In our third and final reflection for LGBTQ+ History Month, our JRF and Stipendiary Lecturer Dr Lewis Webb shares how his passion for Classics has supported and nurtured his identity and self-acceptance as a queer man.
Sappho’s longing for Anaktoria and Catullus’ ceaseless kisses for Iuventius drew me to Classics. Growing up as a young queer man in a conservative community in Australia, I had few words and fewer possibilities to express my desires or identity. I faced homophobia at every turn and the ever-present threat of violence. But, in the yearnings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, I glimpsed something of myself and those I loved. This glimpse ignited my passion for studying genders and sexualities in the distant past, and an abiding desire to support my queer sisters and brothers. For a time, I was Pride Secretary at the University of Adelaide and the first openly queer person to hold a senior administrative position at Lincoln College in North Adelaide.
I pursued my passion across continents: from Australia to Sweden and finally to the United Kingdom. After a PhD in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History in Gothenburg, I moved to Oxford for my postdoctoral research on female visibility in the Roman Republic. I applied to several colleges, but Somerville College stood out: a progressive bastion in an ancient university. Despite the pandemic, Somerville College welcomed me with open arms, and I was elected to a Fulford Junior Research Fellowship in Classics and eventually to a Stipendiary Lectureship. I found myself amidst a warm, accepting community of colleagues and students. I gladly took up teaching in Roman History and Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. My students are radical: they prompt each other and me to (re)consider our collective futures, to question longstanding categories and preconceptions, and to push the boundaries of the possible. I continue to grow with them.
In late 2022, I was appointed the first Departmental Lecturer in Classical Sexuality and Gender Studies at the Faculty of Classics. I hope to draw on my own experiences and those of my colleagues and students to improve the study of queer peoples in the ancient past at Oxford.
I leave you with a poem by Catullus, a Roman poet whose queer desires captured mine and many others’ hearts:
Catullus 48
Your honeyed eyes, Iuventius,
if anyone would allow me to go on kissing,
I would go on up to three hundred thousand times,
nor would I ever be sated, not ever,
not if the crop of our kisses
were denser than dry ears of wheat.
Dr Lewis Webb is a Departmental Lecturer in Classical Sexuality and Gender Studies at the Faculty of Classics, and a Fulford Junior Research Fellow and Stipendiary Lecturer in Classics at Somerville College.