Required Text: Barry B. Powell, Classical Mythology, 8th ed., (Boston: Pearson, 2015) [Powell]
Gendering the Mythic World. Hesiod’s Theogony provides an account of how Zeus came to rule over “men and gods.” This account serves to
justify the (divine) structure of the world as it is known to Hesiod (and as it is portrayed in most of our Greek sources from the Archaic
and later periods). Yet Hesiod’s telling of the origins of the gods also introduces obvious gender dynamics into the story of the origin
of the world and the gods. It institutes the rule of the omnipotent male father (Uranus, Cronus, Zeus), even as this authority is often
challenged and undermined by a crafty female deity (Gaia, Rhea). And such dynamics are not only a feature of Hesiod’s myths. Choose a myth
or set of myths and analyze them from the perspective of gender: how are male-female, male-male, and female-female relationships depicted?
What features are valued for each gender? Why?