We talk to Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz about history’s nameless faces, the news negativity bias, and how to raid ancient texts to find women.

How were women named and anonymized in Jewish and Christian texts? When did bene Yisra’el mean "sons of Israel" in the Hebrew Bible, and when did it include the daughters too? What do we know about female scribes in antiquity?  Who was Rav Hisda's daughter? And how do biases shape what scholars find?

Episode show notes: womenwhowentbefore.com/invisible-women

Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh.

The music is composed and produced by Moses Sun.

Sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, and the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University

Views expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individuals, and do not represent Princeton University.

In our season intro we ask: Why aren't women in our ancient history textbooks? What is antiquity? How were women imagined in ancient Mediterranean societies? And why does women's history matter? 

Meet the North African woman Perpetua, whose prison diary from Carthage is one of the few surviving literary texts written by an ancient woman. And meet your podcast hosts, Rebekah Haigh and Emily Chesley.

Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Rebekah Haigh and Emily Chesley. The music is composed and produced by Moses Sun.

Episode show notes: https://womenwhowentbefore.com/missing-presumed-absent/

Sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, the Program in Judaic Studies, and the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University

Views expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individuals, and do not represent Princeton University.