Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for December 13, 2022

Hodie est Id. Dec 2775 AUC ~ 20 Poseideion in the second year of the 700th Olympiad

In the News

In Case You Missed It

Classicists and Classics in the News

Greek/Latin News

Fresh Bloggery

Other Blog-like Publications

Assorted Twitter Threads

Fresh Podcasts

Turns out that famous prince of Troy, Paris, had a wife before Helen… This is the story of the nymph Oenone.

Io Saturnalia! Long before Christmas existed and was celebrated… There was another mid-winter festival…SATURNALIA! Gaius Valerius Catullus described it as “the best of times”; an extravaganza of food and drink, an inversion of social roles, an expression of one’s self through singing gambling… Originating as a farmers’ festival dedicated to Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and the harvest, it started as one day celebration, usually December 17th, but over centuries evolved to something bigger. Eventually the Roman dramatist Seneca complained ‘December used to be a month- now it’s a whole year’ Can you not relate? Every holiday nowadays seems to last, until the next one! Could be month, could be longer, after all, the Christmas tat goes for sale in August these days!

What happens when, in the wake of worldwide upheaval, a Classics department decides to put into practice the principles of anti-racism and social justice in the classroom? Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is now the first department of Classics in the world to require coursework in critical race theory for all majors and minors. Shivaike Shah talks to the founding teachers, THM Gellar-Goad (Associate Professor at Wake Forest) and Caitlin Hines (Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati), about the impetus for the project, the impact it has had on the faculty, and the importance of destabilising assumptions about what ‘core’ Classics curricula should contain.

Fresh Youtubery

Book Reviews

Online Talks and Conference-Related Things

Jobs, Postdocs, and other Professional Matters

Alia

Diversions

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends abundance but also threatens disease.

… adapted from the text and translation of:

Jean MacIntosh Turfa, The Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar, in Nancy Thomson de Grummond and Erika Simon (eds.), The Religion of the Etruscans. University of Texas Press, 2006. (Kindle edition)

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