Medusa Looks Back: Women, Power and Mythmaking

What does the mythical Medusa see when she looks in the mirror? Once portrayed as a monster, she is now seen as a powerful symbol of survival after sexual violence.

Why was Joan of Arc appropriated for ideological and political causes, while other pioneering women from the past quietly faded into the background?

Writers and scholars Janina Ramirez and Jacqueline Klooster explore how women from antiquity and the Middle Ages were cast as monsters, saints or heroines and how those images continue to be used, rewritten and contested to this day.

About the speakers

Janina Ramirez is the author of the international bestseller Femina (2022). Her latest book, Legenda, explores how women were instrumentalised in the mythmaking of Europe. She presents numerous programmes for the BBC and works as an art historian at the University of Oxford and as a medievalist at the University of Lincoln.

Jacqueline Klooster is the author of, among other works, Medusa in the Mirror: What Myths Tell Us About Who We Are (2025, published in Dutch), which has been shortlisted for the Homerus Prize. She is Professor of Greek Literature at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau.

With thanks to

This event is made possible in part by the Women of the Rijksmuseum Fund.