2022 FemClas Conference: My Experience
Last month, I had the privilege of attending the 2022 Feminism & Classics Conference hosted by Wake Forest University. The conference, which first began in 1992, is held in partnership with the Women’s Classical Caucus and, as stated on the WCC site, is known as “the venue where tensions emerging from the intersection of feminism and classical studies are first recognized, formulated, and debated.” This year, the event included 32 sessions and panels, all with a focus on the gender binary and the relationship between body and language in ancient text.
As luck would have it, I had tested positive for Covid three days before the conference commenced. Fortunately, the conference was virtual, so I was able to muster the strength to tumble out of my bed and flop down into my desk chair just two feet away to attend the meetings. Although my energy may have been at a low level, the lectures and panel discussions I witnessed raised my curiosity to a high one. I was unsure of what to expect, given that I’m a high school junior and have never previously had the opportunity to attend an academic conference. I shakily clicked on the Zoom link -- insecure about my age, experience, and what insights, if any, I had to offer. I soon realized that my hesitation and uncertainty were for nothing. I could feel both tolerance and a shared excitement to learn flowing out of my laptop screen and seeping out of my keyboard. Suddenly, my computer had morphed into an intellectual portal for me to jump through, connecting me with scores of other people holding similar interests and willing to participate in meaningful discourse.
My time at the conference was roughly split between a dozen sessions, each one with a niche topic within the larger umbrella of the FemClas’s quadrennial focus. The two that most stood out to me, however, were the “Feminism is for Everybody” meeting and the “Look at Me and Listen” one. The former session discussed how to deal with resistance to themes of feminism within the Classics classroom. This discussion was interesting to me, since most attendees were teachers, and yet I was a student, thus offering me a unique meta-perspective. I also attend an all-girls school, so hearing the sexist comments my national peers had relayed to their teachers was deeply disturbing yet eye-opening. Listening to the carefully-devised tactics these teachers create in order to broach topics of feminism was surprising, given that themes of female empowerment underscore almost every class I attend. The latter Zoom room, “Look at Me and Listen” focused on seeking an intersectional feminist perspective on the restoration of mythological women. I found this session to be immensely interesting, given that many of my own posts on this very site focus on similar concepts. Consequently, both sessions equipped me with new perspectives with which I can continue to tackle my studies of women’s roles in ancient text.
Despite these significant yet specific discussions and subsequent takeaways, what I felt most moving from the FemClas 2022 conference was its existence, itself. Throughout the weekend’s duration, I found myself in awe of the extent to which ancient literature and culture hold relevance to our modern world. Evidently, I’ve already fostered my own appreciation for the ancient world’s transgression into our current one through the creation of Being Anti-Sexist, but hearing scholars from around the world speak to this same idea, stoked the fire of my passions even further. I left each session amazed by the life that exists within each poem and every myth. I smiled when acknowledging that the written works from the likes of Sappho, Ovid, and Catullus aren’t historical artifacts, but rather, living and breathing documents that forever evolve alongside their readers. Although the authors have certainly passed on, a dynamic relationship still exists between their labors of love and our societies. Harmonious at times and dissonant at others, these remnants of the ancient world continue to support and challenge our modern-day cultures, and for that I thank FemClas for hosting a space dedicated to these very investigations, and I thank these late writers for their ingenuity and devotion to their craft.