisciplinary framework, the Unit has considerably expanded our understanding of female intellectual contribution to Greek and Roman Hellenistic and Imperial socio-cultural contexts, with further references to both earlier and later periods. The project has produced original scholarly results, established durable international collaborations, and laid the foundations for future research on women’s history and education. Its outcomes demonstrate that the study of women’s culture - both preserved and silenced - is essential for understanding the historical processes through which intellectual authority has been defined, negotiated, and transmitted across cultures.Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Lucia Floridi
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica
Coordinatore:
Università degli Studi di MILANO(Italy)
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 59.596,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
17/10/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
