Feminine iconography in Magna Grecia and Illyria: representing women and femininity from 8th to 3rd cent. BC

ended

FEMINICON will explore feminine iconography in Magna Grecia from 6th to 3rd centuries BC. In a multidisciplinary approach, it will use all visual sources to identify and clarify the modalities of women’s representation in Greek and indigenous craft from South Italy, and their influence on coastal Illyria. This is important to understand gendered representations in Magna Grecia in context as these have been exported to collections all over the world and analyzed according to anachronistic preconceptions, contributing to convey a largely distorted image of Greek antiquity and women’s history. Today, thanks to new technologies, it is possible to process the huge amount of data available. This innovative project will focus on funerary representations and combines literary sources, archaeological evidence and all sorts of iconographic supports: vases, statues, paints... FEMINICON has four main objectives: 1. The creation of an indispensable database for iconographic studies in Magna Grecia and coastal Illyria with OMEKA and of an open access photographic documentation; 2. The study of iconographic patterns networks, in relation to supports and contexts; 3. The identification of the modalities of the female iconography, its customers and producers; 4. An online and physical exhibition in Taranto and Paestum museums. The interdisciplinary approach will include the history of women, funerary, gender and visual studies. New digital technologies are crucial in the project as new database models, open-data, network analysis and visualization softwares are now sufficiently developed and relevant to process the vast corpus. Digital humanities and open access philosophy are also very important for the dissemination to the scientific community and the general public. The project will contribute to European scientific excellence and competitiveness and to a better knowledge of European culture. It is of major interest for the proposer, the hosting institution and the secondments.