SCS Blog | Society for Classical Studies

Blog: Equitable Assessment in the Classics Classroom, Part 1 of 3Continue Reading

Picture a student getting back a graded essay or exam. They glance at the letter or number at the top of the page and throw the paper in the recycling on their way out the door without reading the feedback, even when you think it will help them succeed on the next major assignment. Imagine being consistently impressed by a student’s in-class work. Their insights and positive attitude contribute significantly to the learning environment. However, they do very poorly on the first major assessment, a midterm exam. Both of you are surprised and dismayed, and the student is discouraged….

Blog: From Diogenes the Cynic to China’s Lying-Flat MovementContinue Reading

At the end of every year, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center in mainland China, an organization affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education, publishes a list of the most popular online words and phrases of the year. One entry in the 2021 list is tǎng píng (躺平), or “lying flat.” “Lying flat” denotes a posture both physical and political. It is a rejection of the “996” (9am–9pm, 6 days a week) work culture prevalent among China’s younger population. It is also a silent protest to widening income disparity, exorbitant housing costs in major cities, and the…

Blog: Teaching in a Time of Anti-Asian Violence: Reflections on Asian & Asian American Experiences in Classical Studies, Part 2Continue Reading

This is a two-part blog post reflecting upon AAPI experiences in classical studies. Part 1 reflected upon the author’s personal experience teaching race & ethnicity in antiquity in the context of the ongoing surge of anti-Asian violence in the country. Part 2 reflects upon the shared experiences of students and scholars of Asian descent in classical studies through a series of interviews. Curious about whether other people of Asian descent in Classical Studies have had experiences similar to mine and how that affects our lives in the field, I reached out this spring to scholars and…

Blog: Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities: Contemporary Responses to Greek Myth and Tragedy through Drama, Film, and Visual ArtContinue Reading

The Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities initiative (AnWoMoCo), launched by the SCS in 2019 as the Classics Everywhere initiative, supports projects that seek to engage broader publics — individuals, groups, and communities — in critical discussion of and creative expression related to the ancient Mediterranean, the global reception of Greek and Roman culture, and the history of teaching and scholarship in the field of classical studies. As part of this initiative, the SCS has funded 132 projects, ranging from school programming to reading groups, prison programs, public talks, digital…

Blog: “Deeply rooted in history”: Teaching abortion ancient and modern in a post-Roe v. Wade worldContinue Reading

With weary hearts, we consider with you what Classics can do in the face of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992). We bring you what we can from our own experience: Amy Richlin spent the 1990s teaching half in Gender Studies in the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush administration, when Planned Parenthood v. Casey was heard, and also taught Roman women’s history and sometimes Roman law during her years at USC and UCLA. Bruce Frier has been on the Faculty of the Michigan Law…

Blog: Teaching in a Time of Anti-Asian Violence: Reflections on Asian & Asian American Experiences in Classical Studies, Part 1Continue Reading

This two-part series reflects upon AAPI experiences in Classical Studies. Part 1 is catalyzed by the author’s personal experience teaching race & ethnicity in antiquity in the context of the ongoing surge of anti-Asian violence in the country. Part 2 will reflect upon the shared experiences of students and scholars of Asian descent in Classical Studies through a series of interviews. “Do you know about your Penn Law School colleague Amy Wax?,” a friend texted me in January, as the semester was starting. “Blocked it out,” I thumbed back. I had, in fact, dimly seen the news, but the…

Blog: Roe v. Wade, the GOP, and echoes of Augustus: Reproducing fascismContinue Reading

I guess I should say “thank you.” Gratias vobis ago. Thank you to the Republican Party’s long game, a partisan SCOTUS, years of deliberate Democratic avoidance. You see, I’ve been wanting for a while to write a book about social control, forced reproduction, and their effects on real people living under an authoritarian government. Of course, I was planning to write about Augustan Rome. But with the Court’s decision yesterday, ending nearly 50 years of Roe (that is, legal abortion in America), I’ve got a great reception study. And in real time. Living history! In 18 BCE, 17 BCE, and 9 CE…

Blog: Paternalism and the “Good Slave” in the Speech for Phormion and the Legacies of SlaveryContinue Reading

In a discussion of the concept of the “good slave” in her book Reconstructing the Slave: The Image of the Slave in Ancient Greece, Kelly Wrenhaven rightly argues that “representations of good slaves are as much a part of the rationalizing ideology of slavery as bad slaves, as both help to justify and reinforce the institution.” Examining enslaved nurses depicted on Athenian tombstones, Wrenhaven points out that, out of a total of 15 extant tombstones for nurses, nine include the word chreste. Other inscriptions further confirm the association between the adjective chrestos and enslavement….

Blog: Co-Publishing with Students: An Interview with Eli Gendreau-Distler and Siddhant KarmaliContinue Reading

Last year, I published an edition of Perpetua’s Passio together with a group of students: Mia Donato, Carolyn Engargiola, Eli Gendreau-Distler, Elizabeth Hasapis, Jacob Nguyen, Siddharth Pant, Shamika Podila, Anna Riordan, and Oliver Thompson. I worried that a book with ten names in the byline would look like a monstrosity. I worried that, since nine of those names belong to students, people would dismiss it as a school project, of interest only to the parents of the students on the cover. Yet the book has been warmly received: reviewed in journals, adopted for classes, and most…

Blog: Review of HypotacticContinue Reading

Hypotactic.com is a website that provides open-license metrical scansions for a broad range of Greek and Latin texts. The main project interface, while relatively simple in its design, supports the user in reading ancient texts metrically through a variety of customizable annotations. The user can toggle between various display formats, including the addition of macrons, scansion, and marks for foot-breaks and/or caesuras. Particularly helpful for reading aloud is the innovative option to apply color-coding that highlights metrical units (and elisions) without the need to consult a separate…