#academic booktok

[jeannereames]

@bestnoncannonship, here you go!

Calling all the queer Classicists. :-)

BookTok Part I, going over some of the important books (and a few articles) about homoeroticism in ancient Greece. This covers material pre-2000. It's not everything, but several important works, including some that had an impact on my own academic work ("An Atypical Affair?: Alexander the Great, Hephaistion Amyntoros and the Nature of Their Relationship," et al.), as well as on Dancing with the Lion.

Enjoy! Part II will come, but probably not for a little bit. I'm covered up in grading/et al. Same goes for the asks.

But I will answer!

[notnocturne]

academia things to research when you're bored (because doom scrolling is insipid) :

african architecture

medieval methods of washing clothes

the history of religion

oceanic mythology

the renaissance era's idea of masculinity

the colour wheel

the history behind braids

donna tartt's childhood

the influence of cigarettes on women in the 1920s

how, exactly, swords are forged

the history of cinnamon (very interesting!!)

the different shades of maroon and their names

who the first person was to dissect a human body

the side affects of anaesthesia

your favourite university's mantra

the black dahlia murder

the controversy surrounding psychiatry

why do we smile to express joy

music theory and how it shaped the making of instruments

symbolism in renaissance art

the rat race

the most poisonous plants

the history of calligraphy

what ancient greece thought about music

how to bake sourdough bread from scratch

conspiracy theories

how to study latin

turkish proverbs

the history of metaphors

the process of erosion

the act of proposing

[juneacademia]

Literature is the window to the soul.

[peter1rose]

“Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?”

-Ocean Vuong

[itisiives]

Hey, y'all, I'm still raising money for this tuition that's gotten me in a chokehold, so I am still selling my books. But if money is too tight, would you mind requesting the title at your local library, instead? That may help!

📚 📖 📙

And to help convince you: I have a poem featured in Janus Literary.

[starrynightsxo]

Dead Poets Society by Nancy H Kleinbaum

[selenepluto]

[myacademiaescape]

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

- Gilbert Hignet

[waqtkibaatein]

This had me in chokehold

"I don't think anyone knows what love is , its an ENIGMA , it gets redefined every time someone says it ''.

[tulip-jojo]

winter book recs!!!

I wanted to put little bit of something for everybody. I hope you guys enjoy my recs <3

ig: jovanatulip

[kryssadaugereau-swritingnook]

What kind of dark romance do you like most? Leave comments if your choice isn't in the poll!

I have a few ideas for after I finish the King of Smoke and Ash series but I wonder which stories you would like to see the most?

Use the poll to select your favorite dark romance sub-genre

Comment if you can't find your favorite on the poll

Comment to specify which trope is your favorite if I gave multiple examples.

Examples ((but feel feel to comment yours if it's not on here))

Blully Romance

Mafia romance

motorcycle/ biker gang dark romance

Age-gap

Forbidden love: (step-brother, brother's best friend, child of family's business/political rivals, teacher X Student; patient x psychiatrist)

Gothic Romance

Supernatural/ Paranormal/ ET lovers: (vampire, werewolf, shifter of any kind; ghost; fairy; a god from a different culture; merman or mermaid; monster romance)

Toxic or obsessive relationship: (parasocial, Stalker/obsessed X person of interest, captive X captor, yandere X darling, Stockholm's syndrome)

Historical dark romance

Dark LGBTQ romance

Billionaire ; Royalty and a commoner

son of a rich man X daughter of the live-in help ; master x servant

Dark romantasy

BD/SM relationship

Why Choose/ Reverse Harem

Boarding school: (student council president; religious boarding school; rich x scholarship student

Enemies to lovers or academic rivals to lovers

[jeannereames]

The rest of the books on Greek homoeroticism.

I am working on the ask that came in after. Just been buried pretty much consistently this semester. It's been crazy.

[notnocturne]

what 2025 will look like:

classic and historical fantasy books. reading like a fish swims. long sips of bitter tea. writing everyday. picking up new languages. nature walks. soft smiles and silver rings. singing in the shower. dirty white shoes. watching the sunrise stain the sky. learning new recipes. petting stray cats. waving at strangers. cosy candles. sweet pie. birds call. ink on linen. chess games in the park. consistency. iced water and dates. flowy pants. radiant sunshine. faith. stretching.

[moonriserworld]

reading r.f. kuang’s babel right now and after skimming through some locked reddit threads i am so disappointed by the reception.

spoilers ahead, and disclaimer that i am only on chapter 21, but i went looking for a discussion about how their plan to cover up after lovell was a little lacking, and what i found instead were hundreds of disappointed (apparently) white readers tone policing the author. calling her a bad writer, unsophisticated, and overly simplistic. Arguments that are so profoundly rich with irony as these are nameless white readers discussing the qualifications of an asian cambridge/oxford/yale graduate, but i digress. i can easily enough dismiss these criticisms as inane and incomprehensible to anyone who values non-western intellect.

the criticism i have seen over and over again though, which infuriates me to the point of hysterics is that the book is too “preachy”. again and again and again dozens of people posted and hundreds of people upvoted that kuang’s book about the evils of colonialism wasn’t subtle enough. that it’s too in your face, the characters are too aware of “modern” discussions and opinions of colonialism, and that her heavy handed, over-articulated critique shows her youth and inexperience.

i could scream.

because why should colonialism be subtle? why must people of color assuage our indignation to accommodate the feelings of our oppressor’s descendants? why must the cruel, ceaseless destruction of hundreds of world cultures be boiled down to a beautiful metaphor? why is it that books about the evils of capitalism and discrimination can be so easily understood in the fantastical dark academia pieces of white authors, but the second the discussion shifts to imperialism and white supremacy, we must speak in similes and hushed whispers?

does reading about western missionaries intentionally devastating the lives and cultures of people of color for dominance and profit feel like preaching to you? imagine how the natives feel. for monolingual, white intellectuals who base their intellect purely off of western morality and philosophy, this book may certainly feel like a lecture, but for the marginalized communities who to this day speak the languages of their colonizers, this is just reality. a reality that in upper academia is still discussed in stilted, awkward tones because it would require considering where their endowments comes from. and kuang would know that, as someone who graduated from such institutions thrice.

for those that say her character’s speak with too much modern disdain and comprehension of colonialism, these opinions are not modern. the novel takes place in the 1830s, slavery, indentured servitude, and genocide were common practices of the western empires, and i can promise you none of their victims would be upset by admitting so. to say that the cantonese protagonist, with his indian muslim and haitian best friends, the three of whom were torn from their colonized home countries and now make up 75% of the incoming class of oxford’s most prestigious college, should not hold beliefs of anti-imperialism and should not have the vocabulary to express such, is so completely absurd and insulting I can’t even dignify it a response.

make no mistake, it is not that i cannot believe the outrage, because it is so very believable, but i cannot fathom how someone can deign to call themselves a reader and so flagrantly despise learning the experiences of others.

something that was particularly fascinating to watch was when someone mentioned achebe’s things fall apart, lauding it as the faithful brother to babel’s prodigal son. in an interesting reversal of roles, this black author’s novel was presented as the model to which minority writers should aspire to. subtlety, intrigue, mysticism, a delicate string of scenes and plot points to allow the reader to internalize the profound pains of cultural oppression without pointing too many fingers at whose doing the oppressing. because it is simply ‘more powerful’ to draw a beautifully direct parallel to a rhetorical issue than to point at the true source of our real world, ongoing crisis. now this is INSANE if you’ve read things fall apart, but for those that haven’t, not only is this a deeply mischaracterized description of achebe’s novel, but is precisely the rhetoric that both novels aimed to critique.

no novel is perfect. i still have yet to finish babel, and some comments I’ve seen about dialogue and characterization choices, with which i often disagree, i see the merit and validity of such arguments. however listening to the mindless degradation of this work by white, self-proclaimed academics, who offer nothing of note besides overly-intellectualized statements of cultural insecurity, frustrates me on a level i struggle to put to words in any language.

anyways back to reading! i don’t imagine my thoughts are of much note, but if i have anything interesting to say, i’ll give an impassioned key smash when i finish

[peter1rose]

Thrift shop book haul.

[theseviolentdellghts]

these violent delights have violent ends

romeo and juliet, william shakespeare