Trojan Horses

Page DuBois is Professor of Classics and Cultural Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her books include Sappho is Burning, Torture and Truth, and Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women.

A lucid and utterly persuasive book that shows how the classical Greek world might serve as a rich and complex resource for contemporary cultural and political analysis. duBois counters effectively those who would idealize classical Greece as the origin of a narrow notion of civilization, demonstrating with wit and poignancy how a progressive and complex view of culture and politics can be derived from a knowledgeable reading of its texts and institutions. There is no single line that runs from the classical world to conservative cultural politics, and duBois shows us quite distinctly how we might begin to think plurality, nature, imagination, and sexuality anew by drawing from this importantly equivocal past. - Judith Butler,Maxine Elliot Professor, University of California, Berkeley Page duBois forcefully weighs in on the contentious debate about the role of the Classics and the ancient Greeks in education today. Grounded in a deep understanding of the Greeks and their texts, Trojan Horses is at once polemical and imaginative, open-minded and passionate. Those who only want a treacly version of the ancient world will try to discount duBois' argument, but readers who are themselves prepared to engage in the adventure, and risk the dangers, of the unending historical quest, should read this book. I recommend it to anyone as a bracing introduction to the study of the ancient world - Ralph Hexter Page duBois loves the classics too much to permit them to be embalmed, calcified, or imprisoned in a rigidly conservative straight jacket. Her Greeks are guides to sexuality, democracy, and the sacred. With zest and courage, Trojan Horses rides into the global future. - Catharine R. Stimpson,Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University