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Women in Greek Drama: A Bibliography
compiled by John Porter

The following bibliography is far from comprehensive, but offers some general starting points.

For a list of journal abbreviations and call numbers, see the
Journals Relating to Classics in the University of Saskatchewan Libraries page.

Please send corrections or emendations to john.porter@usask.ca.

• Background Material
• General Works
• Women and the Dramatic Festivals
• Portrayal of Women by Male Actors
• Aeschylus
• Sophocles
• Euripides
  • Medea
  • Bacchae

Background Material

• Arthur, M.B. "From Medusa to Cleopatra: Women in the Ancient World," in C. Koonz and S. Stuard, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Second edition; Boston, 1987) 79-105.
• Ascher, L. "Women in Classical Studies: Victorian and Modern," in CJ 68 (1973) 354-65.
• Bingham, M.W., and S.H. Gross. Women in Ancient Greece and Rome. St. Louis Park [MN], 1983.
• Block, J., and P. Mason Sexual Asymmetry. Studies in Ancient Society. Amsterdam, 1987.
• Blundell, S. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge [Mass.], 1995.
• Cameron, A. "Women in Ancient Culture and Society," AU 32.2 (1989) 6-17.
• Cameron, A. and A. Kuhrt, eds. Images of Women in Antiquity. London, 1983.
• Cantarella, E. Pandora's Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Baltimore, 1987.
• Carson, A. "Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt, and Desire," in D.M. Halperin, J.J. Winkler, and F.I. Zeitlin, eds., Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, 1990) 135-69.
• Clark, G. Women in the Ancient World. Oxford, 1989.
• Cohen, D. Law, Sexuality, and Society. Cambridge, 1991.
• Culham, P. "Ten Years after Pomeroy: Studies in the Image and Reality of Women," Helios 13 (1986) 9-30.
• Dickison, S.K. "Women in Antiquity: A Review-Article," Helios 4 (1976) 59-69.
• duBois, P. Sowing the Body. Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women. Chicago and London, 1988.
• Fantham, E. "Women in Antiquity: A Selective (and Subjective) Survey 1979-84," EMC n.s. 5 (1986) 1-24.
• Foley, H.P., ed. Reflections of Women in Antiquity. New York, 1981.
• Goodwater, L. Women in Antiquity: An Annotated Bibliography. Metuchen [N.J.], 1975.
• Gould, J.P. "Law, Custom, and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens," JHS 100 (1980) 38-59.
• Halperin, D.M., J.J. Winkler, F.I. Zeitlin, eds. Before Sexuality. Princeton, 1990.
• Hawley, R., and B. Levick, eds. Women in Antiquity: New Assessments. London, 1995.
• Humphreys, S.C. The Family, Women, and Death: Comparative Studies. London, 1983
• Hunter, V. "Women's Authority in Classical Athens," EMC 33 (1989) 39-48.
• Just, R. Women in Athenian Law and Life. London and New York, 1989.
• Keuls, E.C. The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens. New York, 1985.
• Lacey, W.K. The Family in Classical Greece. Ithaca, 1968.
• Lefkowitz, M.F. and M.B. Fant Women's Life in Greece and Rome. Second edition. Baltimore, 1992.
• Lefkowitz, M.F. Heroines and Hysterics. London, 1981.
• Loraux, N. The Experiences of Tiresias: The Feminine and the Greek Man. Princeton, 1995.
• Lyons, D. Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult. Princeton, 1996.
• Massey, M. Women in Ancient Greece and Rome. Cambridge, 1988.
• McAuslan, I., and P. Walcot. Women in Antiquity. Oxford, 1996.
• Noddings, N. Women and Evil. Berkeley, 1989.
• Patterson, C. "Hai Attikai: The Other Athenians," Helios 13 (1986) 49-67.
• Paul-Zinserling, V. Women in Greece and Rome. New York 1972.
• Peradotto, J., and J.P. Sullivan, eds. Women in the Ancient World. Albany [N.Y.], 1984.
• Pomeroy, S. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York, 1975.
• Pomeroy, S.B. Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities. New York, 1997.
• Powell, A. "Athens' Pretty Face: Anti-feminine Rhetoric and Fifth-century Controversy over the Parthenon," in A. Powell, ed., The Greek World (London, 1995) 245-70.
• Rabinowitz, N.S., and A. Richlin, eds. Feminist Theory and the Classics. New York, 1993.
• Reeder, E.D. "Women and Men in Classical Greece," in E.D. Reeder, ed., Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Princeton, 1995) 20-31.
• Richter, D.C. "The Position of Women in Classical Athens," CJ 67 (1971) 1-8.
• Sealey, R. Women and Law in Classical Greece. Chapel Hill, 1990.
• Sissa, G. Greek Virginity. Cambridge [Mass.], 1990.
• Sourvinou-Inwood, C. "Male and Female, Public and Private, Ancient and Modern," in E.D. Reeder, ed., Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Princeton, 1995) 111-22.
• Walcot, P. "Greek Attitudes Toward Women: The Mythological Evidence," G&R 31 (1984) 37-47.
• Williams, D. "Women on Athenian Vases: Problems of Interpretation," in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Detroit, 1983) 92-106.

General Works

• Bassi, K. Acting Like Men: Gender, Drama, and Nostalgia in Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor, 1998.
• Bouvrie, S. des Women in Greek Tragedy. An Anthropological Approach. Oxford, 1991.
• duBois, P. Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being. Ann Arbor, 1982.
• Case, S.-E. Feminism and Theatre. New York, 1982.
• Easterling, P.E. "Women in Tragic Space," BICS 34 (1987) 15-26.
• Foley, H.P. "The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama," in H.P. Foley ed., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (London, 1981) 127-68.
• Foley, H. Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. Princeton, 2001.
• Gamel, M.-K. "Staging Ancient Drama: The Difference Women Make," in J.R. Porter, E. Csapo, C.W. Marshall, and R.C. Ketterer, eds., Crossing the Stages: The Production, Performance and Reception of Ancient Theater (Syllecta Classica vol. 10 for 1999) 22-42.
• Gomme, A.W. "The Position of Women in Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries," CP 20 (1925) 1-25. [Reprinted in A.W. Gomme, Essays in Greek History and Literature (New York, 1967) 89-115.]
• Holst-Warhaft, G., Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature. London, 1995.
• Katz, M.A. "The Character of Tragedy: Women and the Greek Imagination," Arethusa 27.1 (1994) 81ff.
• McClure, L. Spoken Like a Woman. Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama. Princeton, 1999.
• Saxonhouse, A.W. "From Tragedy to Hierarchy and Back Again: Women in Greek Political Thought," APSR 80 (1986) 403-18.
• Seaford, R. "The Imprisonment of Women in Greek Tragedy," JHS 110 (1990) 76-90.
• Seidensticker, B. "Women on the Tragic Stage," in B. Goff, ed., History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama (Austin, 1995) 151-73.
• Shaw, M. "The Female Intruder: Women in Fifth-Century Drama," CP 70 (1975) 255-66.
• Stehle, E. Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece. Nondramatic Poetry in its Setting. Princeton, 1997.
• Young, S. The Women of Greek Drama. New York, 1953.
• Zeitlin, F.I. "Playing the Other: Theater, Theatricality, and the Feminine in Greek Drama," in J.J. Winkler and F.I. Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do with Dionysus? (Princeton, 1990) 63-96. [also in: Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago, 1996.]
• Zelenak, M.X. Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy. New York, 1998.

Women and the Dramatic Festivals

• Goldhill, S. "Representing Democracy: Women at the Great Dionysia," in R. Osborne and S. Hornblower, eds., Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis (Oxford, 1994) 347-69.
• Goldhill, S. "The Audience of Athenian Tragedy," in P.E. Easterling, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1997) 54-68.
• Henderson, J. "Women and the Athenian Dramatic Festivals," TAPA 121 (1991) 133-48.
• Katz, M.A. "Did the Women of Ancient Athens Attend the Theater in the Eighteenth Century?" CP 93 (1998) 105-24.
• Podlecki, A.J. "Could Women Attend the Theater in Ancient Athens? A Collection of Testimonia," AncW 21 (1990) 27-43.
• Sommerstein, A. H. "The Theatre Audience, the Demos, and the Suppliants of Aeschylus," in C. Pelling, ed., Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford, 1997) 63-79.
• Winkler, J.J. "The Ephebes' Song: Tragôidia and Polis," Representations 11 (1985) 26-62. [Reprinted, with additions, in J.J. Winkler and F.I. Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do with Dionysos? (Princeton, 1990) 20-62.]

Portrayal of Women by Male Actors

• Case, S. "Classic Drag: The Greek Creation of Female Parts," Theatre Journal 37 (1985) 317-27.
• Ferris, L. "Cross-Dressing: The Greeks and the Wily Phallus," in ead., Acting Women (New York, 1989) 20-30.
• Zeitlin, F.I. "Playing the Other: Theater, Theatricality, and the Feminine in Greek Drama," in J.J. Winkler and F.I. Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do with Dionysus? (Princeton, 1990) 63-96. [also in: Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago, 1996.]

Aeschylus

• Podlecki, A.J. "Aeschylean Women," Helios 10 (1983) 23-47.

Sophocles

• Knox, B.M.W. The Heroic Temper. Berkeley, 1964.
• Wiersma, S. "Women in Sophocles," Mnemosyne 37 (1984) 25-55.
• Winnington-Ingram, R.P. "Sophocles and Women," JHS 88 (1949) 130-47. [Reprinted in Sophocle: Entretiens sur l'antiquité classique 29 (Geneva, 1983) 233-49.]

Euripides

• Blundell, M.W., M.-K. Gamel, N.S. Rabinowitz, and B. Zweig. Women on the Edge: Four Plays by Euripides. New York, 1998.
• March, J. "Euripides the Misogynist?" in A. Powell, ed., Euripides, Women, and Sexuality (London, 1990) 32-75.
• Powell, A., ed. Euripides, Women and Sexuality. London, 1989.

Medea

• Dibble, G.V. "Recordings of Androgynous Communication: Sophocles' Antigone and Euripides' Medea," T&P 12 (1992) 7-13.
• duBois, P. Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being. Ann Arbor, 1982.
• McDermott, E.A. Euripides' Medea. The Incarnation of Disorder. Pennsylvania, 1989.
• Rabinowitz, N.S. Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women. Ithaca, 1993.
• Shaw, M. "The Female Intruder: Women in Fifth-Century Drama," CP 70 (1975) 255-66.

Bacchae

• Levine, D. "Lysistrata and Bacchae. Structure, Genre, and 'Women on Top,'" Helios 14 (1987) 29-38.

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