Maud Gleason: "Maud studies the cultural and social world of Greeks in the Roman Empire, with a particular interest in issues of gender, performance, and power. She is the author of Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton 1995). One life Gleason examines in this work is the first-century public-speaker and super-star Favorinus.
As a 'Gaul who spoke Greek, a eunuch prosecuted for adultery, and a man who quarreled with the emperor and was still alive', to quote Philostratus' account of his own paradoxical self-description, Favorinus was a bizarre figure, good -- or hard -- to think with. He flaunted his own precarious position within gender, class, and racial categories, and this very flaunting means that the descriptions of Favorinus both by himself and by others are extremely revealing of the categories he puts under such strain. - Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Her study of Greek cities under Roman rule will appear in the Blackwell Companion to the Roman Empire."
Her email address: maud@stanford.edu
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