CLARA Review: Brenda Longfellow & Molly Swetnam-Burland (eds), 2021: Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices. Roman Material Culture and Female Agency in the Bay of Naples. Austin: University of Texas Press

Abstract

Editors Brenda Longfellow (University of Iowa) and Molly Swetnam-Burland (College of William & Mary) have previously published insightful work on ancient Roman art and monumental architecture, and the social history and material culture of Pompeii and Rome. In Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices. Roman Material Culture and Female Agency in the Bay of Naples they bring together fourteen leading specialists in a pathbreaking collection of essays that challenge us to rethink gender-based occupational stereotypes, Roman women’s identities and public participation in spheres exclusively associated with Roman elite men. By drawing on epigraphic, archaeological, art historical and architecturalevidence, the various authors investigate female agency with an emphasis on social engagement and the lived experiences of Roman women in the Bay of Naples. Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices adopts an interdisciplinary approach to research, covering a wide range of theoretical frameworks, methodological objectives and materials. Taken together, these innovative discussions challenge entrenched beliefs about women’s essential passivity and inactivity in Roman society by drawing attention to how women from different social backgrounds engaged with the local community through families, businesses and religious activity, and how they expressed their identities in the funerary realm. Challenging familiar elitist-classicist standards dominating past scholarship, this book pushes women’s and gender studies, feminist art history, urban materiality, women’s local involvement and daily lives into a new era of research.