Katherine Backler

My research centres around women, relationships, and self-writing in ancient Greece. My doctorate, Women’s Relationships in Classical Attika, analysed how women’s relationships were formed and changed across the course of women’s lives, how they cross-cut other groupings and divisions in Attic society, and how women described them. It argued that women were more able to shape their lives and relationships than has previously been thought, and therefore played a more dynamic role in the social history of classical Attika. Within and beyond this work, I am particularly interested in informal family and care relationships, including fostering and shared breastfeeding. I have previously written on how textiles in the Homeric epics memorialise the labour and identity of women who are excluded from dominant narratives and memorialising processes. My current project is on the Attic speech-writer Lysias.