This article proposes a new understanding of the etymology of histrio. It is likely that it originally came from Greek histor, as has been demonstrated by Szemerényi 1975. However, the conclusions presented by this scholar must be slightly revised, in particular the distinction he establishes between histrio and ludius. While the second word has…[Read more]

Johann Joachim Winckelmann not only idealized Greek Classical art, but also the whole ancient Classical Greek world in a way that went well beyond what could be envisaged as historical knowledge. His influence on the history of contemporary literature and on classical scholarship, however, is not an obvious topic to scrutinize, since he was almost…[Read more]

In this episode of The History of European Theatre, Phil Rowe interviewed me on the evolution of Greek theatre after the Classical period and the existence of dramatic performances in Greek in Roman Italy.

The article shows that the character of Odysseus in Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes constitutes a crucial element for the redefinition of the concept of ‘nobility’. This figure has already been seen to promote a new definition of the concept, but previous analyses have tended to focus only on one or the other of the two plays, as Odysseus appea…[Read more]

This paper looks beyond Ptolemaic Alexandria to consider the literary dynamics of another Hellenistic kingdom, Attalid Pergamon. I offer a detailed study of the fragmentary opening of Nicander’s Hymn to Attalus (fr. 104 Gow–Schofield) in three sections. First, I consider its generic status and compare its encomiastic strategies with those of T…[Read more]

In an early version of his article “Harlem Literati in the Twenties,” first published in the Saturday Evening Review in 1940, Langston Hughes offers the curious suggestion that Wallace Thurman was the ghostwriter of Men, Marriage and Me (erroneously written as Men, Women and Checks in Hughes’ article), the tell-all memoir ostensibly by the origi…[Read more]

THEATER OF THE PEOPLE:
SPECTATORS AND SOCIETY IN ANCIENT ATHENS

Greek drama has been subject to ongoing textual and historical interpretation, but surprisingly little scholarship has examined the people who composed the theater audiences in Athens. Typically, scholars have presupposed an audience of Athenian male citizens viewing dramas…[Read more]

Projects that bridge the humanities and sciences often attract attention from journalists, but evoke dismay from humanists who feel that their subjects of expertise have been misinterpreted. For the humanities to reclaim a place of pride in public conversation, humanists themselves need to embrace interdisciplinarity and take the lead in this…[Read more]

Highlights and insights from the author’s unique Global Faculty Development position at Kansai University in Osaka from 2016-2020. The article, published in Australia, summarizes data on the expressed needs of faculty clients, cites international research on English-Medium Instruction programs, and shows how globalization pressures reach the level…[Read more]

Review of Kings, Countries, Peoples: Selected Studies on the Achaemenid Empire, by Pierre Briant, translated by Amélie Kuhrt. Oriens et Occidens, vol. 26. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017. Pp. xxv + 633. €99.

The open-cbgm library is an open-source software implementation of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) designed with customizability and performance on large-scale collations in mind. The library is free to use or modify and has been tested on real data from the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) of the New Testament. This presentation first…[Read more]

The current mechanisms by which scholars and their work are evaluated across higher education are unsustainable and, we argue, increasingly corrosive. Relying on a limited set of proxy measures, current systems of evaluation fail to recognize and reward the many dependencies upon which a healthy scholarly ecosystem relies. Drawing on the work of…[Read more]

This is the published introduction to the born-digital, open-access, peer-reviewed *Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities*. More a rationale and scholarly study of both Digital Pedagogy and DPiH in general, this introduces articulates the uses, theory, rationale about digital pedagogy as it has been shaped in U.S. institutions since the explosion of…[Read more]

English abstract: A paper on Facebook and ubicuous online social networking as a radical intervention on the elitist social networks which were at the origin of Zuckerberg’s stroke of genius in computer-mediated communication and in social self-presentation. This is done by way of a critique of David Fincher’s film ‘The Social Network’ based on…[Read more]

In this essay, I shall examine VR technology so as to ascertain the kind of human-technology relations therein. This will be done using the framework provided by Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek (who are currently seen as postphenomenologists). My choice of VR technology, as an instantiation of technological advancement, is due to its impact on…[Read more]

In this essay, I examined the idea of ‘technological revolution’ to confirm whether it connotes a sort of incorporation of existing technologies as new ones emerges or whether it portrays a ‘sharp discontinuity’ from the prior technologies. I began by exploring the dictionary definitions of ‘revolution’ in order to appropriate its usage in re…[Read more]