9/27/96 Contact: Alden Waitt, Ohio University, 614/593-4687

ATHENS, Ohio -- Amy Richlin, author and professor of classics and women's studies at the University of Southern California, will deliver a free, public lecture titled "Pliny's Brassiere: Women's Bodies in Roman Medicine" at 7 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 3) in Anderson Auditorium in Scripps Hall.

The humorous talk takes its title from Roman writer Pliny's habit of wearing a breastband on his head to relieve headaches. Richlin also will lead a Women's Studies Colloquium titled "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Theory for Women?" at noon Oct. 3 in 334 Baker Center.

"One of the best known scholars in this field, Amy Richlin is in the forefront of the movement to retrieve, as she puts it, the bones of our foremothers,'" said Alden Waitt, associate director of the Women's Studies Program. Richlin's presentations have covered a number of topics, including Roman women's religion, first-person narratives, and women in Roman satire.

Richlin is the editor of Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (1987) and author of The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (1983). She also is co-editor with Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz of Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993).

Richlin is among classicists re-examining the classic works of Greco-Roman antiquity for indicators of cultural understandings of sexuality and gender. Richlin's current work focuses on Roman witches as well as manhood and speech in the Roman forum. At USC, Richlin teaches graduate courses in women in world literature, feminist theory, Roman ethnography and satire, and undergraduate courses in women's studies, women in antiquity and elementary and intermediate Latin.

Richlin's visit is sponsored by the Women's Studies Program and the departments of Classics, Philosophy, History, English and Political Science.