As I now seem to remark at the end of every December, and yet persist in the belief that things will now be different: it’s been one of those years… I suppose the basic motive for persisting in that belief is that the alternative is uncomfortable; both that I will continue to feel tired all the time and uninspired – but on the edge of inspiration, if only I could get a couple of decent nights’ sleep – most of the time, and that I would then need to take some difficult but necessary decisions about whether I can really spare the time and energy to persist with this blog and all the other random stuff that tends to seem more attractive than solid, sober scholarship… (more…)
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
2019 on The Sphinx
Posted in Uncategorized on December 29, 2019| Leave a Comment »
No Place Like Rome
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, tagged Douglas Carswell, historical analogies, Rome on March 6, 2017| 4 Comments »
We do seem to be having a Roman moment. To the numerous comparisons, both positive and hostile, between Trump and miscellaneous Roman emperors, the ‘hordes of Visigothic economic migrants overwhelming the frontier’ claims of Arron Banks and the numerous flattering interviews of David Engels on right-wing websites, we can now add the historical musings of Douglas Carswell in the Grauniad, explaining how Brexit is going to be a wonderful liberation but not at all nasty or populist, because Rome. Apparently. (more…)
Keep Lectures Live!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged higher education, teaching, technology on March 3, 2017| Leave a Comment »
There are two carved reliefs above the entrances to the Yale Law School intended to make a point about teaching. On the left (or above, depending on how your browser is showing it), above the students’ entrance, we have the students’ conception of the lecture: they’re engaged and eager to learn, but the professor is bored and would rather be doing something else, and his assistant is completely disengaged, reading pornography. On the right (below) we have the professors’ conception: brilliant, passionate lecturer with students fast asleep. The dominant contemporary image of the lecture is the worst of both worlds, with disengagement on both sides – let alone when we’re talking about scores of students rather than half a dozen. That is, the negative perceptions and expectations on either side – and, let’s be honest, there are real negative experiences on both sides as well – are taken to define the nature of the whole exercise.
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Rome: Open City? (Reprint Project)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged historiography, Keith Hopkins, migration, rhetoric on February 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Another installment in my long-term project to make available copies of old chapters and articles, when I have a spare moment. This one is prompted by another exchange with Will Pooley at Bristol, who asked on the Twitter about modern historians using the dialogue form, whether invented or found. My immediate thought was Keith Hopkins’ A World Full Of Gods, which (if you don’t know it) experiments with a variety of unexpected literary forms to capture different aspects of religions in the ancient world and the numerous historiographical issues involved in trying to study and represent them. As I think I’ve remarked on here before, I’m not convinced that many of Hopkins’ experiments actually work properly – the professional exponents of science fiction do time travel stories rather better, for example – but it’s amazing that it was done at all, and a great shame that this aspect was largely passed over by reviewers as quickly as possible with an air of great embarrassment. (more…)
If It Comes Up Mud…
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, tagged David Engels, Europe, historical analogies, Historikerstreit, politics on February 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I am not a gambling man – but I know a pretty sure thing when I see one. David Engels has written a substantial rejoinder to the critique of his ‘The EU Is Doomed, Because Rome’ argument written by Roland Steinacher and me, characterising it as an Althistorikerstreit, and concludes with the suggestion that time will show whether he’s right or not. Fair enough; if over the next 20-30 years Europe collapses into civil war – and it’s worth stressing that this is not about a return to warring nation states, according to Engels’ model, but about conflict between suburbs and districts within different regions of Europe – and then willingly surrenders in toto to a single charismatic autocrat, then he wins, and as the prophet of the new regime will presumably be in a position to have me locked up and my property confiscated. We win if it doesn’t. My real problem is deciding what the stakes should be; let’s say 10 litres of fresh water, as that will be worth its weight in gold in any post-apocalyptical wasteland you care to imagine, and will be perfectly serviceable in any case. (more…)
Bring On The Night
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, tagged David Engels, European Union, historical analogies, Roman Empire, Roman Republic on February 9, 2017| Leave a Comment »
“The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dead and buried, bears contemplation.” Thus G.R. Elton in The Practice of History, a book that I read at an impressionable age and so can still quote large chunks verbatim despite disagreeing with most of it. This line has always struck me as particularly, but interestingly, wrong; it encapsulates, tongue in cheek, the essentially conservative view of history as a means of escape into a past that is always conceived as preferable to the present – if only because it’s already over, so human suffering is more bearable (echoes again of Hegel’s account of history as the view from the shore of a distant shipwreck). It’s also linked to an explicit anti-determinism; there is no underlying logic to historical development, so the past speaks only to itself, not to the present, let alone to the future. Stuff happens, and we can grasp it properly only in retrospect. (more…)
Red Shoes
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, tagged academia, art, jazz, La La Land, life, The Red Shoes on February 3, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The most interesting and provocative comment on Rachel Moss’s wonderful blog post last month on Choosing Not To Give, on the sacrifices that women are expected to make in academic culture, was from Lucy Northenra: “How many women are remembered for their ability to never miss a school run compared to those who manage against all the odds to publish enough to be made professors?” Rachel’s response was equally passionate: “I may well only have one child, and during the week I see her for an hour in the morning and an hour and a half in the evening. Perhaps I might somehow write an extra 4* publication if I gave up one of those hours each day. For me, the cost isn’t worth it.”
Do you want to be remembered as a great scholar but a lousy parent – or not remembered at all except by your nearest and dearest? Why are you mucking about with plasticine instead of changing the world? Why are you wasting time on an article that five people will read with limited attention when you could be making a real difference to one or two individuals who completely depend on you? Such dilemmas go to the heart of academic ambitions and self-image.* Who do I think I really am, who do I want to be, and what to do about all the things that threaten to get in the way? (more…)
2016 Part 2: Abendlandesdämmerung
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged analogy, blogging, Brexit, higher education, historiography, quotations, Thucydides, translation on December 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »
See Part One here.
July A month of very conflicted emotions. On the one hand, back in Berlin; on the other hand, Brexit. On the one hand, the remarkable pleasure to be gained from the Ablehnung of a Ruf, and an opportunity to reflect on the sheer weirdness of German academic appointment processes; on the other hand, Brexit, and the thought that a job in Germany might be no bad thing. On the one hand, some actual research into cheap translations of Thucydides (though not in a REF-able publication, unless the rules change dramatically in the near future); on the other hand, my most-read post of the year on, you guessed it, Brexit… (more…)
Down the Rabbit-Hole
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, tagged David Markson, literature, quotations, Stacy Schiff, Thucydides on December 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Next to the originator of a great sentence is the first quoter of it. Said Emerson. Stories happen only to people who know how to tell them. Said Thucydides. A novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak, minus much of the novel, is money for old rope. Said David Markson. The quotation of a misquotation is still a misquotation. Said @Thucydiocy. (more…)
Sphinx 