Women's Lives, Women's Voices

The editors have assembled a group of talented researchers who span a couple of scholarly generations, from established names to newcomers who grant novel insights.  The result is an impressive collection of essays that can and should take its place on the bookshelves of Roman social historians, Pompeianists, and scholars of women’s lives across other times and places. 

— Jeremy Hartnett

This volume challenges the reader to look for women in the archaeological record—even where they are not immediately visible—and to hear them in the silences. Giving voice to a wider cross-section of Pompeiian women, this volume makes an excellent contribution not only to Roman material culture studies of Pompeii, but also to female agency in the Roman world more broadly.

— Antiquity

These essays do much to make the fascinating archaeological material accessible.

— Shepherd

A pathbreaking collection of essays that challenge us to rethink gender-based occupational stereotypes, Roman women’s identities and public participation in spheres exclusively associated with Roman elite men...Challenging familiar elitist-classicist standards  dominating past scholarship, this book pushes women’s and gender studies, feminist art history, urban materiality, women’s local involvement and daily lives into a new era of research...this book is very useful for researchers as well as students, with enormous potential to shape future research on Roman women.

— CLARA

Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices is an incredibly important and enlightening volume for which its editors and contributors should be commended...Each chapter returns agency to one or another group of women in the Bay of Naples, and these re-centering efforts involve women of many more classes, statuses, and communities than is typical...The volume’s extensive bibliography, high production quality (including seventy-six figures and sixteen full-color plates), and relatively affordable price only enhance its utility and accessibility.

— Woman's Art Journal

The contributors bring novel approaches and interpretations to well-studied evidence...This volume offers innovative ways of looking at evidence, helps to correct the scholarly blindness of the past and unveils the diverse lives of the women who dwelt in Pompeii and Herculaneum.

— Journal of Roman Culture