Elke Nash

I am a classical philologist and cultural historian who specializes in archaic and Classical Greek literature. I am currently at work on my first monograph, tentatively titled /The Monopoly on Value: Rereading Honor and Women in Aeschylean tragedy/, which explores the intersection of honor and gender in the 5th century BCE Athenian tragedies of Aeschylus, with a particular interest in female participation in and performance of Greek timê, a term which is regularly translated as “honor,” but one which, when understood more capaciously, signifies a complex network of values that encompasses ideas of status, duty, privilege, and respect between both human and divine agents. Rather than seeking to reify timê on behalf of women past and present, this project leaves the question of female timê open, concluding that, in Athens, timê was a demarcating strategy – one of many – for civic inclusion and exclusion, and that, at a fundamental level, both timê and honor can be understood as a measure of the value a person holds in their community/ies. In addition, I am preparing articles on Aeschylus' use of metoikia ("foreign residency," sometimes translated as "immigration") and the performativity of the Greek tragic chorus.