Ok, talked about controversial things and it seemed to go well? Phew. Such a great audience and great questions.

For all of the handwringing over the falling quality of students, we should always be willing to be surprised by every new cohort. I currently think I am teaching some of the best Roman history students I've ever had and it's their first ever Roman history class.

My article, "The Life of Terence, Revisited," has now been published open access in NECJ. I discuss how classicists have historically denied Terence’s blackness out of a belief that “humanistic” or linguistic excellence could not be reconciled with blackness. crossworks.holycross.edu/necj/vol52/i...

If you're in the Philly area on April 10, I'll be giving a talk at UPenn: www.classics.upenn.edu/events/2025/...

Lewis' Cleopatra also seems to have a role in Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich's "Cleopatra at the Mall" (2024) #AncientBlackness www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

In 2020, Margaret and Martha Malamud published an article on Edmonia Lewis' Cleopatra, discussing the sculpture's dialogue with the Cleopatra of William Wetmore Story #AncientBlackness muse.jhu.edu/article/815654

Lewis' "The Death of Cleopatra" (1876) shocked contemporary audiences for its realistic depiction of death, exhibited to great acclaim at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. The sculpture was eventually used to mark a horse's grave at a racetrack #AncientBlackness americanart.si.edu/artwork/deat...

My article “Depathologizing the Bisexual Orpheus” is out in Helios! It’s my first piece specifically on the classical canon, and uses a mix of psychology of sexuality, queer theory, and translation theory to make sense of how scholars have treated Ovid’s Orpheus as bi. Hit me up for a copy!

Firing everyone isn’t about efficiency, just like gutting the liberal arts wasn’t about budgets, just like crushing anti-genocide protesters wasn’t about safety

I took my Cleopatra and Roman history classes to this exhibition on Friday and it was stunning--and made my Cleopatra students really think about how to approach the question of her race and its reception in different periods. Really excellent work by Akili Tommasino.

Academic friends: If you have the time and volition, and want to link up with the AAR Classical Summer School, and possibly give a guest presentation, or site/excavation tour, please message me here or email: evan.jewellATrutgers.edu

Note: due to illness, this event has been postponed until later this Spring.

Philly area historians, esp. on US immigration and citizenship history - my department is hosting a seminar with Dr. Hardeep Dhillon (UPenn), "An Immigration Story: Children in the Era of Asian Exclusion", this Friday! If you're interested, please email me to RSVP & for the pre-circulated chapter.

Anyone else had so many issues with Perusall? This year it seems impossible to use. So I tried out Hypothesis - so much easier to use with Canvas! Wow.

rescuing Romans from the idea of fascism is more important to some than confronting the real and material threat of fascism

As someone who's been obsessed with domestic baths at Pompeii for a long time (one day I'll get that article on the baths in the House of the Menander out!), this is so exciting. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Bath time! Such a stunning example of private luxury in #Pompeii. I think we're going to need a lot of bubbles. #AncientRome www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One thing I'm going to tell/ask my students about using AI in their writing this semester: if everyone's using AI to write for them, then how will your writing stand out from the crowd? What will make your essay, personal statement, your sales pitch, [insert genre], unique?

abstracts due Jan 9! #ResDiff6

if anyone on bsky was at the #AIASCS slavery panel, here's a link to the recent piece by @maiakotro.bsky.social I mentioned: Race, Desire, and the Objectification of Theory bibleandcriticaltheory.com/vol-20-no-1-...

Jessica Clark (@koriannon.bsky.social) and I will be hosting a panel on race, gender, and warfare at the 16th Celtic Classical Conference in beautiful Coimbra! Check out the CFP below and please do get in touch if you have questions or want to submit an abstract: www.uc.pt/site/assets/...

This just passed SCS/AIA meeting certainly hammered home how quickly one goes from being an academic teenager to adult… scary, but good?

then this afternoon, I'm moderating the slavery panel, featuring @chancebonar.bsky.social, @javalac.bsky.social, @platanoclassics.bsky.social #AIASCS

Pro Tip: when citing someone, do go and check to see if their name has changed, and/or they have transitioned to a different gender(s).

Paper done! (Seemed to go well and love how there is such a committed LCC community!) Three meetings done! Friend dinner / catch up no.1 —fab. #aiascs

Read Kate Myer's novel "Excavations" on the plane home from Australia. What a good, fun, satisfying read (even if it didn't cohere always with how I know an excavation to work), and most importantly, such a refreshing takedown of the cis white male hegemony in Classics/Classical Archaeology.

Encouraged to see that there are no less than 26 mentions of the word "queer" in the SCS program this year, and three different panels devoted to queer Classics in one way or another! (But I realize how capacious and nebulous this term has become, not least in academic parlance...)

Associate Lecturer in Classics - Canberra / ACT, ACT, Australia jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/associa...

Pūkenga - Lecturer in Classics job with VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON | 385608 www.timeshighereducation.com/unijobs/list...

A reminder: applications for the 2025 Classical Summer School are due December 20 (incl. recommendation letters)!

Making a promise to myself that on this platform I’m only going to engage in more positive, constructive conversations in my academic field. So much of what turned me off on Twitter/X was the reflexive recourse to critique without solutions or lifting up the good that is out there.

This is what's so baffling about so many suggestions for AI in the humanities classroom: they mistake the product for the point. Writing outlines and essays is important not because you need to make outlines and essays but because that's how you learn to think with/through complex ideas.

Oh no. Why does this not surprise me?

Final graduate seminar last night for “Craft of History” (and we went over time well into 9:30pm!) was convivial and such a blast—a wonderful cohort! And one student made key chains (by hand) with individual designs for each person in the class, myself included!

Oh no. Uh oh.

Haven't done an intro thread yet... I'm an American archaeologist living and working in Italy. For the past six or so years I've been studying the use of "local" stones, principally volcanic tuff, as construction material around Rome and Naples during the last five centuries BCE... 🏺#AncientBlueSky

Next Spring I'm teaching my #Cleopatra course (about 50% ancient focused; 50% reception): any suggestions on new scholarship or reception examples you've come across?

FYI I don’t use Threads, so don’t bother adding me there. And if I haven’t met you, I won’t accept any Facebook or Instagram requests. Just a privacy thing. Bsky it is for now.

Come to Rome! with @quidamabo.bsky.social

Something I found striking about watching Gladiator II and Wicked on the same weekend: the wild and wonderful polychrome aesthetics of Wicked are far closer to the "reality" of ancient Rome than Gladiator's austere, dusty, stripped down sandstone world, with one fresco in the entire movie!

Officially deleted my account on X (had been on there since 2011!). Hopeful that something new is taking shape here. Thankful though for the connections made along the way (looking at you @opietasanimi.bsky.social and many others)!

If you're attending SCS/AIA in Philadelphia, come to the Mountaintop Coalition panel, co-organized by myself, @yusiliu.bsky.social, and @drakontophonos.bsky.social!

this is what has been torturing me about CUP wanting my first book to train AI. it came out fairly recently but it represents research started a decade ago. I’ve grown and changed since then - and, god willing, I’ll continue to grow. a bot which reproduces work I’ve put behind me is not growth

I know we now have the recent reconstruction of the Colossus of Constantine, but I'll never stop using the "gatti di Roma" calendar photo to demonstrate scale for students

This semester I have been teaching our required grad seminar, "Craft of History", and with just one week left, I can say it has been one of the more intense, thought provoking, ethically stimulating classes/cohorts I have taught (and this included almost two monographs a week!).

Another thing about Gladiator II: I think I was even more attuned to the historical inaccuracies/anachronisms because it is just simply a really bad movie (the original was better and so I likely gave it more grace for its own issues).

Me watching Gladiator 2: clocking every inaccuracy and wild anachronism (Soccer?!). “This would make a good drinking game”. But also, “I will be unteaching this movie for the next 5 years”.

FYI I don’t use Threads, so don’t bother adding me there. And if I haven’t met you, I won’t accept any Facebook or Instagram requests. Just a privacy thing. Bsky it is for now.

few years back, I wrote an article (which is OA) on Cicero's euphemizing of Archias' identity as cynical act of forceful assimilation ("Archias the Good Immigrant"): open.bu.edu/handle/2144/.... I assign this paired with Padilla Peralta's "How I teach this text": www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBjs...