Join us to celebrate the release of Gaia Gianni's new book, All in the Family: Childhood and Fictive Kinship in Roman Society (University of Michigan Press, 2025). This book explores how children shaped the development of pseudo-familial bonds, or fictive kinship, in Roman society during the early imperial period. Gianni focuses on the ways in which Roman families raised children and formed long-term relationships with individuals outside of the nuclear family, such as friends, neighbors, nurses, and caretakers, who gradually became full-fledged members of the family unit. Drawing on a wide variety of literary works, legal documents, and funerary epitaphs for children set up by their families and caregivers, Gianni argues that children acted as catalysts or connecting nodes in the creation of fictive kinship with individuals who were not part of the biologically determined family. All in the Family reveals how this social network was integrated into the family both in practice and in ideology, presenting a more complex view of the Roman family than the traditional nuclear structure.
This event will include brief presentations by Gianni, Sarah Levin-Richardson (University of Washington), and Kristina Sessa (Ohio State).
To attend virtually via Zoom please use this registration Link: https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/sirZZg59TQCDYyFd46wFFg