Queens in Antiquity and the Present: Speculative Visions and Critical Histories

This interdisciplinary edited volume explores the notion of queenship from antiquity to the present, challenging traditional narratives and offering new perspectives on historical queenship. It brings together scholars, educators, curators, and artists to discuss the concept's contemporary urgency and address gaps in archives and cultural representation. The contributors examine the multivariate and nuanced ways in which royal women wielded power, re-examining primary sources and historiographies to forge new paths forward for reconstructing and imagining queenships from antiquity to the present.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 19 September 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Queenship has been a significant aspect of human history for thousands of years, with women playing a vital role in political, social, and cultural life. This interdisciplinary edited volume explores the notion of queenship from antiquity to the present, in contexts ranging from political acts to art production. Featuring the work of scholars, educators, curators, and artists, this book gathers temporally and geographically distinct ideas about queenship into a single discursive space. The contributors discuss 'queenship as a concept with contemporary urgency—from North America to Africa, and Europe to Asia—foregrounding critical methodologies and creative interventions that address the gaps within archives and current cultural and socio-political representation. Traditional narratives present queens of the ancient Mediterranean world primarily as the wives, daughters, and mothers of kings, such as Semiramis and Cleopatra. However, the ways in which royal women wielded power were actually multivariate, highly nuanced, and culturally specific. The current contributions featured in this volume are concerned with teasing out the modern assumptions that have heavily influenced interpretations of gender norms and power dynamics in antiquity. In addition to re-examining primary sources, this volume scrutinizes the historiographies, methodologies, and stereotypes that have shaped knowledge production and popular imagination over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years. As such, contributors present different kinds of receptions and speculative articulations of historical queenship, thus forging new paths forward for reconstructing and imagining queenships from antiquity to the present.

Weight: 732g
Dimension: 242 x 164 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350380882