Naked Truths, edited by Koloski-Ostrow and Lyons

Naked Truths: Women, sexuality and gender in classical art and archaeology, edited by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Claire L. Lyons.
 
Naked Truths explores how sexual difference is communicated symbolically through visual mechanisms that regulared and reinforced gendered roles in Graeco-Roman art and architecture.
 
The articles in this volume challenge traditional assumptions regarding how artistic representations of the body - clothed, partially disrobed and naked - work to define norms of femininity and masculinity. The contributors use a range of theoretical perspectives and address a variety of topics, including: the dynamics of female beauty and male violence in early Italian society; the divested breast in classical art; Clytemnaestra and the iconography of transgression; moral and divine sexuality in the Parthenon Frieze; voyeuristic interactions inspired by the figure of the hermaphrodite; message of control, domination, and violence in Pompeian mythological paintings; and the role of 'desire' and 'desirability' in shaping a nuanced understanding of sex and gender in antiquity.
 
While scholars in sister disiplines have confronted these issues by applying feminist theory to inquiries about the past, the material culture of the ancient Mediterranean has not been the subject of such a re-examination. This volume fills the gap with a timely, provicative and beautifully illustrated re-evaluation of gender and its significance in Classical art and archaeology.