Finding Persephone

Maryline Parca teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is author of The Franchetti Collection in Rome: Inscriptions and Sculptural Fragments.Angeliki Tzanetou teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has published articles on women's rituals and politics in Greek drama.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsPart 1. Introduction1. Ritual and Gender: Critical PerspectivesAngeliki TzanetouPart 2. Sources and Methodology2. The Scandal of Women's RitualDeborah LyonsPart 3. Gender and Agency3. Looking for the Images: Representations of Girls' Rituals in Ancient AthensJenifer Neils4. Improvising on the Athenian Stage: Women's Ritual Practice in DramaBarbara Goff5. Sanctissima femina: Social Categorization and Women's Religious Experience in the Roman RepublicCelia E. Schultz6. Threat and Hope: Women's Rituals and Civil War in Roman EpicVassiliki PanoussiPart 4. Performance7. Folk Songs as Ritual Acts: The Case of Work-SongsAndromache Karanika8. The Rise of the Demon Womb in Greco-Roman AntiquityChristopher A. Faraone9. Thesmophoria and Eleusinian Mysteries: The Fascination of Women's Secret RitualEva StehlePart 5. Appropriations and Adaptations10. Worshipping Demeter in Ptolemaic and Roman EgyptMaryline Parca11. Nuptiarum Sollemnia? Girls' Transition to Marriage in the Roman JuristsLauren Caldwell12. Maidens and Manhood in the Worship of Diana at NemiEve D'Ambra13. Male Improvisation in the "Women's Cult" of Eileithyia on ParosDavid D. Leitao14. Early Christian Antipathy toward the Greek "Women Gods"Kathy L. GacaBibliographyContributorsIndex

". . . a good representation of the potential of the study of women's rituals as a medium for relocating women to the center of ancient society from their long relegation at the edge. January 2009"—Randall S. Howarth, Mercyhurst College"[T]his volume has advanced the study of women and men and ritual in the ancient Mediterranean, an area which has rightly entered the mainstream of classical scholarship."—Classical Review"[This] volume spans nearly a millennium of the Greco-Roman world. It offers a snapshot of the best work in a burgeoning subfield. Especially welcome is the fresh attention paid to issues of female agency, local differentiation in cult practices, and the precise literary, material, and socio-political contexts of our evidence. August, 2011"—Journal of Folklore Research"[T]he scholars who contributed to this volume have done a fine job of initial recovery with careful re-interpretation of their maddeningly fragmentary primary sources. 69.1, 2010"—Western Folklore"As the excellent introduction makes clear, there are good reasons why the study of women and religion is an exciting topic at this time."—H. Alan Shapiro, Johns Hopkins University