Who’s Your Daddy

Reconstructing Paternity in the Ancient World

 


Suzanne Dixon




Research Fellow School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics

University of Queensland

suzannedixon@bigpond.com

 

She will be presenting a paper entitled

"Problematising Paternity: fatherly fads and anxieties through the ages"

Paternity is in many cultures invested with a centrality to masculine identity and to the social fabric yet there is a sense in which paternity is intrinsically a more problematic and flexible concept than maternity.


In the modern world, the limits and meanings of parental and quasi-parental roles are the subject of continual re-negotiation and even confusion. In classical antiquity, paranoia and control are often at the heart of the many myths and laws governing paternity and father-child (especially father-son) relations. Freud and Jung have ensured that

disturbing aspects of the Greek heritage are enshrined in modern

European culture.


The scholarly focus has varied with contemporary interests. The late

twentieth century saw the emergence of new analytic models for approaching literature, art and documentary evidence. The social history of the family has been the focus of unprecedented attention but many areas remain for the scrutiny of a new generation of classical scholars: fatherlike relations, anxieties about paternity, symbolic issues and the fit between group membership and paternity among them.



Accomplishments:

  1. •Post-doctoral Fulbright Fellowship at Stanford University 1985

  2. •Residential fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge (UK), 1990-1991

  3. •Rockefeller Award at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, 1994.

  4. •Lectureship at the University of Queensland 1985-2002.

Selected Publications

  1. •The Roman Mother (1988)

  2. •The Roman Family (1992)

  3. •Reading Roman Women (2001)

  4. •Cornelia (2007)

  5. •Pre-Industrial Women (1984)

  6. •Stereotypes of Women in Power (1988)

  7. •Childhood, Class and Kin (2001)

 

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