Interview with Stephanie McCarter: Women in Power in the Classical World

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Stephanie McCarter about her new book Women in Power: Classical Myths and Stories from the Amazons to Cleopatra (Penguin Books, 2024). As we discuss in the episode, this work brings together excerpts from Classical texts which discuss the life and rule of a variety of women, from mythical figures like the Amazons, to a range of ruling queens including well known figures like Zenobia, Boudicca and Cleopatra to those who aren't often discussed, like Salome Alexandra or Amanirenas.

Guest Bio:
Stephanie McCarter is professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, where she has taught since 2008. Her teaching and research interests include Latin poetry, translation theory and practice, gender and sexuality in classical antiquity, feminist reception of the classics, and Greek and Roman philosophy and ethics. McCarter’s books include Horace between Freedom and Slavery (University of Wisconsin Press, 2015) as well as two works of translation, Horace’s Epodes, Odes, and Carmen Saeculare (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics, 2022), which won the 2023 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has penned numerous academic articles in journals such as Classical Journal, Eugesta, and American Journal of Philology, as well as essays, translations, reviews, and interviews in The Washington Post, The Sewanee Review, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Lapham’s Quarterly, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere.