What makes a symposium a symposium? Standard views of the classical symposium have long been rooted in implicit assumptions of both masculinity and Athenian centrality. Following last year's Colloquium on the New Sappho Papyrus, three members of the Department of History and Classics (Dr. Margriet Haagsma, Dr. Frances Pownall, and Dr. Selina Stewart) challenge the standard scholarly construction of the classical symposium from three perspectives: the archaeological, the historical and the literary.