Since 2020, the Res Difficiles conference series has been a venue for addressing inequities within the field of Classics, examining issues arising out of intersectional vectors of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, class, socio-economic status and beyond. An outgrowth of this conference series, Res Difficiles, The Journal—an imprint of Ancient History Bulletin, a Green Open Access Journal—invites submissions from individuals, pairs, or groups, addressing “difficult things” within the discipline of Classics and related fields. Res Difficiles, The Journal seeks to publish the “traditional” argumentative forms of inquiry standard to the discipline, but also reflections upon pedagogical concerns as well as contributions of a creative, personal, or experimental nature, including interviews. In addition to individual submissions, we welcome pitches for guest-edited special issues.
Res Difficiles, The Journal as an imprint of AHB adheres to the usual North American editorial policies in the submission and acceptance of articles but imposes no House Style. Authors are, however, asked to use the abbreviations of L’Année philologique (APh) for journals, and of the Thesaurus linguae latinae (TLL) for Latin authors.
Please direct submissions to Hannah Čulík-Baird: culikbaird@humnet.ucla.edu.
Submission of articles must be sent as .doc (or .docx) files in the form of email attachments. PDF files should be submitted in addition to the .doc file when the article contains Greek or other fonts; Greek text should be entered using Unicode. Authors will receive PDF offprints of their contributions. Copyright is retained by the author.
Editorial Board:
Hannah Čulík-Baird (UCLA), Co-editor
Joseph Romero (University of Mary Washington), Co-editor
Luke Roman (Memorial University), Associate editor
Elke Nash (University of New Hampshire), Associate editor
Vol.1, No. 2 (2024)
Special Issue: “Re(Orient): Reception, Power, and Asian Experience”
Arum Park, Chris Waldo, and Tori Lee, Introduction / Re(Orientation)
Keywords: colonial travel literature, Grand Tour, orientalism, primitivism.
Abstract: In the mid-eighteenth century, the Roman towns that were buried under the debris from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE began to be excavated. The findings drew an unparalleled number of travelers to Naples, eager to visit the Bourbon excavations and see for themselves the remains of the best-preserved example of daily Roman life. The immediate impact that Pompeian wall paintings and decorative arts had on eighteenth-century interior design is well studied, but what remains relatively underexplored are the reactions of shock (and horror) to the artefacts being unearthed in towns like Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here I show how some British travelers understood the artefacts through a distinctly colonial lens. Some likened the vividly-colored wall paintings to Indian or Chinese art, while others were deeply disturbed by the proliferation of erotic statues which recalled the phallic objects described in recent reports from the South Sea islands. My research brings to light a different experience of the British Grand Tour, where travel to the Mediterranean drew heavily upon foreign tropes found in contemporary colonial travel literature.
Keywords: architecture, Classical reception, diaspora, migration, Neoclassical
Abstract: The county of Kaiping, located in Guangdong Province, China, is well-known for the local watchtowers called diaolou which are commonly found throughout its landscape. The diaolou is a form of defensive architecture first developed in the Ming era. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kaiping saw a boom in diaolou building, accompanied by rising numbers of local people migrating to the West or Western colonial spaces in East Asia and then later returning home. The diaolou built during this period display a unique mix of Western architecture, often recognizably Classical or Classicizing, set in a traditional Chinese structure. This article argues that the reception of Western/Classical architecture in these buildings was multivalent, structured along the following themes. First, the Western/Classical references were not drawing from true antique Classical architecture, but rather, on contemporary Neoclassical architecture in Asian colonial spaces, Australia, and North America. Second, the designs of these buildings reference how their owners and builders experienced overseas migration into Western spaces during this period. And lastly, these diaolou have served as enduring foci of cultural memory regarding the diasporic experiences of the local community over time.
Keywords: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, Haizi, Reception, Sappho.
Abstract: This article examines the contemporary poet Haizi’s response to a hybrid Chinese and Western tradition of mediating Sappho in his short poem To Sappho, and pays particular attention to the routes of transmission and translation through which Haizi encountered the Greek poet. For Haizi, Sappho comes to represent an elusive lyric ideal as he strives for affective poetic language in the wake of the Cultural Revolution’s impact on Chinese literature. Echoing and reconfiguring imagery from her available poetry and biography, Haizi domesticates Sappho into his symbolic, rural landscape of poetry, thereby creating a paradigm to contemplate his own poetic identity and legacy.
Dominic Machado, Tam magnus ex Asia veni: Towards an Asian American Hermeneutics in Classics
Keywords: Asian American hermeneutics, Aeneid, disciplinary reform, freedmen, Petronius, racialization, romantic capitalism.
Abstract: Riffing off Vincent Wimbush’s directive to consider Blackness in biblical studies, this article imagines what it might mean to center Asian Americanness in the study of the classics. I offer two brief case studies that offer one possible vision of what an Asian American hermeneutics for classics might look like. These two case studies focus on two Asian immigrants in Roman culture—Aeneas (as well as his fellow Trojans) in Vergil’s Aeneid and Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyrica—and how reading them through an Asian Americanist lens can shed light on these figures and, more broadly, on contemporary Roman social, cultural, and political structures. The article concludes by considering the ethics that might attend further attempts at developing an Asian American hermeneutics in classics.
Volume 1.1 (2024)
Hannah Čulík-Baird and Joseph Romero, Co-editors’ Preface
Keywords: banking model, Classics teaching, conscientizaçao, critical pedagogy, Paulo Freire.
Abstract: This paper offers a critique of traditional Classics pedagogy which has been historically avoidant of pedagogical theories from other disciplines, such as Education. Resituating the bibliography of difficulty literature in Classics through the discursive frameworks of critical pedagogy advanced by scholars such as Paulo Freire, we examine Classics’ dependence upon a banking model of learning which positions students as empty vessels waiting to be filled by the authority of their teacher. Furthermore, we offer a critique of the prevailing pedagogical mode in Classics, which positions some students as the cause of “difficulty,” as a fundamentally managerial practice. Finally, we offer some reflections on the potential of conscientizaçao (“consciousness raising”) to chart a course for disciplinary change within Classics.
Kelly P. Dugan, Ancient Rhetoric, Abolition, and Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford’s The Tragedy (1897)
Keywords: Black literature, ancient rhetoric, Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Herodotus, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Abstract: Following the efflorescence of scholarship on Black freedom narratives and activism, this article examines Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford’s The Tragedy (1897), an antilynching text which recounts a history of colonization and enslavement from the Mediterranean in the 7th century BCE to America in the late 19th century CE. Together with a study of the ancient discourses, Rev. Stanford’s work is here situated in the context of the white paternalism of British and American publishing during the late 19th century, with particular attention to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s preface to Stanford’s The Tragedy (1897). The article analyzes how Rev. Stanford uses ancient rhetoric to argue for the sanctity of Black life, including both classical and biblical references, concluding with reflections upon pedagogical applications as well as the need for further study.
Sportula Europe, Mutual Aid, Solidarity, and Classics in Higher Education
Keywords: microgrant organisations, mutual aid, solidarity, Sportula Europe.
Abstract: This paper describes the efforts of the microgrant organisation, Sportula Europe, to offer material support as well as the kinship of solidarity to historically-looted and marginalised communities within Classics. Contextualising our work within critical intellectual traditions and the history of mutual aid practices, we reflect upon non-hierarchical approaches to ameliorate the material conditions of students and researchers in our field.
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