The students read an excerpt from an article by Emmanuelle Valette entitled "Masculine-feminine" which explained that the exclusively male origin of written discourse on women rendered null and void any attempt to rediscover the "soul" or "life" of Greek or Roman women and that it was therefore necessary to write a history of representations, in order to analyze the way women were viewed in a given era, to study the construction of moral and social norms imposed on women and the development of an imaginary world about women and the feminine. After that, the students analyzed two ancient statues of Mars and Venus and asked themselves how they were representative of gender stereotypes. Then, they read the Greek story of the love of Mars and Venus in Homer's Odyssey (Canto VIII) and its Roman rewriting in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book IV) and The Art of Love (Canto II). Finally, they researched artistic representations of Venus from Antiquity to the present.

The students selected 5 images of Venus : they proposed a caption for each one in which they analyzed the characteristics of the goddess and the symbol(s) she embodied in each era.

 

Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
Artistic representations of Venus through time
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