Women Who Went Before
Women Who Went Before is on a gynocentric quest into the ancient world. Join hosts Rebekah Haigh and Emily Chesley as they interview the world’s top scholars and unearth the lives of women from the past. It’s a history podcast and detective journey in one, sifting through texts and tropes to find the women who lived beneath. | Season 2 episodes every other Thursday!
Episodes
19 episodes
To Have and To Hold: Sexual Violence and the Bible
CW: This episode discusses themes of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.Dr. Rhiannon Graybill shares her research on sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible and ways of reading such messy stories for then and now. We also talk abou...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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57:37
Bad Blood: The Period Talk in Rabbinic Judaism and Zoroastrianism
We talk with Dr. Shai Secunda about the Babylonian rabbis’ science of blood, breaking taboos through sex education, and menstruation as a cure for rabies.Today, taboos about menstruation keep thousands of girls from attending school. For...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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57:00
The Pee Test: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Ancient Egypt
Dr. Ada Nifosì tells us about the gymnastics of ancient Egyptian birth, why Egyptian women ate donkey balls and their cats ate penis cakes, and why the god Seth should be avoided at all costs.Childbirth was a scary time for women, ...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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56:11
Blemished Brides: Women’s Bodies and Disability in Ancient Judaism
Dr. Julia Watts Belser talks about ancient prenups, dancing at weddings, and what the rabbis had to say about beauty. We meet an Etruscan woman named Seianti Hanunia, an Egyptian Jewish woman Tapamet, and hear the (sometimes damaging) ideas of ...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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58:07
Veiled But Not Hidden in Ancient Greece
Dr. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells us about the veil in ancient Greek culture. Many women in the distant past (as today) wore veils during their life. Veiling meant many things to many people. It could be a means of patriarchal control, a sensual ...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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58:05
Virginity and the Hype About Hymens
Dr. Julia Kelto Lillis asks, "To whom does a woman’s virginity belong?" Join her and your hosts as we dive into the world of early Christian purity culture, what wine has to do with the V-Card, and why the gods like to make babies with virgins....
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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59:11
Wandering Wombs: Greco-Roman Gynecology and Women’s Health
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Rebecca Flemming and talk about ancient gynecology, wandering wombs, and what agency, if any, women had over the healing of their bodies. How did medical writers in Greece and Rome describe a woman’...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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58:31
Bodily Matters: The Lifecycle of an Ancient Woman
In a time when society is thinking passionately about bodily rights and who gets to make decisions about women’s bodies, Season 2 turns to history. Women in the ancient world mattered, and so did their bodies—maybe learning about them can give ...
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Season 2
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16:07
Out of Pandora’s Box, Recovering Hope
On the Season 1 finale we talk with Dr. Deborah Lyons about ancient Greek myths, breaking cultural boxes, and why we should all strive to be killjoys. Pandora's box, Penelope's gifts, Helen's beauty in Sappho's poetry, and more. Why doe...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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58:39
In Her Own Words: Ancient Women Authors
In the penultimate episode of season 1, “In Her Own Words: Ancient Women Authors,” we talk with historian and classicist Dr. Kate Cooper about gatekeeping, the privilege of individualism, and those rare surviving moments when women wrote for th...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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59:58
Suffering Witches to Live: Jewish Women and the Legacies of Religious Law
In Episode 8 our hosts talk with Dr. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander about whether women can keep track of their own periods, religious law as a boys’ club, and why ancient rabbis cared about witchery. Episode show notes:
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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59:19
Women Get a Head: Gender and Other Weapons
Dr. Caryn Tamber-Rosenau explains how two lethal women perform gender in the Hebrew Bible. Judith and Jael were talented Jewish heroines who skillfully played their hands (and bodies) to save their people from invading armies.How might t...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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47:02
Scepter and Sword: African Warrior Queens
Dr. Solange Ashby teaches us about Nubian warrior queens, Hollywood stereotypes about Egyptian women, and why you shouldn’t trust Wikipedia.Meet the powerful, voluptuous queens of Meroe—Amanirenas, Amanitore, Amanishakheto. While Roman n...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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56:24
Was the Oldest Profession a Profession?
We interview Dr. Thomas A. J. McGinn about Roman prostitution, marriage laws, and a strange Cinderella story. What was a paterfamilias and how did they determine a woman’s life? Were prostitutes merely doing their civic d...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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53:04
“The Two Breasts of the Father”: Does Your God Look Like You?
We talk to Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey about how gender shaped ancient thinking about God, women's church choirs, and the complex web of metaphors for the divine within Syriac Christianity.Women Who Went Before is written, produc...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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49:18
Fall Girl: Theology, Gender, and How Eve Ruined Us All
Dr. Elaine Pagels joins us to talk about manic pixie dream girls, lost Gnostic texts, and why being a heretic might not be so bad. Stereotypes about women aren't solely a modern phen...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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50:19
Ghostwriting the Daughters of Men
We explore ancient Jewish fan fiction, why makeup made the angels fall, and the ever-present problem of ghostwriting with Dr. Annette Yoshiko Reed in Season 1 Episode 2, "Ghostwr...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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50:15
Invisible Women and How they Make History
We talk to Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz about history’s nameless faces, the news negativity bias, and how to raid ancient texts to find women. How were women named and anonymized in Jewish and Christian texts? When did bene Yisra’el
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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57:44
Missing, Presumed…Absent? Where Were All the Ancient Women?
In our season intro we ask: Why aren't women in our ancient history textbooks? What is antiquity? How were women imagined in ancient Mediterranean societies? And why does women's history matter? Meet the North African woman...
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Season 1
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Episode 0
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20:53
