Are today’s “Oath Keepers” descendants of Euripides’ “Hippolytus,” whose titular hero is himself an oath keeper extraordinaire? This lecture explores classical and contemporary connections between oath-keeping and masculinity, attending to the politics of sex/gender in connection with Hippolytus and Phaedra, and reading the “Hippolytus” as noir, alongside John Stahl's film noir, “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945).

Bonnie Honig is the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science at Brown University, and (by courtesy) Religious Studies and Theater and Performance Studies, and co-director of the Democracy Project, Brown University; she is an affiliate at the American Bar Foundation, Chicago.