What makes Medea a perennial figure of feminist fascination? Why was the mythological heroine marked as an icon of defiance in feminist movements throughout the twentieth century? In this week’s episode, we hear from Dr Chiara Sulprizio, a Senior Lecturer in Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. Shivaike Shah and Dr Sulprizio explore how Medea’s story of rage and otherness fed into many of the issues that were paramount to the feminist movements of the twentieth century, and consider how her unspeakable act of violence and her rejection of the roles of traditional wife and mother made themselves manifest in the theatrical productions of Euripides’s Medea from 1900 to 2000 and beyond. In doing so, they pay particular attention to how the different exigencies of successive ‘waves’ of feminism — the need by turns for political agency, liberation and recognition — created different, but linked, responses to this polarising figure.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/khameleon-classics/medea-and-twentieth-century-feminism