Individual Presentations

Alison talked about Lysistrata, and asked the question whether the situation of women withholding sex could be reversed. Back in the caveman days, essentially women needed iron, and they knew that that men provided it through hunting. So, they had sex with the men, which they came to associate with babies and then with death. She also talked about the modern day non-violent movement the Lysistrata Project.

Chase's presentation was on Dionysus and his similarities with Jesus. Both have mortal mothers and Gods for fathers. Their worships contain aspects of omophagia (but in Christianity, the Eucharist is more symbolic) and the idea of rebirth. The symbol of the phallus in Dionysian worship is not so much present in Christianity, but both Gods give life.

Hannah also talked about Lysistrata and gave examples of recent similar protests like the ones in Columbia and Turkey. And, she read a poem by Simonides - her favorite part is about the sea.

Brittany showed a picture of herself metamorphosed into Minnie Mouse at the age of four. Then she called her grandma to have her tell a story about when Brittany was little, which happened to be about her misbehaving - and Bob the rat. She pointed out that most of the stories we read were about people or gods misbehaving and how we have a fascination with them. But, they are immortalized this way.

Megan talked about how individuals react to love differently and gave examples from Antigone, Demeter and Persephone, and Lysistrata. But, she mainly focused on Cupid and Psyche, which is a great love story. Love is confusion as well as eternal.

Jesse gave a very interesting interpretation of his paper. What I got out of it was that moms can make everything better. I suppose this had to do with Cupid and Psyche...maybe Demeter, too?

Jann also discussed Dionysus, but she presented a different view of him. She compared him to Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter in the Virginia Tech massacre. There are very disturbing sentiments in both, and she pointed out that history repeats itself - sometimes not for the better.

Brittini compared women from classical literature to more contemporary ones, for example Lysistrata to Rosie the Riveter.

Barbara's story was about going to feed the ducks and chatting and reminiscing with an old woman. And, the one little boy told the other one not to eat the Rice Chex because they were duck food, which I thought was cute. But, she included and compared experiences in her life to many of the characters that we studied, including Europa, Demeter and Persephone, Niobe, Antigone, Dionysus, Lucius, and trees.