Contents

• Ritual and gender : critical perspectives / Angeliki Tzanetou
• Sources and methodology
• The scandal of women’s ritual / Deborah Lyons
• Gender and agency
• Looking for the images : representations of girls’ rituals in ancient Athens / Jenifer Neils
• Improvising on the Athenian stage : women’s ritual practice in drama / Barbara Goff
• Sanctissima femina : social categorization and women’s religious experience in the Roman Republic / Celia E. Schultz
• Threat and hope : women’s rituals and Civil War in Roman epic / Vassiliki Panoussi
• Performance
• Folk songs as ritual acts : the case of work-songs / Andromache Karanika
• The rise of the demon womb in Greco-Roman antiquity / Christopher A. Faraone
• Thesmophoria and eleusinian mysteries: the fascination of women’s secret ritual / Eva Stehle
• Appropriations and adaptations
• Worshipping demeter in ptolemaic and Roman Egypt / Maryline Parca
• Nuptiarum sollemnia? : girls’ transition to marriage in the Roman jurists / Lauren Caldwell
• Maidens and manhood in the worship of Diana at Nemi / Eve D’Ambra
• Male improvisation in the "women’s cult" of Eileithyia on Paros / David D. Leitao
• Early Christian antipathy toward the Greek "women gods" / Kathy L. Gaca