Natasha F.

"Students are highlighting the same sentences in the same passages and writing down the same main ideas and details, producing identical written responses."

Farewell to Textual Criticism? | Bible Interp Search

Farewell to Textual Criticism? | Bible & Interpretation article by Ronald Hendel

www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

Ancient Greek black-figure amphora showing men dressed as "knights" riding on the shoulders of men dressed as horses.

Still can't believe there was a time when I thought ancient Greek vase paintings were boring.

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pa...

The German word ‘Pferd’ and its Dutch cognate ‘paard’ are horses of mixed breed parentage.

Their common ancestor came from Latin ‘paraverēdus’ (substitute post-horse), a word composed of an Ancient Greek element and a Gaulish one.

Zoom in on my new infographic to learn everything about it:

“I tell my students, who believe passionately in explaining the work they’re sharing, ‘You know, when you’re dead, you can’t go around explaining this thing—it has to be right there on the page.’ ” —Louise Glück buff.ly/uXAASEg

Epigraph typed at the top right of the page by John Berger Between the experience of living a normal life at thisoment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.

Few authors do epigraphs as well as Ali Smith does. Pictured here, the first epigraph from the novel The Accidental.

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

The Representation of African People in Early Modern European Art & Culture Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to get the best experience.

How did artists of the early modern period depict African people?

Join our online course (13 Nov–11 Dec) to explore how these images shaped ideas about race and ethnicity in Europe — from saints and magi to portraiture and decorative arts.

warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

#ArtHistory

Thanks for the link! I've saved it to read it properly once my marking is finished - looking forward to it!

This looks fascinating.. Are you presenting this anywhere soon?? Would love to sign in and listen if that's an option!

"Yet education’s vocation has never been speed. Its vocation has been the cultivation of reflective freedom, the ability to pause before conclusion." - Sandy Leaton Gray

Susanna Cries: Attending to the Auditory Dimension of the Susanna Narrative Since antiquity, the story of Susanna has inspired interpretations that focus on its visual dimensions. The auditory dimension of the narrative has received much less attention. While some scholars...

I was a bit nervous about joining the Septuagint Society of South Africa in 2024 - but the first paper I delivered there has just been published in the Journal of Early Christian History!

Susanna Cries: Attending to the Auditory Dimension of the Susanna Narrative www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A Basotho proverb in white letters is shown on a black board, hung on a wall. The English translation is "Stones are the bones of the earth"

Visited the Kgodumodumo Dinosaur Interpretation Centre yesterday. 10/10 - truly a fantastically curated exhibition. Paleontological insight and evidence perfectly balanced with Basotho legends and proverbs.

Also spotted @amayor.bsky.social's The First Fossil Hunters in the museum café!

An old military maxim often attributed to Napoleon is “an army marches on its stomach” and I feel the same way that a university thinks via its library. The slow and steady financial diminution of research libraries and the librarians who staff them is, to me, a slow-rolling higher Ed catastrophe.

Great news!
JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month

www.jstor.org/action/showL...

Don urges African Scholars to embrace Classics as Africa’s heritage By Eniola Shobiye A professor in the Department of Classics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Olakunbi Olasope, has urged African scholars to stop viewing Classics only through the lens of Gr…

Don urges African Scholars to embrace Classics as Africa’s heritage - Tribune Online
tribuneonlineng.com/don-urges-af...

The Silence of the Frogs Tacitly poking fun at Dead Poets

(21) The Silence of the Frogs - by Armand D'Angour
armanddangour.substack.com/p/the-silenc...

Equinox: equal-night. Autumnal: when Persephone leaves Demeter to go down to hades her husband. Bernal: when she leaves the underworld and returns to her mother. Image: above, Persephone leaves her mother and takes hades’ hand. Below, she runs back into her mother’s arms.

It’s the Autumnal Equinox in the UK today.
Persephone’s Katabasis, Demeter’s goodbye.

My modest proposal for how to acknowledge AI work is to use the Latin phase "Fieri Iussit," which means "commanded to be made." It acknowledged the Emperor's orders on Roman buildings.

You didn't make the thing, but you commanded it be done, so the proper acknowledgement is "Ego hoc fieri iussi."

"It’s true that scholars no longer have the exclusive claim to territory that they once had. But it’s what you do with what you find."

Eliot Weinberger, interviewed by Srikanth Reddy for The Paris Review's 'The Art of the Essay'

Trying to channel my inner Yeats: "Months of re-writing. What happiness!"

No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

-Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy

X’s Altmetric Hegemony Ceding to Bluesky The alternative social media platform is matching engagement of Elon Musk’s X in ways that “would have seemed unthinkable until recently,” says study.

#Bluesky has become preferred platform for researchers www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty... #researchmatters #academia #highered

Translator's note by Cecelia Luschnig on the necessity of reading aloud in the translation process:

"In an earlier version of my translation of Alcestis, I used the word 'pusillanimity,' which is literally unspeakable, as became apparent in a classroom reading."

#greektragedy #classicsbluesky

September 2025 VRG: Tragedy and Politics on Stage: An Encounter with Euripides | Liberty Fund Portal with Ella Street Wednesdays September 3, 10, 17, and 24, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm EDT Join us for a four-week discussion of ancient Greek tragedy. Together, we will read four plays by Euripides, the play...

I’m facilitating a (free! Open to public!) reading group in September on Euripides. Register here: libertyfund.circle.so/c/events-ann...

The latest issue of Akroterion, Journal of the Classics in South Africa, Vol. 69 (2024), is now available.
akroterion.journals.ac.za/pub

I'm rereading a thesis from 1910 and the -gh simplifications are delightful.

Thru instead of through.
Tho instead of though.
Thot instead of thought - the most jarring one!

Adding Owen's Iphigenia in Splott to the to-read list

The Death of the Student Essay—and the Future of Cognition One professor's reflections on the end of an era, as AI tools such as ChatGPT have murdered the student essay (RIP). Here's why that threatens the future of human cognition—and how to save ourselves.

What @brianklaas.bsky.social said.

open.substack.com/pub/briankla...