#I'm not a classicist I was in Latin American studies

[findusinaweek]

For my mutuals that are posting about Greek myth retellings, do you all have thoughts of Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus)? 

[classicslesbianopinions]

Italian here. I don't know if I count in the Discourse but in Italy we have a specific "brand" of high school called "classical" high school (but now I'm in Greece for an exchange program) where we start to study Latin and Ancient Greek as soon as we enter (and some kids I know start studying Latin in like. middle school) and even if I'm not the best in these subjects I still like. Have a pretty wide knowledge on myths and stuff (also because we have mandatory epic and ancient literature classes throughout middle school and high school) and sometimes it baffles me to see with how much confidence usamericans come here talking absolute nonsense about these kind of subjects without understanding the basic core of them. Like, all the myths have different versions due to oral transmission and such or that time when Italian tumblr was joking about the tavern found in Pompeii (I don't remember precisely but it was called the whole Nicia discourse if you want to search it up) and some usamerican student came to explain to us our culture. Idk, it's weird. It's almost like they forget that Italians and Greek people still you know. Exist.

Also, after reading the articles in your pinned posts (very interesting even if I don't plan to study classics after high school) I was confused because I thought that some things were common knowledge but apparently they aren't. Like this is by no mean an universal experience I think but many of my friends and I had the luxury (?) To have well informed and left leaning teachers, so in my experience things like "the result of uncritical analysis of ancient history and mythology and literature has been used by mussolini and many other fascist ideologies and white supremacy as propaganda and explanation for their actions" or "the ancient Greeks and Romans weren't all white with blue eyes and blonde hair and their societies were way more multicultural than our" are stuff that the teacher tell you on day one of middle school even.

(I was the one who sent the troy 2004 anon with the middle school teacher, and one of the things I'll never forget about that lesson were all the times she told us "yeah OF COUSE they weren't this white all with blonde hair and blue eyes. This movie it's so american").

I think it's important to have this kind of discussions but I think that if you are this invested in classics you should try to read stuff written by people who actually live in the Mediterranean (and this means also people from North Africa and West Asia of course) or at least try to listen to us when we talk about stuff that in a good way or in a bad way is part of our heritage and culture. Some other Italian and Greek users have formulate this in a better way but I hope this wasn't much of a bother. Have a nice timezone!

okay "have a nice timezone" is maybe the best online signoff i've heard... and you're definitely never a bother. i promise everyone in our inbox, as long as you're not being like... actively mean or engaging in bad faith, you're not a bother! and especially if english isn't your first language, we are very happy to hear from you and with whatever wording you've got! i'm really enjoying the conversations we've been having on here.

but! yeah okay so 1. you totally count in the discourse, we've got people coming in from all sides and i really appreciate your input! 2. i think like... there's two sides to classics (as an american classicist). there's the actual stories and traditions and the way they've come through to the modern day, and then there's the way people have manipulated and used those stories and traditions over time (which is more like... where the articles in our pinned post come in). and both are important to study and be aware of.

so like, yeah. i can only speak for my experience, but i can say that my experience has not done nearly enough to consider the people still living in the mediterranean, and it also has not considered the full mediterranean-- like, we don't really talk about mediterranean areas outside of greece and rome unless they feature prominently in a latin or greek text.

and i have also seen patriarchy, white supremacy, and (i don't know how to phrase this) enforced christianity? i guess? in action, and i can see how those things have shaped classics as a field over the years. like, actually nothing said about classics in the pinned articles was like... all that surprising to me? there were insightful points, of course, but it felt very accurate to what i've seen and heard in the field. and seeing and hearing all that in the field almost turned me away from academia entirely. so i'm really glad people are talking about it. so i guess i would say from a usamerican perspective/experience, those articles felt 100% accurate, and i'm glad you had a different experience.

and like, as a usamerican classicist, i think it's important to study the context of classics throughout history of the united states. this interview (from the pinned post) talks about what classics means for the Black community in the united states, both in terms of how classics have been forced on them as part of their history of oppression, and in terms of what it's like to read the actual texts and see what's actually there (which, like you say about troy-- it's not actually a bunch of white blonde people!).

and like... white europeans have projected ourselves onto the classics for so many years that like... we can't ignore that. and yeah i do think the best way to cut past a lot of that projection is to go back to the original texts, actually read them with an open mind, and listen to what people who have a direct connection to that heritage and religion have to say; we have such a strange disconnect between past and present in the united states.

but a lot of it is also examining the history and context of these works in more recent history (by which i mean... anytime in the last couple thousand years). which also includes listening to people of color (and other marginalized people) when they talk about how these works and societies have been weaponized against them over the years-- which is what a couple of the pinned articles are there for. like studying how the texts have been used and weaponized is its own whole thing. like, it's a whole aspect of the field.

oh and also i would add that the us education system is uh... not that great. so. it's not surprising to me that people think they know a lot when they only know a little, but it is discouraging.

and i've gone on FOREVER but i don't think i really have like. the full knowledge/research/context to like... really talk about this, this is like. just me rambling. and i welcome any further discussion or feedback!

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I'm not Greek, but I share your fear regarding the Netflix show... I study Ancient Greek and Latin, but I bet not one person on the production team will... Or if they do, they are these American "classicists", who think they can just put their American issues in the stories... So yeah, this will be a disaster... With all wrong pronunciation and interpretation... So not really a question, just a little rant

I bet they will utilize more social justice professors than classicists and Greeks.

[lazylacadaemon]

(1) hi! this is a similar question to the other anon asking advice, but with a different twist. i'd like to ask specficially if you have any advice for uni students planning to major in classics/classical studies? how was your experience with it? did you end up focusing more on the history/archaeology side of things or the ancient languages? is it possible to do both? also, on a somewhat related note, how do you find doing your masters in classics in canada? i'm briefly (cont..)

(2) considering it (i’m on the west coast), but job prospects look…. a little dismal. is that just me, or is that a legitimate concern? would you happen to know what kind of options are out there in academia now for people who’d like to pursue more than an undergrad in the humanities? sorry that this ask is a little out of control with the questions. feel free to filter out your answers; i don’t want to bother you too much or take up too much of your time!

Hey thanks for dropping by to ask, I’l do my best to account for as many things as I can. This could get long haha. A lot of this is from my (limited) personal experience and the experience of people I know, so don’t take it as the be all end all answer.

1. Classics in general

I adore the discipline, I adore my profs, and while I complain a lot about dead languages I really don’t have any regrets doing it. I think the experience will vary from school to school and country to country, but I just want to get my overarching fondness for the ancient world out of the way.

In my undergrad I focused mostly on art history and archaeology (though my minor is in linguistics) because I’m a very visual person, I’m a self-taught artist, and it was interesting to me. My supervisor (who sort of adopted me because I took so many of her classes) is the one who really loves getting down in the dirt and she’s always trying to get me to get out there too but I’ve never been on a dig and I honestly don’t know how useful I’d be on one. xD In grad school now I’m in a program called Ancient Societies and Cultures which is an interdisciplinary program- there are people like me who are Classics majors that want to bridge that gap between literature/language and archaeology and history, but there are also people who major in things like math/engineering who want an older perspective on things too. As far as I know, my university is the only one with such a MA program in classics. 

But yeah it’s certainly possible to do both in undergrad- I took a lot of myth courses, a lot of history courses, and a few courses I wouldn’t have thought to take due to limited options in certain years (but tbh I nearly died in 500 level Roman Monarchy because I know pretty much nothing about Late Imperial Roman History, just the art lol). I of course took a lot of Greek and Latin- I was going through a bit of a crisis in my first couple years trying to decide between East Asian Studies and Classics, and taking Intermediate Japanese at the same time as Intro Ancient Greek was… interesting. I didn’t take Latin until my MA- I don’t think it was a Super important requirement for what I was doing, but I’m very glad I did it anyway. Also… a shameful admittance… I have my BA in Classics, I am maybe 2 months tops from getting my MA… and I have never read the Iliad- the closest equivalent to a bible there is- all the way through. In English. (I’ve read the Odyssey twice to make up for it though)

2. Classics in Canada

The first most important distinction in Classical studies: in North America, Classics is usually put together with the history department. In Europe, Classics is still fundamentally linked to its origins in philology. Classical archaeology in particular is actually a really niche discipline, at least in North America- the anthropologists don’t want it because we have “too much literature”, the historians don’t want it because we have “too much dirt”, and the art historians sometimes begrudgingly take us in even though they aren’t super fond of dirt either. I had a colleague who referred to a complete and utter lack of good programs in classical archaeology at “the university that shall not be named” in Toronto (whatever it was, it did leave quite a sour impression on him).

Secondly, Canadian students relative to American and European students entering classics are at a particular disadvantage if they want to dive right into languages: in the States, there seems to be a Latin revival in secondary school- maybe even in primary school- so you can legitimately have people with 4 years of Latin straight out of high school under their belts. In Canada, the last private school that offered Latin at the secondary level dropped the program. It’s not a big problem if you are doing an undergrad and are super interested in doing languages (although they’ve cut the Classical Languages Major here because only like 2 people did it… pretty ridic still and a lot of my profs are Very Angry), but say you are me who took Greek in undergrad on a whim but no Latin, and then looking at grad schools like UBC who seem to cater to American/International students by requiring a minimum of six years of Latin or Greek and four in the other- friggin impossible when you only have been doing Greek and no Latin for half your undergrad. However, if you love Latin there are (or at least… there were, idk what’s up with this political mess) a lot of prospects in the US for teaching Latin and it’s an easy straight shot from uni into the field (easy if you don’t mind living in the States).

Finally, specifically, I don’t know much about Classics outside my university. I’m a student at the U of A and, being the filthy rich Albertans we are, we tend to have a lot of advantages that other universities might not. We have a tidy little collection of artefacts in our museum from Greece, Italy, Egypt and the Near East, the UK, and so forth. We have regular exchange programs in Italy for students interested in poli sci, history, art history, or classics, and we have regular digs in both Italy and Greece. We also have pretty decent entrance requirements and great profs- still pretty limited to Greece and Rome, but I think we recently got someone who is an expert in Sanskrit for instance, which is great. I don’t know much about other universities- I’ve heard gossip that U of T has some interesting department drama, and I had a former classmate who really really really loved a particular school on the east coast (the name is escaping me right now but it was clear she would have much rather been there- I want to say it’s in New Brunswick). 

3. Job Prospects

ok let me get one thing very clear: i’m really

really

rEALLy tired of people who have only taken high school repeatedly telling me that the Only Thing you can get with a History/Classics Degree is being a professor (or a teacher). The professor life is a very viable option and a lot of profs will either nudge you toward it or away from it- my dad is a prof (not in humanities) and is really pressuring me to do a phd because ‘its the best job in the world’ etc etc but I’m not sure if it’s what I wanna do, at least not yet. I really don’t like the idea of moving around where the jobs are, and a lot of it does depend heavily on travelling around to lectures and talking to people and hoping you make a good connection. It is dismal, as my profs will be the first to admit, but Classics is definitely still hiring new profs- my uni just got a new mediterranean archaeologist I believe after holding auditions for a couple months. 

This is a worry that comes up so often in classes and there isn’t a straight answer for it- the terrifying and also liberating answer is that life is messy. It’s not terribly likely you’ll get a job in your field- but that applies to classicists and historians just as it does to engineers and microbiologists. The degree, the specialty, isn’t that important. Getting it done, doing something is more important. 

I’m not the best person to ask about what happens after university because I’m right on the brink of moving to Toronto to do another MA in Museum Studies/Information Studies - I’ve been in school from Kindergarten with no breaks and I’m going to be in University for exactly 10 years- not too keen on spending another 7 doing a phd. I’ve been in a very lucky position and my parents have been very supportive of me, I can’t thank them enough. They’ve been saving since I was born to send me to university, and my dad was very supportive of my arts degree because I get to do a lot of the things he didn’t have the option to do when he was going to school and I get to provide his discipline with a new perspective and vice versa every time we talk. I have a great support network of family and friends who have made this possible for me and I’m forever in their debt.

Knowing ancient greek isn’t going to get me a job, but knowing how to talk about ancient greek to people who are curious, knowing how to communicate in writing, how to communicate orally, how to make my subject less impenetrable and elitist for other people are all skills that are invaluable to me. Who knows, maybe some employer will look at a resume like /you know greek AND latin? you must be a crazy hard worker and disciplined to pick up dead languages/. If you get wrapped up in the “what am I going to do with this”, you’re not really focusing on the right things? Sometimes it won’t be obvious until you’re looking back on it, or until someone else is looking at it. I’ll pull up the typical ‘JK Rowling was a classics major’ of course, and I’ll point out that there are so many many many more jobs out there than there are fields that account for them. If that piece of paper gets you a job you enjoy, regardless of whether you use 100% of your skills and knowledge every day, then enjoying the road to getting that piece of paper is worth it imho. 

Think beyond teaching, think about archaeology, museums, archives, local history, information, movies and documentaries, writing fiction or non-fiction… and there are possibilities out there that haven’t occurred to me only because I’m still in school. You can’t predict what jobs are going to look like in the future and hell, job prospects for snake people are dismal enough as it is. I live in a province that’s absolutely flooded with engineers for example, and a lot of them face difficulties because of the rollercoaster economy here regardless of how ‘useful’ the degree is considered relatively. Might as well do something you enjoy, something that is applicable to multiple disciplines (Classics is like history, language arts, art history, etc all rolled into one and they all teach basics of communication, critical thinking, etc. that are indispensable for any society). Also, Classics remains desperately isolated from other disciplines in part because people have been avoiding it- there’s a lot that could be done uniting it with other disciplines like cultural studies or computers - especially because so many profs make new websites that look straight out of the 90s. -cries-

I know this wasn’t part of your question but also consider it from a social angle- Classics is considered to be a dying discipline in part because it is considered “useless” and partly as it has been historically perceived- correctly- as “elitist”. However, you’ll notice that classics is becoming more and more relevant, particularly with the rise of extreme right, white/euro supremacist groups appropriating the imagery of “western civilization”. The discipline desperately needs fresh ideas, new perspectives, and challenges to the status quo to keep idiots like this from misusing the ancient world for their own racist, sexist agendas. My thesis is getting increasingly relevant to this as I continue writing it, and though it will ultimately reach a small audience the knowledge that I’ve researched myself and have had peer reviewed will become invaluable to me in dispelling misconceptions and outright lies about ‘western’ civilization. Please consider it from that angle as well.