"Women Who Went Before" Podcast

A gynocentric podcast on the ancient world, Women Who Went Before shares quality scholarship on ancient women in a creative and accessible form. Organized in thematic seasons, each episode interviews one scholar about their work. Hosts Rebekah Haigh and Emily Chesley introduce the topic to listeners, frame an array of primary and secondary sources, and draw creative connections to modern concerns in episode introductions and conclusions. The majority of each episode presents the conversation with the guest expert. 

Episodes present a diversity of topics, disciplines, and subject matter. The podcast is rigorous yet accessible, and North American faculty report assigning episodes in their courses. A companion website provides full episode transcripts, embedded audio players, source lists, art/visual resources, and guest bios.

Season Descriptions

  • Season 1 asks the big questions: How did male authors use women’s stories for their own ends? How can we recover the women who lived and wrote and taught in the ancient Mediterranean? What spaces did women forge for themselves despite social and religious barriers? And why does this matter today? 
  • In Season 2, Women Who Went Before follows an ancient woman’s life cycle tracing her many embodied experiences. Episodes look at menstruating bodies, clothed bodies, birthing bodies, disabled bodies, violated bodies, raced bodies, erotic bodies, and ascetic bodies. For many women in antiquity, their sex and gender shaped both how they encountered the world and how the world encountered them—not unlike today.