Women Who Went Before

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Rebecca Flemming and talk about ancient gynecology, wandering wombs, and what agency, if any, women had over the healing of their bodies.
How did medical writers in Greece and Rome describe a woman’s anatomy and its inner workings? And how did those beliefs influence the treatments they prescribed?
Read transcript and episode show notes: https://www.womenwhowentbefore.com/episodes/wandering-wombs
Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh.
Podcast theme music is composed and produced by Moses Sun.
This podcast is sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Committtee for the Study of Late Antiquity at Princeton University.
Views expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individuals, and do not represent Princeton University.

Dr. Ada Nifosì tells us about the gymnastics of ancient Egyptian birth, why Egyptian women ate donkey balls and their cats ate penis cakes, and why the god Seth should be avoided at all costs.

Childbirth was a scary time for women, and that desire for safety and comfort is reflected in their stories about their gods. The most important goddess, Isis, was enshrined in Egyptian mythology as giving birth in dangerous circumstances. Women turned to amulets, charms, midwives and wise women, their families, for assurance.
Access transcript and episode show notes: www.womenwhowentbefore.com/episodes/the-pee-test
Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh.
This episode was fact-checked by Emily G. Smith-Sangster.
Podcast theme music is composed and produced by Moses Sun.
This podcast is sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Committtee for the Study of Late Antiquity at Princeton University.
Views expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individuals, and do not represent Princeton University.

CW: This episode discusses themes of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.

Dr. Rhiannon Graybill shares her research on sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible and ways of reading such messy stories for then and now. We also talk about violent tropes in modern romance literature and Rome's origin stories—and what these kinds of tales do to those who read them.

She says, “In our world sexual violence is often grounded in or justified by the Bible, and the Bible is used against survivors of sexual violence. And so reading biblical stories as fuzzy, messy, and icky helps us dismantle our experiences of sexual violence and of rape culture.”

Access transcript and episode show notes: https://www.womenwhowentbefore.com/episodes/to-have-and-to-hold.

Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh.
The podcast's music is composed and produced by Moses Sun.
This podcast is sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Committtee for the Study of Late Antiquity at Princeton University.
Views expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individuals, and do not represent Princeton University.

On the Season 1 finale we talk with Dr. Deborah Lyons about ancient Greek myths, breaking cultural boxes, and why we should all strive to be killjoys.
Pandora's box, Penelope's gifts, Helen's beauty in Sappho's poetry, and more. Why does it matter that Pandora didn't actually have a box in the earliest versions of the myth? How were objects and the practice of gift-giving gendered in Classical Greece? What rituals did ancient Greek women participate in, and what did they produce? As we study ancient women, what strategies can we turn to for unearthing hope?
Shownotes: https://www.womenwhowentbefore.com/out-of-pandoras-box-recovering-hope/
Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh.
The music is composed and produced by Moses Sun.
Sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, and the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University
Views expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individuals, and do not represent Princeton University.

In the penultimate episode of season 1, “In Her Own Words: Ancient Women Authors,” we talk with historian and classicist Dr. Kate Cooper about gatekeeping, the privilege of individualism, and those rare surviving moments when women wrote for themselves.
The famous Greek poet Sappho, who wrote of love and loss.
Faltonia Betitia Proba, the elite Roman woman who adapted Virgil to tell Christian history.
The pilgrim Egeria who described her tour of the Holy Lands to her circle of female friends back home.
And of course we revisit Perpetua, the martyr from Carthage we first met in Episode 0.
Shownotes: https://womenwhowentbefore.com/in-her-own-words/

Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh.
The music is composed and produced by Moses Sun.
Sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, and the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University
Views expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individuals, and do not represent Princeton University.