Profs and Pints: RecIaiming CIeopatra

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Reclaiming Cleopatra,” an exploration of the life and legacy of a queen who continues to influence our thoughts about women and power, with Stephanie McCarter, who teaches a class on women and gender in antiquity as a professor of classics at the University of the South in Sewanee.

**Purchase your own ticket via this link (recommended) or at the door (high sell out risk): https://profsandpints.ticketleap.com/cleopatra/details**

• Advance tickets: $14.74 + tax/fees
• Door tickets: $17, or $15 w/ student ID + tax

Doors open 6:30, event starts at 7pm and will run ~2 hours.

Few names are as immediately evocative as “Cleopatra,” a figure who over the centuries has inspired both creative works and heated debate. Yet the historical figure behind the name is tantalizingly elusive.

Learn what we know—and don’t know—about this famous queen in a talk that will examine Cleopatra as both a historical figure and an invented one. You’ll learn how her Roman foes shaped her indelible legacy and how her own self-representations tell us a different story.

Professor McCarter will help us get to know the real-life Cleopatra as a ruler and administrator. She’ll discuss Cleopatra’s travels to Rome and, of course, her famous death. You’ll learn why Cleopatra has a Greek name, how she used her hair to make a political statement, whether she really did marry her brothers, and why she destroyed a priceless pearl to make a statement. Among the questions the talk will tackle: Why are we arguing about Cleopatra’s race?

We’ll see numerous examples of women today reclaiming Cleopatra as a way of owning their own beauty and sexual agency. Finally, we will consider why Cleopatra continues to fascinate us and how her legacy has shaped our own tangled views about women in powerful positions.

Please RSVP with integrity, so we save only the seats we need.