About Kinema: Gladiatrix!

Kinema: Gladiatrix was a colloquium held at the 2008 meeting of the American Philological Assocation on January 4th in Chicago, Illinois. The primary purpose of this website is to archive the papers and presentations at the colloqium. This website also exists as a clearing house of information related to the role of the female warrior in film.

The original call for papers read:

This final panel of KINHMA will deal with a frequently neglected aspect of the modern representation of ancient Greece and Rome: the portrayal of female arena fighters, for whom there is ancient evidence and of whom Ridley Scott’s Gladiator included some fictionalized examples, and of other kinds of heroic women, most prominently Xena, warrior princess. We are looking for papers that address the ways in which usually male screenwriters and directors show (or show off) their female stars, especially in their interactions with heroic males.