#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!

[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

[notnocturne]

reminder: you are the only person you ever need to like.

[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 ''.

[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.

Wthe 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. 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 self-proclaimed white 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

[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.

[annie-isnt-0k]

If We Were Villains

“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”

-M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

[peter1rose]

Thrift shop book haul.

[theseviolentdellghts]

these violent delights have violent ends

romeo and juliet, william shakespeare

[starrynightsxo]

having a page open and then the book flipping shut accidentally ignites real feminine rage.

[notnocturne]

"on a brisk, spring day, at around noon, Nan picked apricots with me.

the sun beamed proudly at its zenith, yet the wind was still sharp, as though the warm season didn’t quite comprehend its presence yet. 

my skirt swished across my scabbed knees as I ran towards the orchid. Nan yelled from behind me, though I could barely hear her over the sound of my beating heart and the humming bees. my eager feet tripped over themselves several times, eventually laden with mud and twigs. one would think my legs grew heavier, yet I felt as though they’d shoot out from under me. 

we plucked ripe apricots for hours, tossing aside the ones ripped into by monkeys. I climbed up the withered tree in the distance, biting my lip as army ants stung into my skin. 

my Nan’s hunched figure swiped herbal leaves from the ground, pressing them against her crooked nose. my cheeks were sticky from sneaking a few sweet fruits, and my lips were bright pink. beneath my fingernails lay the evidence of my adventures; sickly sweet juice, dirt, bark, sweat, and grime. 

when we went home, my Nan tugged on my braids and told me to fetch a glass jar to make jam. "