Online lecture

YAN Di

Tsinghua University

Narrating the Gender: Autochthony Myths as Social Myths of Gender Order

12 December 2024

15:00-16:00

To attend this lecture please use the following zoom link:

https://uoc-gr.zoom.us/j/81034661225?pwd=NbAkILfctrAouWsuU4oGKbuNblshxk.1

Meeting ID: 810 3466 1225

Passcode: 573789

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Contact: Maria Papadopoulou

Abstract:

Autochthony is usually taken as a political myth of democratic Athens since the 1980’s. This theory believes that the success of the ideology was due to the myth’s exclusion of women from the reproductive cycle: a straightforward reflection of the historical exclusion of the female from the male-only political sphere. However, this paper will argue that the myths of autochthony are not political myths of origin but are social myths of order. In the order of autochthony both men and women are assigned to clearly defined roles and this order, through its intimate relation to the divine world, justifies itself and thereby forms a powerful social discourse for Athenian society.

Short biography:

YAN Di, Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cambridge, is an Assistant Professor at the Xinya College of Tsinghua University. Her main research areas are ancient Greek mythology, history and literature. She is the author of Autochthony and Athenian Democracy (SDX Joint Publishing Company) and the translator of Simon Goldhill’s Oresteia (SDX Joint Publishing Company). Her representative papers include "The Dynamics of Mythos and Logos: Tracing the Spirit of Ancient Greek Civilization"in Social Sciences in China; "Three Electras: Competition and Composition in Ancient Greek Tragedy”, in Journal of Peking University(Philosophy and Social Sciences); "The Contest Between Poetry and Philosophy in 'Oedipus Tyrannus’”, in Foreign Literature Review; “Relation and relationships between Folk Literature and Classical Literature: Taking Autochthony as a Case Study”, in Cultural and Religious Studies; “Classic Translation and Humanistic Spirit in the Age of AI”, in Journal of Literature and Art Studies, etc.