Professor of Classics Andrew Lear presents “Pederasty in Archaic Greece: Differing Visions/Versions of a Sexual Custom in Two Poetic Traditions” on Tuesday, April 12, at 5:00 pm, in Scripps College’s Edwards Humanities Building, room 201. This event is free and open to the public.
Lear, assistant professor of classics at Pomona College, taught at Harvard and Columbia Universities prior to coming to Claremont. He is a leading expert on Greek vase-painting, the early Greek lyric, and sexuality in the ancient world. His book Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods (Routledge, 2008) has been widely and positively reviewed. His second book, Paiderastia: History of a Social Custom, from the Age of Homer to the Code of Justinian, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
Lear explores the ancient Greek custom of pederasty (erotic relations between adult men and adolescent youths), which has played a key role not only in recent classical scholarship but also in the development of the modern field of gender and sexuality studies. The predominant view of this custom today is that it presented an ethical problem for the Greeks: in Foucault’s terms, it was “problematized.” But is this in fact true? Lear’s talk will consider whether or how pederasty was an ethical issue in archaic Greece.
For more information, please contact Professor David Roselli in the Classics Department at Scripps College (909) 607-3058.