Thursday, April 1                              Off the Wall Lecture: “The Ambivalent Heroine:

6:30 p.m.                                            Femininity in Ancient Greece”

Auditorium

Free

In a culture in which the dominant ideal was masculine, what made one a heroine? In this Off the Wall lecture Mireille Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor of the history of art at Vanderbilt University, will discuss what it meant to be a heroine in ancient Greek culture. Helen, for instance, was admired for her great beauty, but reviled for her wantonness. Similarly, goddesses such as Athena, Hera, Artemis, and Aphrodite displayed both positive and negative characteristics. And while we might admire the Amazons or Circe for their modern sensibilities, they were really objects of apprehension for the Greeks. But if mythology provided few models for women, ancient Greek vase-paintings and sculptures display images of the feminine ideal to which all aspired: beauty and industriousness, while being modest and circumspect. The true heroine embodied these cultural ideals.