Classics, Ancient History, Linguistics, Academia and more
Thomas Hardy was one of my favourite authors as a teenager (my friend and I had a challenge to try to read all of his novels, which we didn't quite manage). I never read much of his poetry, probably because 15-year-old me was more interested in stormy Victorian romances, but I was revisiting some of... Continue Reading →
This morning the blogosphere has obligingly brought me the answer to a question I couldn't answer yesterday. Natalia Elvira Astoreca, of the CREWS project in Cambridge, has written a blog post on the different ways that people learn the alphabet in modern Europe. A colleague asked me a question about this at my talk yesterday, which I... Continue Reading →
This Wednesday, I am giving the Classics and Ancient History research seminar at Exeter. The paper will be based on brand new research I have been doing on the dedications to the goddess Reitia at Este. Here is the abstract: The epigraphic culture of the Veneto region is full of contrasts, particularly between its two... Continue Reading →
This week I was excited to see the release of the first film by new company Barefaced Greek - and even more excited to see that the film was the opening speech of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. In their own words, Barefaced Greek is "a new initiative to create digital educational resources for the study of Classics and... Continue Reading →
This time last year, I set myself a reading challenge for 2016. My goal was to expand my horizons a bit, and discover authors and genres I might otherwise miss out on. You can see the original challenge list here - I think over all I did well, both in covering the items on the... Continue Reading →
It's the end of the last week of term here in Exeter, and we've had a whole host of fun end-of-term things: the Classics Christmas Ball run by the Classics Society, a staff Christmas party, and a Christmas quiz with my third-year linguists (with impressive Greek-themed baking, pictured below - many thanks to Abi!). I've... Continue Reading →
It's (just about) getting to the time of year when people are having job interviews for next academic year. I've had a few interviews over the past few years, some successful and some not, but I always found the best resources for interview preparation online. The most important thing (I think) is planning answers to... Continue Reading →
My review of Harry Potter and the Classical World by Richard A. Spencer is now online at the Classics for All online reading room. As you can tell from the review, I enjoyed this book great deal! It goes into an incredible amount of detail about the Classical allusions in the Harry Potter series - perhaps... Continue Reading →
Language is a problem for sci-fi. In any story involving contact with alien peoples or human civilisations from the distant future, there has to be a mechanism for understanding what everyone else is talking about, or most plots will never get off the ground. In Star Trek, you have the linguist Uhura, who has already presumably put... Continue Reading →
One of my favourite things about the Roman death course I'm teaching this year is that every week teaches me something I never knew before. A few weeks ago, while I was translating some epitaphs to use in a lecture, a particular word caught my eye. The inscription ran: Rottio hic sit[us es]t iuve/nili robore... Continue Reading →
Katherine McDonald 