This is so well put and thought out. My BA is in Classics, and I have a deep love of the field, but not an uncomplicated one, and one that comes with guilt and always a strange feeling of thinking I should have studied my own Latin American history instead of Ancient Greek.
I love your line that classics is "woven so intently with the vision of the present we’re presented with, in and out of the West. If a tree falls in a forest and the sound of it echoes down for centuries, should we exalt it or ignore it out of spite?" This is such a good observation regarding the field and its importance.
Oh my goodness, thank you for this comment. Yours is the exact kind of perspective that I am so grateful to hear. As a non-Greek classicist, it does often feel like you're having an affair, doesn't it? and yet the love prevails.
An affair is the perfect way to put it! At the end of the day you don’t come home to it (or, well at least in part, though the pervasiveness of western culture is always there), but you may sneak away to your study for an illicit reading of Homer or Catullus. The trick, and one I don’t have an answer for, is how to harmonize it with non western culture (broadly societally, but I think in the academic field as well). I just read an academic paper by Gerardo Mosquera called “The Marco Polo Syndrome,” that tackles the subject of eurocentrism and cultural pluralism. It’s about modern art, but I think the classics field could do well to look at. At least for the perspective.
This is incredible and I couldn't agree more. It's so well written.
thank you so much, Emma. And thanks for your invaluable perspective!!
This is so well put and thought out. My BA is in Classics, and I have a deep love of the field, but not an uncomplicated one, and one that comes with guilt and always a strange feeling of thinking I should have studied my own Latin American history instead of Ancient Greek.
I love your line that classics is "woven so intently with the vision of the present we’re presented with, in and out of the West. If a tree falls in a forest and the sound of it echoes down for centuries, should we exalt it or ignore it out of spite?" This is such a good observation regarding the field and its importance.
Oh my goodness, thank you for this comment. Yours is the exact kind of perspective that I am so grateful to hear. As a non-Greek classicist, it does often feel like you're having an affair, doesn't it? and yet the love prevails.
Thank you so much for highlighting that line.
An affair is the perfect way to put it! At the end of the day you don’t come home to it (or, well at least in part, though the pervasiveness of western culture is always there), but you may sneak away to your study for an illicit reading of Homer or Catullus. The trick, and one I don’t have an answer for, is how to harmonize it with non western culture (broadly societally, but I think in the academic field as well). I just read an academic paper by Gerardo Mosquera called “The Marco Polo Syndrome,” that tackles the subject of eurocentrism and cultural pluralism. It’s about modern art, but I think the classics field could do well to look at. At least for the perspective.