Sphinx

As we got towards the end of the year, with the general chaos on the Bird Site and speculation about what might replace it, there was a certain amount of nostalgia for the great days of blogging (as well as the odd suggestion, perhaps not too serious, that these might return). Well, that would be nice – so long as it means more than just all the people on SubStack trying to monetise their followers. My worry is that I seem to find most of the posts that mean the most to me via the Twitter, where I now follow enough people that I regularly stumble across random interesting things, and it doesn’t feel as if I’m going to be able to reconstruct that network on any of the new platforms any time soon…

January

Jen Ebbeler on online teaching – partly very personal to her own situation, but some important general reflections: https://jenebbeler.medium.com/the-department-chair-ba8eba4a7be5

Paul Cotterill (@bickerrecord) on what really happened during lockdown: https://bickerrecord.medium.com/rules-and-power-why-we-mustnt-fall-into-the-same-tory-trap-b464311190c2

Adam Roberts (@arroberts) on Jane Austen and the politics of how we feel about stuff: https://medium.com/adams-notebook/sensibilitous-b04d30f48443

February

Tanner Greer (@Scholars_Stage) on ‘Shitpost Diplomacy’: https://t.co/ej9j26wp6w?amp=1

Edith Hall (@edithmayhall) on Lesya Ukrainka and Iphigenia in Tauris: https://edithorial.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-founding-mother-of-ukrainian.html?fbclid=IwAR2ioJe7Azjk1riTJA-9P6qmWlxEnOym0Xo1-ZAvb0O_q5kker98S7UBfL4

Eric Schliesser (@nescio13) ‘On appeasement today’: https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2022/02/appeasement.html?fbclid=IwAR297-cNrjhEm9AEp5uC5i2M6BW_LLxSHYP5CzqA6wd0g8pUJnYbP00NXwg

March

Alan Finlayson (@ProfAFinlayson) on the power of protest songs: https://oursubversivevoice.com/case-study/but-does-it-work-politics-rhetoric-and-the-protest-song/

Chris Bertram (@crookedfootball) on solidarity and compassion, and figures on the left playing strategy games: https://crookedtimber.org/2022/03/11/solidarity-and-compassion-should-come-first-for-the-left/

April

Pat Porter (@PatPorter76) on Thucydides as Realist – I disagree with quite a lot of this, but it is by a fair distance the best example of this particular reading: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/in-defence-of-thucydides-the-realist/

Rebecca Kennedy (@kataplexis) on Ukraine and ‘The West’: https://rfkclassics.blogspot.com/2022/04/reflections-on-west.html

Mark Berry (@boulezian) on the Deutsches Historisches Museum exhibit on Wagner: https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2022/04/richard-wagner-and-nationalisation-of.html

May

Catherine Baker (@richmondbridge) on Ukraine and Eurovision: https://bakercatherine.wordpress.com/2022/05/10/even-if-all-roads-are-destroyed-how-ukraine-put-itself-on-eurovisions-mental-maps-from-2003-to-2022/

Jack Monroe (@BootstrapCook) on writing recipes for the poor; a lot more mainstream than things I usually post, but this is righteous and glorious: https://t.co/thrxmyvTo9?amp=1

Isabel Ruffell (@iaruffell) on Ricky Gervais, Roman satire and the ‘comic’ persona: http://artemisia.scot/blog/2022/05/25/when-masks-slip/#when-masks-slip

June

Mark Buchan on his cat and Odysseus’ dog: https://medium.com/in-medias-res/the-truth-about-my-cat-and-odysseus-dog-a8236627a2b8

L.D. Burnett (@LDBurnett) on citation practices and plagiarism in different kinds of academic publication: https://loradawnburnett.medium.com/is-it-plagiarism-9daa44a24057

July

The ever-eloquent Maria Farrell (@mariafarrell) on chronic illness and cosplaying normality: https://crookedtimber.org/2022/07/05/settling-in-for-the-long-haul/

Jana Becavic (@jana_bacevic) on academic research in the midst of climate crisis: https://janabacevic.net/2022/07/20/when-it-ends/

August

Alexandra Sills (@BelovedOfOizys) on discussing your research online as a very early career researcher: https://ancientalexandra.wixsite.com/domus/post/what-i-learned-this-week-on-twitter-dot-com

Peter Gainsford (@PeterGainsford) offers excellent summary of issues involved in reconstructing classical texts from medieval manuscripts: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2022/08/manuscripts.html

September

Deborah Cameron (@wordspinster), fascinating as ever, on QEII and feminism: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2022/09/11/is-this-what-a-feminist-looks-like/

Katja Thieme (@katja_thieme) on surveying the alleged decay of academic freedom: https://katjat.medium.com/look-over-there-an-academic-freedom-crisis-1644247f5ec5

October

Network for Working-Class Classicists on the cost of living crisis: https://www.workingclassclassics.uk/2022/10/11/we-need-to-talk-about-money-what-the-cost-of-living-crisis-means-for-working-class-classicists/

Frances Coppola (@Frances_Coppola) on economic populism and its failures – the UK as dodgy South American country: https://www.coppolacomment.com/2022/10/when-populism-fails.html

Helen King (@fluff35) on Sondheim as a guide to marriage: https://viamedia.news/2022/10/27/marry-me-a-little/

November

Evan Smith (@evansmithhist) on the early history of anti-immigrant rhetoric of ‘swamping’ and ‘invasion’: https://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/2022/11/01/rather-swamped-thatcher-moral-panics-and-racist-rhetoric/

Liz Gloyn (@lizgloyn) on walking pedagogy: https://lizgloyn.wordpress.com/2022/11/02/walking-supervisions-first-thoughts/

L.D. Burnett (@LDBurnett), again, on the shift from #Twitterstorians to #Histodons: https://www.arcdigital.media/p/i-may-have-been-a-twitterstorian

December

Maria Farrell (@mariafarrell) on the deceptive metaphor of tech platform as ‘ecosystem’: https://crookedtimber.org/2022/12/08/your-platform-is-not-an-ecosystem/ “They say ecosystem. They mean snow-globe. It’s not at all clear if they understand these are different kinds of thing.”

John Holbo (@jholbo1) on Nietzsche and early graphic design: https://www.onbeyondzarathustra.com/isohighertype?fbclid=IwAR3etzNsJbxPAAsqNwfOfnGgiplWA4Rle6UJoWO3VBT351S4FXx_9ptLKgQ