A flash Fall 2020 speaker series “at” UW-Madison How and to what ends does classical antiquity remain relevant today? How have racism, sexism, and Eurocentrism shaped its study and perceptions? …

About the Future of Classics and Humanistic Higher Ed — This is the first of a two-part transcript of a conversation with Joy Connolly and Joseph Howley. Check out Part II for professional advice and resources for classics grad students. On April 23, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, Joseph Howley, Associate Professor of Classics at Columbia University, convened a…

As We Face Changing Jobs and Markets — This is the second of a two-part conversation with Joy Connolly and Joseph Howley during a special April 23 session of the Columbia University Graduate Research Colloquium convened in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Read the first part for introductions and big-picture thoughts on the future of higher ed. Joseph…

John Tully on Alt-Ac Careers and Program Redesign — Today marks eminent historian Erich Gruen’s 85th birthday, and the inauguration of the Society for Classical Studies’ first annual Gruen Prize for graduate research on cultural interactions in the ancient Mediterranean. (Submissions are due October 9, and a matching gift will double donations toward the prize endowment.) Like his myriad…

A Classical Lexicon of What’s Getting Us Through this Pandemic — April is over, and I see no lilacs in this dead land. My state university is off to a running start with slashing budgets. Mandatory furloughs — grad students are thankfully exempted — will mean more work for less pay in the months to come. Halfway through our department’s online…

Classics’ New COVID-19 Relief Fund — “Together, apart.” This phrase is like a seesaw. Which word will tip the balance today? In glass-half-full moods, I tell myself this pandemic could recalibrate our selves and our societies. …

Animals, the Environment, and the Limits of Empathy — On a honeymoon safari in Tanzania two years ago, as my husband slept off a cold he caught on the plane, I spent fireside nights listening to lions roar and reading Out of Africa. This “lyrical meditation” by the Danish author Karen Blixen, writing under the name Isak Dinesen, looks…

Prophesying the Future of Our Field — As the earth reawakens outside our closed doors and we livestream springtime rites of renewal, many of us are wondering: what will remain of Classics, what will we resurrect, when this plague recedes? In the beginning, Ovid says, there was chaos. Then god and a better nature put the elements…

Finishing a Classics PhD During the Pandemic — As COVID-19 deaths rise and our lockdowns wear on, many of us are anxiously wondering what our worlds will look like post-coronavirus. But not all of us interact regularly with the graduate students who are the future of classics. …