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

This interdisciplinary edited volume explores the notion of queenship as it has manifest 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. Invigorating the conversation around powerful historical women and their legacies, 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. Although traditional narratives present queens of the ancient Mediterranean world primarily as the wives, daughters and mothers of kings, such as Semiramis and Cleopatra, the ways in which royal women wielded power—whether directly or indirectly—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.