If you are interested in Classics, then this blog is for you. It really is as simple as that. Please read about my different blog genres below.
Reviewing the Classics
Book reviews normally deal with new publications. In academia, scholars review the research publications of their colleagues in specialized print or online journals. Reading reviews is the best way to keep track of what is going on in a discipline; being reviewed is an important sign of collegial recognition; and writing reviews is an effective method to actually read (and not simply skim over) a recent publication and think about it in depth.
In this blog I turn to a review genre for which there is no place in traditional review media: the reviewing of ‘old’ books. I call this “Reviewing the Classics”. The ambiguity of the term ‘Classics’ is intended: it refers both to the discipline called ‘Classics’ (viz., the study of the ancient Greco-Roman world) and to the use of the term ‘classic’ for a book that is considered to be of lasting value (no matter whether it was written fifty or 2500 years ago).
I review ‘classical’ translations of ancient classics as well as ‘old’ pieces of research that are (for one reason or another) considered to be classics in the field of Classics.
Exhibition Reports
Classics is an extremely broad field that includes the study of textual as well as material sources. Classicists are literary scholars, philologists, linguists, translators, archaeologists, historians, etc. – but few of them are all of this. Professionally I am a Greek philologist and a literary scholar, but my interests span much more widely.
In this blog I write reports on exhibitions that deal with the ancient Greco-Roman world, using my core competence as a literary scholar and philologist, and at the same time venturing into territories about which I wish I knew more than I actually do.
Further topics
Anything that comes to my mind and that is (somehow, remotely…) linked to Classics will be dealt with. Provided that I find the time and the energy to do so. Suggestions are always welcome.
From a scholar’s office. Photograph taken by Silvio Bär (2019).
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