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.
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
Keywords: academic writing, black studies, colonialism, crip theory, disability studies.
Abstract: This essay argues that the conventional
and doctrinal forms in which we do our writing and thinking—because of
their indebtedness to racializing, pathologizing, and colonial
regimes—put limits on our ability to enact change, resistance, and
abolition in our work. It suggests that we find our way to experiments
in form, and thus to new possibilities for thought and relation, through
mundane interruptions in our abilities to reproduce such forms, as well
as through other departures from the over-performed and idealized
hyper-rationalism of academic work.
Keywords: ancient Mediterranean religion, epigraphy, manumission, metaphor, slavery.
Abstract: In this article, I offer a critique of a
common trend in classical and religious studies scholarship: the
treatment of human enslavement to deities as fictional, metaphorical, or
otherwise unreal. In conversation with postcolonial and feminist
historiographical and philosophical interventions, I explore what
assumptions operate in metaphorizing or fictionalizing ancient
Mediterranean deities and their role in socioeconomic affairs, including
slavery. After providing an overview of how historians and philosophers
have challenged some Western historiographical norms that govern the
treatment of deities as unreal, I examine inscriptions from three sites
(Delphi, Leukopetra, and the Bosporan Kingdom) and how the sale,
dedication, and enslavement of humans to deities occurs. I end by
analyzing how scholars have often continued to treat such inscriptions,
noting how there tends to be a common reading of enslavement to a deity
as fictional or a religious smokescreen.
Keywords: language pedagogy, second language
acquisition, grammar and translation method, active Latin, communicative
method, Prussian method.
Abstract: The way the classical languages are
traditionally taught can constitute a barrier to the entry to the field
for many students. This piece reviews the history of language pedagogy
over the last two centuries (starting with the Prussian school reform),
and makes the case for embracing more progressive approaches to teaching
Greek and Latin, informed by contemporary linguistics and second
language acquisition studies. It includes a discussion of existing
barriers to change, suggestions on how to implement small incremental
changes in the classroom, as well as a conversation with an expert who
has shifted to teaching Latin communicatively.
Abstract: This piece is a call-to-action for those
who work with ancient greco- roman material, often identified as
“classicists,” to minoritize the field of classics by adopting a stance
of disciplinary and individual humility. This includes critically
examining the assumption that classics is exempt, or will even benefit,
from the political persecution of racialized, queer and trans, disabled,
and other minoritized populations. Current diversification attempts to
combat this state of affairs by incorporating minoritized viewpoints via
reception, though well meaning, ultimately bolster the colonial
supremacy of the discipline. Minoritizing classics requires a varied,
widespread, and communal imaginative labor aimed at completely revising
the hierarchized valuation of greco-roman material and classical
(philological) methodologies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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