March is Women’s History Month, and we here at UC Press are proud to share our rich record of publishing stories of women from throughout history, between disciplines, and across borders. Please enjoy these collections which highlight the many roles women have played from the ancient world to today, from the arts to global studies, from Asia to Africa, and beyond, proving that women’s legacies are inextricable from every detail of our past and vital to the shape of our future.


Sappho
A New Translation

by Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard

“Expressing the bare, lyrical intensity of Sappho’s poetry without recourse to excessive linguistic ornament or narrative padding, Mary Barnard’s translation is widely regarded as the best in modern idiom.”—Synthesis

These hundred poems and fragments constitute virtually all of Sappho that survives and effectively bring to life the woman whom the Greeks consider to be their greatest lyric poet. Mary Barnard’s translations are lean, incisive, direct—the best ever published. She has rendered the beloved poet’s verses, long the bane of translators, more authentically than anyone else in English.

Melania
Early Christianity through the Life of One Family

Edited by Catherine M. Chin & Caroline T. Schroeder

“In this tightly focused volume, Catherine Chin and Caroline Schroeder have done a splendid job giving shape to the emergent Christianity of the late Roman Empire through the lens of the Melanias. The work is of a very high caliber.”–Susanna Elm, Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley

Melania the Elder and her granddaughter Melania the Younger were major figures in early Christian history, using their wealth, status, and forceful personalities to shape the development of nearly every aspect of the religion we now know as Christianity. This volume examines their influence on late antique Christianity and provides an insightful portrait of their legacies in the modern world. Departing from the traditionally patriarchal view, Melania gives a poignant and sometimes surprising account of how the rise of Christian institutions in the Roman Empire shaped our understanding of women’s roles in the larger world.

Shameless
The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece, With a New Preface and Appendix

by Cristiana Franco

“The book will attract wide attention—not easy for a book based on ancient Greek evidence—from scholars of anthropology, archaeology, and even those interested in animal rights, feminism, ecology, and cultural history.”—Alessandro Barchiesi, Professor of Classics at Stanford University

Woman and dogs in the Greek imagination were intimately intertwined, and in this careful, engaging analysis, Cristiana Franco explores the ancients’ complex relationship with both. By analyzing the relationship between humans and dogs as depicted in a vast array of myths, proverbs, spontaneous metaphors, and comic jokes, Franco in particular shows how the symbolic overlap between dog and woman provided the conceptual tools to maintain feminine subordination.

Cleopatra
A Sphinx Revisited

Edited by Margaret M. Miles

“After reading, and perhaps re-reading, the contributions to this remarkable set off essays, the reasons contributing to the posthumous super-status of Cleopatra VII become self-evident.”Bryn Mawr Classical Review 

Cleopatra—a brave, astute, and charming woman who spoke many languages, entertained lavishly, hunted, went into battle, eliminated siblings to consolidate her power, and held off the threat of Imperial Rome to protect her country as long as she could—continues to fascinate centuries after she ruled Egypt. These wide-ranging essays explore such topics as Cleopatra’s controversial trip to Rome, her suicide by snake bite, and the afterlife of her love potions. They view Cleopatra from the Egyptian perspective, and examine the reception in Rome of Egyptian culture, especially of its religion and architecture. They discuss films about her, and consider what inspired Egyptomania in early modern art. Together, these essays illuminate Cleopatra’s legacy and illustrate how it has been used and reused through the centuries.

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