If you've been here a while, then you know that I am a bona fide Madeline Miller fangirl. I've written two posts about Miller's bestselling retellings of classical myths, Circe and The Song of Achilles, both of which I cannot recommend highly enough. But Miller is not the only one reimagining ancient stories from new... Continue Reading →
A Drinking Game for Classics-Themed Film
If you have ever studied ancient history or Greek myth, then you know that both are melodramatic, violent, and raunchy AF. Roman political history during the civil wars of the 40s and 30s BCE reads like a damn soap opera. The Iliad and the Odyssey have sex and violence out the wazoo. These stories were... Continue Reading →
Campus Wildlife Encounters: The Grad Student
As a new school year gets underway, one enigmatic creature will be reappearing on university campuses across the country: the graduate student (scholasticus laboriosus). Frequently mistaken for their cousins the undergraduates (scholasticus iunior) and faculty members (scholasticus beneficiarius), graduate students make up a vital part of the university ecosystem. Let's learn a bit about the... Continue Reading →
All My Covid Knitting Projects
If you know me, you know I'm always either knitting or thinking about knitting. I love to knit, for a variety of reasons — it's fun, it's productive, it keeps me focused in situations where I'd otherwise get bored or sidetracked (looking at you, evening lectures), and it's soothing enough to effectively act as therapy... Continue Reading →
A Few Thoughts on Virtual CAMWS 2021
Just a couple of weeks ago we wrapped up the 117th CAMWS—and the second virtual CAMWS—annual meeting. I thought this year's virtual conference was a huge success, thanks in large part to the amazing team of CAMWS tech volunteers who helped keep everything running smoothly. In both the panels I attended live and the ones... Continue Reading →
A Long Time Coming
The task of processing everything that has happened over the last few weeks and all my feelings about it seems almost impossible. For me, at least, these historic moments have dovetailed with watching powerful films in curious ways, all of it culminating in a newfound obsession with an old favorite song. Two weeks ago we... Continue Reading →
Bye, 2020
I don't think anyone is sorry to be showing 2020 the door this week. This year, the opening of a new decade (depending on your perspective), was seen by so many of us as the time when we would take control of our lives, take on new challenges, bring renewed energy to existing goals, cast... Continue Reading →
Medusa, Too?
Most of you have probably heard by now about Medusa with the Head of Perseus, a 7-foot statue that was recently installed outside the courthouse in New York City where Harvey Weinstein was convicted of sex crimes. And if you’ve heard of the statue, you’ve also heard a myriad of interpretations of it, because WOW... Continue Reading →
Lanam fecit and Craftivism
Women in antiquity were so much more badass than they get credit for. Because we hear almost exclusively from men in the surviving literature, our portraits of women in antiquity are sketchy and highly biased (as we saw with Clodia Metelli). The tombstones of Roman women usually focus on their virtues as wives, mothers, and... Continue Reading →
Greek Myth Figures as The Emperor’s New Groove Quotes
Some of these were previously published on Twitter. Oedipus Colonnus Atalanta Tantalus Nestor Medea Also Medea Orestes Achilles, on Agamemnon: Odysseus Pentheus Orpheus Demeter: Clytemnestra Io Everyone who ever talked to Hesiod ever:
Medea Palatina 