Author: James Ker File Type: pdf The forced suicide of Seneca, former adviser to Nero, is one of the most tortured--and most revisited--death scenes from classical antiquity. After fruitlessly opening his veins and drinking hemlock, Seneca finally succumbed to death in a stifling steam bath, while his wife Paulina, who had attempted suicide as well, was bandaged up and revived by Neros men. From the first century to the present day, writers and artists have retold this scene in order to rehearse and revise Senecas image and writings, and to scrutinize the event of human death. In The Deaths of Seneca, James Ker offers the first comprehensive cultural history of Senecas death scene, situating it in the Roman imagination and tracing its many subsequent interpretations. Ker shows first how the earliest accounts of the death scene by Tacitus and others were shaped by conventions of Greco-Roman exitus-description and Julio-Claudian dynastic history. At the books center is an exploration of Senecas own prolific writings about death--whether anticipating death in his letters, dramatizing it in the tragedies, or offering therapy for loss in the form of consolations--which offered the primary lens through which Senecas contemporaries would view the authors death. These ancient approaches set the stage for prolific receptions, and Ker traces how the death scene was retold in both literary and visual versions, from St. Jerome to Heiner Muller and from medieval illuminations to Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques-Louis David. Dozens of interpreters, engaging with prior versions and with Senecas writings, forged new and sometimes controversial views on Senecas legacy and, more broadly, on mortality and suicide. The Deaths of Seneca presents a new, historically inclusive, approach to reading this major Roman author. **

Author: Daniel Winunwe Rivers File Type: pdf In Radical Relations, Daniel Winunwe Rivers offers a previously untold story of the American family the first history of lesbian and gay parents and their children in the United States. Beginning in the postwar era, a period marked by both intense repression and dynamic change for lesbians and gay men, Rivers argues that by forging new kinds of family and childrearing relations, gay and lesbian parents have successfully challenged legal and cultural definitions of family as heterosexual. These efforts have paved the way for the contemporary focus on family and domestic rights in lesbian and gay political movements. Based on extensive archival research and 130 interviews conducted nationwide, Radical Relations includes the stories of lesbian mothers and gay fathers in the 1950s, lesbian and gay parental activist networks and custody battles, families struggling with the AIDS epidemic, and children growing up in lesbian feminist communities. Rivers also addresses changes in gay and lesbian parenthood in the 1980s and 1990s brought about by increased awareness of insemination technologies and changes in custody and adoption law. **Review [Riverss] engaging and well-researched social history argues that the history of lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and their children challenges a foundational American belief that the family is heterosexual and that gays and lesbians are childless. . . . A necessary corrective.--American Historical Review An important history of lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and their children.--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society Rivers explores how lesbian and gay parents have worked to expand the cultural and legal definitions of family since the 1950s.--Stanford Magazine In this deeply researched social history of six decades of gay fathers, lesbian mothers, and their children, Rivers seamlessly blends legal materials, oral histories, personal correspondence, and archival materials of grassroots organizations. . . . Essential. All levelslibraries.--Choice Opens up a largely unexplored history.--Womens Review of Books Review A terrific book. In Riverss skillful hands, family becomes far more than the longstanding bulwark for conventional American values--it becomes instead a vibrant site of resistance to the racist, sexist, and heterosexist hierarchies foundational to such values.--Leisa Meyer, College of William & Mary|Daniel Rivers has produced a major contribution to family history, to LGBT history, and to the history of children. Weaving together legal sources, interviews, personal papers, and the archives of grassroots community organizations, Radical Relations demonstrates the transformational impact of lesbians and gay men on each other, and on the generations of children that they fought to raise.--Claire Bond Potter, professor of history, The New School for Public Engagement