Silvia Romani
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After a master in Greek Literature and a PhD in Anthropology of the Ancient World from the University of Siena, Silvia Romani taught many years at the University of Turin and, since 2017, she has been Professor of Anthropology, Religions and Mythology of the Antiquity at the University of Milan. She deals in particular with female figures in myth and ancient religion and with issues related to the representation of the female body in antiquity. In addition to her academic activity (teaching and publishing), she also teaches classics in prison, both to inmates and to university students.
In addition, she is deeply invested in initiatives aimed at disseminating the findings of academic research to secondary school students and the broader community. She also plays a key role for the gender balance programme at the University of Milan, where she is a faculty member.
In January 2025 she joins the Paris IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research Interests
women history, classical mythology, ancient rituals
Being angry women in ancient mythology: a gendered "pathographic" approach
Passions in the ancient world are most often depicted from the 'external' point of view, with strong passions such as anger and rage being particularly prominent. Even before they manifest as an inner feeling, anger is depicted due to the physical indications through which it manifests itself. In the case of women, this corresponds to the creation of a kind of prototypical anatomical landscape. Here, angry women are depicted as extremely unpleasant and unbearable.
The angry women of the ancient world and the female divinities who are patrons of these feelings are first and foremost defined not by the power of the passion they fall prey to, but by the unpleasantness of their posture. This is particularly evident in instances where they should be beautiful but are ugly, perfumed but are smelly, composed and elegant and instead portrayed as out of control and out of bounds. One thinks in particular of the goddess of Anger, Lussa, the Furies, the Harpies. This research aims at reasoning about the possibility of constructing a synaesthetic catalogue that allows us to recognize a gendered quality in the representation of extreme passions. The reflection on the mythical representation of female anger and rage is meant to be in the framework of a very rich and vibrant contemporary debate on the definition and function of female anger: one thinks in particular of the studies conducted by Agnes Callard, Soraya Chemaly, Rebecca Traister, Sarah LaChance Adams, and, as far as antiquity is concerned, by Douglas Cairns, among others.
Key Publications
Romani, S., "Irrelevant Bodies: The Creation of Woman as a Model of Post-Natural Creation", E. Di Rocco, C. Lombardi (eds.), Myths of Origins as Patterns of Literary Creation. Brill, 2024, pp. 26-38
Romani, S., Saffo. La ragazza di Lesbo, Einaudi, 2022, p. 208
Romani, S., "The Resistance of Bodies in Myth and Polytheistic Religion", T. Canella, S. Botta (eds.), SMSR 2 (2022), pp. 1-16
Romani, S., "Translated Bodies: a ‘Cartographic’ Approach", A. Violi, B. Grespi, A. Pinotti, P. Conte (eds.), Bodies of Stone in the Media, Visual Culture and the Arts, Amsterdam University Press, 2020, pp. 45-61
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