Should we care about the survival of the humanities?

Until today I had a google alert set up for "the humanities." Today I was looking through about 10 days' worth of alerts and I thought, meh. "The humanities are vital." "The humanities are nice but impractical." 

I make it rule not to be bored on this blog. I might bore others, but I refuse to bore myself :). Teaching undergraduates gives me my fill of squeezing my academic interests into pretty little boxes that offend nobody. (And most importantly, make no one afraid for their grade.) 

I don't study the humanities because I want to impart critical thinking skills and cultural appreciation to college students. I study them because I've always preferred the middle ages and the ancient world to our own. (Okay, maybe not to live in.)

I love the ancient world's immediacy, its handmade quality, its deep thinking (born, I believe of a profound lack of stimulation most of the time, requiring the individual mind to make up the gap). I teach classics at a university less from a desire to develop students' critical thinking, than to invite them to my favorite treehouse. If they find the view from there enlightening, well and good.

So I will still write about the humanities on Classics Daily. But the big abstract arguments about its survival do not need to be repeated here. I don't understand them anyway, since for me poetry and literature are a necessary part of life, not mental broccoli or a fluffy distraction.

Pin It

"Are our pearls real? You bet they are."

From a study on the benefits of learning Latin and the classics in high school, by the British nonprofit Friends of Classics:

When the results came in, Jeannie and I could hardly believe our eyes. Let me quote just one from a vast range of statistics. It concerns those who had studied classics to School Cert/O level/GCSE and no further, i.e. those most likely to have had a minimal commitment to it (about 45 per cent of the total). On the usual five-point scale — useless, fairly useless, OK, quite beneficial, very beneficial — those who said classics had benefited or greatly benefited their subsequent quality of life came out at 77 per cent of the total. The results in relation to their influence on work-life and skills were equally impressive. Given that two thirds of the survey respondents were over 50, many of them must have sat those subjects for the last time at least 35 years earlier.

The reasons they gave for their replies were equally revealing: overwhelmingly, they cited firm linguistic grip on English and other languages, verbal sensitivity, the capacity to communicate clearly and concisely, and a broad perspective on the intellectual, political and cultural foundations of our world. Not a bad return, 20, 30, 40, 50 or more years on, from subjects studied up to age 16.

Are our pearls real? You bet they are. 

Pin It

Let's hear it for Tyche

via Wikimedia Commons

Tyche, a goddess whose name can mean "happenstance" or "chance," ruled over the destinies of Greek cities. (Her Roman name is Fortuna, but it sounds so much better, because it is less familiar, in Greek.) Her crown, the one worn by the statue at right, represents a city's walls. The Greeks attributed to her all events in a city's history that had no rational explanation: floods, fires and, one hopes, some positive occurrences as well.

Something I find most instructive about the ancient world is how much harsher it was than our own. How much more random, even how much more boring. In the face of terrible disasters with no safety net, the Greeks were comforted by worshipping at the altar of randomness personified.

Reading some of the posts about the academic job market over at College Misery (oh, the memories!) started me thinking about Tyche vs. our straightjacketing sense of personal responsibility. As young academics, we are told that we are natural scholars and will be wonderful teachers. Then we encounter the job market, in which the odds are overwhelmingly against finding a good job. Rather than admitting this, our advisers and many advice books imply that changing some small detail about our applications or publications will of course change our luck. And what's more, we should have thought of this before and basically have no one but ourselves to blame that we have to spend another year on the market.

This is insane. We need to get with the idea that there are things outside our power. Including some of the more random comments on student evaluations. Including whether the topic of a junior scholar's handful of publications fits the handful of tenure track jobs available in his or her field. The Greeks knew it wasn't all up to them.

Let's hear it for Tyche, a divinity whose time has come. Pin It

Christine de Pizan

In high school I was both unpopular and an underachieving student (my parents were thrilled :)) I would ride my bike around daydreaming, and once I passed a tiny, scholarly-looking bookstore about 4 miles from my house. I walked in and bought Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies.

Yesterday I pulled it off the shelf and was fascinated anew by its blend of scholarship and surprisingly assertive proto-feminism. de Pizan, daughter of a Venetian court astronomer, married at 15 and was widowed (with three children!) at 25. She turned to writing to support herself, her children, a niece and her aged mother.

The Book of the City of Ladies describes her plain astonishment at the poor opinion of women put forth by intellectuals in her day. She strongly feels this is contradicted by common sense, if nothing else (I am at Starbuck so I can't provide the direct quote). Much of the rest of the book is taken up with examples of virtuous women from classical antiquity and the Bible. I certainly envy her the cheerful confidence with which she discusses her examples. (I suppose in the 14th century it was a lot easier to be sure you had consulted all available sources! Those were the days ...)

Another thing I enjoy about her book is the anecdote at the beginning, which is strikingly reminiscent of a modern personal essay. I can quote that bit from the text sample at Amazon: "One day I was sitting in my study surrounded by books of different kinds, for it has long been my habit to engage in the pursuit of knowledge. My mind had grown weary as I had spent the day struggling with the weighty tomes of various authors whom I had been studying for some time."* I assume most of my readers know what that's like.

* tr. Rosalind Brown-Grant Pin It

I need to be tougher

So, I have been letting my Latin students do corrections on quizzes (for half their missing points) if their original grade is below a B. Self-correction can be a good learning experience, and I don't want this class to continue on to intermediate Latin in a state of cluelessness.

Despite the great generosity of this policy, today I started to see grade creep. People were handing in quizzes on which they originally received Bs, with their self-corrections attached.

Background: I tend to be afraid of ticking students off. As a woman I am keenly aware of the sexism of student evaluations. I also had my first job at a small liberal arts college where I went in unaware of the amount of hand-holding I was expected to do. I also had two aggressive older colleagues constantly breathing down my neck (to the point of quizzing students at department gatherings oh-so-subtly about the quality of my classes).

But. Self-corrections are supposed to be about learning, not grade-grubbing. So my new policy is that they may be done by anyone gets below a 60. And of course, test and exam grades are (and have always been) immutable.

The dance between "student-friendly" and ridiculous pushover is indeed a subtle one. Pin It

"A letter does not blush"

See a beautiful notecard (alternate version) based on this quote in my Zazzle shop:

To Lucceius, Arpinum April 56 BC

Vincenzo Foppa, The Young Cicero Reading

I have often tried to say to you personally what I am about to write, but was prevented by a kind of almost clownish bashfulness. Now that I am not in your presence I shall speak out more boldly: a letter does not blush. I am inflamed with an inconceivably ardent desire, and one, as I think, of which I have no reason to be ashamed, that in a history written by you my name should be conspicuous and frequently mentioned with praise. And though you have often shown me that you meant to do so, yet I hope you will pardon my impatience. For the style of your composition, though I had always entertained the highest expectations of it, has yet surpassed my hopes... [Cicero Letters to Friends 5.12, tr. Shuckburgh]

Also available (t-shirts and mugs):
Meles mellis non curat. ("Honey badger don't care")*
Id quod mater tua dixit non est. ("That's not what your mother said")
Quis pater tuus? ("Who's your daddy?")
O tempora! O mores! ("Shame on the age and its principles!")
Venefica aetatis meae illustratissima sum ("I'm the brightest witch of my age")

*Available in several versions.

I love David Bamber as Cicero:

Pin It

Roman art proves fish have gotten smaller

Icythologists (is that the right word?) are trying to prevent the extinction of the dusky grouper. They have turned to Roman mosaics to study the fish's original size and habitat. The 3.5-5 foot fish were big enough in Roman times to be portrayed as sea monsters (see the mosaic at the link with a man's legs disappearing into the grouper's mouth). Other figures from the mosaics, who are fishing for the grouper with poles and nets, indicate that shallow water is the creature's ideal habitat.

Under the influence of these mosaics experts have raised grouper in shallow pools and seen them grow much larger than the wild fish. Roman art being used by scientists totally delights me. I guess it is further proof of how much grad school narrows your focus, that such a thing had never occurred to me before. Thanks blogging! Pin It

What makes a good historical novel?

As a voracious reader of historical fiction, sometimes I wonder which is better: a novel about a famous person or a novel about a random person living in times of great upheaval? My favorite medieval fiction is split about evenly: Elizabeth Chadwick's and Philippa Gregory's novels usually revolve around a historically known main character, whereas the Outlander Novels and the works of Ellis Peters and Norah Lofts often don't.

If you are writing about a known person you are stuck with their often shockingly vivid flaws. Philippa Gregory has been criticized for the negative qualities she attributes to Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl, although I believe her Anne is still sympathetic, and Mary is her real heroine anyway. But I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of a "made-up person who encounters famous people/events" novel. It does involve working with the imagination on a different level, and sometimes you end up with a silly "Oh my goodness! I, a simple milkmaid, just happened to trip over George Washington!" type of thing. Pin It

Dobby vs. Pericles: A Comparison

Yes, that Dobby (tongue firmly in cheek):

Pericles
-Defended freedom in the funeral oration after opening a can of whup-ass on Samos and Byzantium
-Unsuccessfully tried to save his friend Phidias from imprisonment
-Died of an unexpected plague

Dobby
-Declared he is a free elf before opening a can of whup-ass on Bellatrix Lestrange
-Unsuccessfully tried to save his hero Harry Potter from returning to school
-Died of an unexpected dagger wound

Pin It

Wonders of the medieval world

Check out Salon.com's slideshow, with commentary, of beautiful and significant things that started in the middle ages: elaborate geometric wall art, universities, illuminated manuscripts, advances in engineering, and more. Pin It

"You may be all that the good people who raised you say you are"

"You may be all that the good people who raised you say you are; you may want all they have shown you is worth wanting; you may be someone who is truly your father’s son or your mother’s daughter. But then again, you may not be."

Via Mental Multivitamin comes this (mostly) excellent essay in the Oxford American, "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?" I love the anecdote about his high-school graduate father demanding that he major in what interests him (Parents who don't have upper-middle-class status to protect might be the last ones with the gut to do that.) I love the discussion that follows about the purpose of college, an unusually articulate definition of 'finding yourself.' I don't love the excessive partisanship towards the humanities. I also don't like the use of the "don't worry about making money, you'll write a successful book" argument:

                        "[The elementary school teacher] buys shirts from the Salvation Army, has intermittent Internet, and vacations where he can. But lo—he has a gift for teaching. He writes an essay about how to teach, then a book—which no one buys. But he writes another—in part out of a feeling of injured merit, maybe—and that one they do buy.         Money is still a problem, but in a new sense. The world wants him to write more, lecture, travel more, and will pay him for his efforts, and he likes this a good deal. But he also likes staying around and showing up at school and figuring out how to get this or that little runny-nosed specimen to begin learning how to read."

Writing a successful book is rare. Maybe you'll just be poor but happy. And doctors and scientists can be soulful and authentic too.


Another essay in the same issue of the OA is a useful corrective. Emily Witt reviews Ross Perlin's Intern Nation and largely agrees with the book's premise that labor, especially that of the recent college graduate, is massively undervalued. If elementary teachers were paid more they might not have to bet on that book. Pin It

Wheelock's Latin and the works of Jan Morris

This morning my Latin students were reading an adapted sentence from Horace, "Et fortunam et vitam antiquae patriae saepe laudas sed recusas" (You often praise but refuse the fortune and life of the old homeland (= old Romans). I had to explain to them the whole array of symbolism that the Romans place on  their virtuous, simple-living ancestors.

I might have wished for the literary abilities of Jan Morris. Bookslut's piece on her wonderful travel books sums up her lyric prose and her ability to capture the spirit of a city in a few paragraphs:

To the ancient Greeks, history was the realm of the muse Clio, and throughout literary history most readers have thought of history as a branch of literature like the play or the poem. Morris’s histories are literature, and reading them is a startling experience in an age when “history” means either cutesy bestsellers or tedious academic cinder blocks.A small sample of Morris’ historical writing, the setting Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee:Victoria returned to her palace in the evening, exhausted but marvelously pleased, through the blackened buildings of her ancient capital, whose smoke swirled and hovered over the grey river, and whose gas-lamps flickered into tribute with the dusk.

Pin It

New Latin Quote T-Shirt: O Tempora! O Mores!

view in the Classics Daily t-shirt shop

A new t-shirt with a Ciceronian slant:

Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives. Lives! aye, he comes even into the senate. He takes a part in the public deliberations; he is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think that we are doing our duty to the republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks.

-Cicero Against Catiline (tr. Yonge and London)

Pin It

"As if celebrating beauty were something to be ashamed of"

The Great Courses’ uninhibited enthusiasm is so alien to contemporary academic discourse that several professors who have recorded for the firm became defensive when I asked them about their course descriptions, emphatically denying any part in writing the copy—as if celebrating beauty were something to be ashamed of.

I take a piece like this (from City Journal) with a grain of salt, of course. The study of art and literature is always evolving, and newer approaches such as theory can be made interesting and relevant, as long as the lecturer is interested in doing so. Not all professors are. Some are teaching to whatever audience already 'gets' what they are doing, with the rest of the class passively along for the ride.

The audience [of the Great Courses DVDs] —mostly older professionals with successful careers—sees the liberal arts as a life-changing experience, observes Louis Markos, an English professor at Houston Baptist University who has recorded courses on C. S. Lewis and on literary criticism for the company. “They are hungry for this material.”

This resonated with me. When I introduced my Latin students to the development of the alphabet I was forced to remember where I first learned about Phoenician writing systems, and the answer surprised me: in my grandparents' living room. They had shelves of Time-Life books about literature, art and history, which I read when I was bored as a little kid. My grandfather was an undiagnosed dyslexic who had some difficulty finishing college, whose father had a sixth grade education. His home office had shelves of Shakespeare and rigorous nonfiction books. My grandmother recently told me about their trip to Greece with two other couples, and how my grandfather studied Greek history and mythology so he could serve as their tour guide. I wish I could find an undergraduate half that enthusiastic sometimes.

So City Journal may go a little far in advocating a college curriculum modeled on these recorded lecture series, but their point about daring to revel in the beauty of the Western aesthetic tradition is well taken. Pin It

"The spirit was approached through a multitude of sensory beauties"

The title to this post comes from the Guardian's slide show of the Treasures of Heaven exhibit now at the British Museum. Personally, I find the idea of saints' relics a little bit uncomfortable, especially in its more 'complete' forms (as with the bodies of saints displayed I have seen openly displayed in Italian and Greek churches). But it is true that these medieval works of gold, ivory and alabaster make you feel better just looking at them. They are so natural in their materials, and yet so permanent in their preservation of the artist's vision.

Medieval vividness and attention to detail is also on display at the Getty Museum's Medieval Gospels exhibit. I especially enjoyed the action figure-ish illustration of St. John (at the top of the page when you follow the link).

Pin It

Labor Day

Gustave Moreau,
Hesiod and the Muse

... There was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle....But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men.

-Hesiod, Works and Days, tr. Evelyn-White

 

Pin It

New read: Stealing Athena, by Karen Essex

While my Latin students were finishing their quiz this morning I downloaded a new historical novel, Stealing Athena. From the library's description of it I gathered that it's about Lady Elgin (as in Elgin marbles) and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles. There's always initial skepticism when I come across a juxtaposing-time-periods kind of novel, but they are mostly very enjoyable in the end. A taste:

"I want you to behave meekly, and not at all like yourself,"Alkibiades said, dragging me by the arm at a pace faster than my tall platform shoes would allow me to walk. "If Perikles sees what you are truly like, he will promptly rescind any offer to help us." (48)

Pin It