Office Hours: Mothers and Empires with Dr. Francesca Bellei

How did Greece and Rome come to be seen as the cultural ancestor of western Europe and Anglo-America, when a Roman would have called a Briton a barbarian? In this episode, Center for Humanistic Inquiry Fellow Francesca Bellei sits down with Priscilla Lee ’25 to trace how empires use the figure of the mother to claim hegemonic power.

Under a patriarchal and exclusionary view of family, a mother passes power from one generation of men to another without being able to exercise it herself — her role is simply to produce rightful heirs. When Greece is called the mother and nurse of Rome, then, or when the British elite take Grand Tours to the bosom of the “classical” Mediterranean, they are using the metaphor of mothers to relegate another empire to the past while appropriating their cultural prestige. This episode analyzes the Athenian origins of this metaphor, how it has figured in Anglo-American claims to the “classical” legacy, and how Italy and Italian migrants to the United States have responded to and employed it in their self-conception.

Episode Notes and Further Reading: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MT7YNfdl-lkvBe2M-eNFQg35eDlgLn2usUiWEbn4D1A/edit?usp=sharing

Edited and produced by Priscilla Lee '25.