While men were, indeed, performing all roles in 5th/4th century BCE Athenian comedy and tragedy, women were also performing as singers, dancers, choristers, and mimes in many venues and “genres” around the Greek-speaking Mediterranean—including later in some of those tragedies and comedies. Widely scattered vases, inscriptions, papyri, mosaics, graffiti, and literary texts attest to the vocal and bodily presence of trained female singers around the ancient Greek-speaking Mediterranean across a long continuum of theater history, including the earliest named female represented performing on a physical stage, and the only known instance of ancient Greek music written for female voice in a tragedy. In this talk, John Starks, Jr. traces how highly skilled female singers of Hellenic ethnic and performance heritage are attested, recognized, and remembered in material culture.

John H. Starks, Jr. is Collegiate Professor in Newing College and Associate Professor of Classical Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Binghamton University SUNY. His research on female performers and black African identity in the ancient Mediterranean World have earned the Blegen Research Fellowship at Vassar College and two awards from the Women’s Classical Caucus. He is currently working on a book manuscript for Cambridge and translations of Greek and Roman comedies for a Wisconsin series.