Memorial Day

The Kerameikos, via Wikimedia Commons

Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other funeral customs. It seemed to them a worthy thing that such an honor should be given at their burial to the dead who have fallen on the field of battle. But I should have preferred that, when men's deeds have been brave, they should be honored in deed only, and with such an honor as this public funeral, which you are now witnessing. Then the reputation of many would not have been imperiled on the eloquence or want of eloquence of one, and their virtues believed or not as he spoke well or ill. For it is difficult to say neither too little nor too much; and even moderation is apt not to give the impression of truthfulness. 

-Pericles' Funeral Oration, tr. Benjamin Jowett (1881) Pin It

The meander isn't much of a symbol

I was thinking of doing a post on the meander's symbolism in ancient Greece, since the loathsome Golden Dawn has adopted it as an emblem, supposedly because of its Greekness and not because it looks like a Nazi symbol.

I discovered that for the ancient Greeks it symbolized ... not much. It's an archeological decoration named for a river with a bend in it, the Meander in Asia Minor. It may at times indicate the labyrinth of Greek mythology, in connection with the worship of the god Dionysus. But the subtlety of the labyrinth hardly seems relevant to a party whose platform is a straight rejection of all immigrants, even legal ones.

I thought "aha! the lack of meaningful symbolism indicates that they did choose it for its suggestions of Nazism."

Turns out this is a moot point, because they are being increasingly obvious about their fascist leanings. They just happen to like eagles, they just happen to adopt Nazi slogans.

Hopefully the Greeks' difficulties forming a government will save them from these wackos, and they will get a smaller proportion of the vote in the next election.

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The pressure on humanities faculty

I have a cousin who wants to become a professor in the humanities. My SO and I are horrified. We're not too miserable now, but we went through some really awful years and landed good jobs through sheer luck. We also fully expect the job market to be worse by the time cousin graduates.

My family is insistent that we not breathe a word of this. We're to be nothing but either neutral or supportive. I've gone so far as to recommend the Academic Job Search Handbook, but that's all. I've listened politely to a lot of talk from my aunt about how this career will 'fulfill' him.

A post on College Misery today reminded me why I want so urgently to warn my cousin. It's from someone who landed a tenure track job against all odds only to find out it's almost impossible to get tenure. 3/4 teaching load and 10-12 articles are required.

My biggest regret is not my “career failure” (I’ll be fine, in the end). Rather, it’s the fact that the state of higher education at this point in time leads to a glut of job seekers who should feel “lucky” to land a crappy job in a toxic department where they work under unreasonable conditions…as long as there’s dental! There’s something wrong with this system. 

SO and I are lucky enough to be at a school with very reasonable research requirements. Still, as an academic I've often found myself in situations similar to this one (an accomplishment turned nightmare because of crazy expectations). Is this the way things are going? Pin It

Posting more

I've finished some side projects that were eating into my free time, so I will be posting here more. I look forward to getting back to 3 or 4 posts a week, rather than one like I've been doing. Cheers! Pin It

'A pageant of parochial hatreds'

Classics lovers already know that the ancient Olympics were far more messy, agonistic and political than popularly perceived. But this article, by an archaeologist who has written a book on the ancient Games, sketches an intriguingly vivid picture. It's nice if you need inspiration for a lecture or just an antidote to the anachronistic purity of the torch lighting ceremony last week:

We imagine the Olympics to have been high-minded and healthy—all about purity of mind and body. Thinking thus, the ancient “Olympic Village” would have come as a shock. With up to 100,000 people camping in the open, it was a sprawling, squalid shantytown of temporary structures, fast-food stalls, drink stands, carts, tethered animals, heaps of refuse, open-air latrines, and heaving, jostling, sweating crowds of people.
Hardly anyone got any sleep, with parties often carrying on until dawn and rowdy groups of drunks stumbling back to their camps in the dark. Citizen-women did not attend the games, but the place was packed with “barbarian” prostitutes, ranging in price from top-of-the-range hetairai to cheap pornai. And that was just the women; ancient Greek men were bisexual. Many attended with their male lovers, while others hoped to make fresh conquests. Despite modern permissiveness, many of those attending the London 2012 Games would probably have been taken aback by the sex-fest of the ancient festival.

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'Invisible classics daily: Narratives of Multimodal Composition'

Trying to get in a scholarly frame of mind to write my APA abstract. I'm looking at:

BMCR recent reviews

Abstracts from last year

I'm also having a laugh with the conference paper title generator mentioned recently on ProfHacker (see the title of this post).

If you're working on an APA abstract (or other conference paper) tonight, best of luck! May we all come up with ideas that are exciting, yet seem capable of being explained in 15 minutes ;)

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Golden Dawn is scary stuff

I've been dealing with end-of-term matters, not leaving much time for deeep thoughts about the ancient world. But I did want to say that the news coming out of Greece right now scares the heck out of me. Just recently, it seems, the media has started describing them in unironic terms as "neo-Nazis."

I also read that their slogan in TV ads is "get rid of the stench" (referring to immigrants). What in the world?!

I spent only a month over there, about 2 years ago, but I have to say the only jobs I saw that were overwhelmingly held by immigrants were itinerant toy and flower sales. Really? The Greek economy would be rescued if only ethnic Greeks were permitted to sell roses at outdoor cafes?

Scary, scary stuff. Pin It