Socratic Women I: Literature and Literary Criticism

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

Can Socrates be a woman? In this stream of panels, we consider why Russian-language philosophical traditions have produced dozens of representations of Socrates, but not a single Diotima of Mantinea, from whom Socrates claimed to have learned the art of eros (in the Symposium), or an Aspasia of Miletus, from whom Socrates said he learned the art of rhetoric (in the Menexenus). Contributors will explore the image of Socrates in women’s writing and philosophical reflection, as well as figures of female Socrateses, both literally and figuratively, in Russian, Soviet, and East European intellectual history.

This session, the first of four in the “Socratic Women” stream, includes contributions on writers, thinkers, and activists like Zinaida Volkonskaia, Lydiia Zinov'eva-Annibal, and Zinaida Mirkina, as well as on the portrayal of women in the work of Vissarion Belinsky.

Sub Unit

• Religion, Philosophy

Chair

• Daria Solodkaia, Independent Scholar

Roundtable Speakers

• Alyssa DeBlasio, Dickinson College

• Judith E. Kalb, U of South Carolina

• Laura Schlosberg, Stanford U

• Daria Solodkaia, Independent Scholar