Tessera
Folgen

Daniel C. Smith

@dcsmith.bsky.social

Assistant Professor at Whitman College. Writing on bodies, rituals, and social history in the Roman Empire

414 Posts2301 Follower617 Folgt
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · last wk.

Given that we are all upset today about Anthropic-shredding-books, I’ll add that I address this here, and it’s part of the same infrastructure threatening the preservation and profession of history but people don’t want to talk about that if the same industry is paying for their research.

It may be tempting to see value in projects such as the Schmidt Foundation - that's Eric Schmidt of Google - funding a fellowship in Al at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Musk Foundation's support of the Scroll Prize to use Al in reconstructing ancient texts in the burnt scrolls of Herculaneum. But these projects are simply two among countless others that have been seeding Al into museums and historical research for well over a decade. Even more egregious is the case of Al companies buying and destroying rare books en masse in the process of scanning them for data. In the context of the dire austerity we are witnessing, the juggernaut of tech money seems impossible to resist. But the public should know the dangers of ceding the precious work of peering into the past to those whose chief aims are to exploit it for data and build visions of our collective history to their own liking.
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · last wk.

“AI has become a blunt instrument in the enterprise to impose precisely this form of sanctioned ignorance about America’s past...Taken together, [Trump’s & Musk’s] plans amount to a one-two punch, history in the hands of the corporate state.” My latest on AI & history: www.salon.com/2026/07/28/t...

@rsutaustin.bsky.social · last mo.

The Department of Religious Studies is pleased to announce a new addition to its faculty, Dr. Matthew Larsen! We're excited to have him join our outstanding faculty cohort as an Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions. Read more about him at the link. tinyurl.com/2s3bs2yp

Bild
Greg Given@greggiven.bsky.social · 2mo ago

University admins, very solemnly: “To protect the mission, it is our sacred duty to ensure that this pile of money survives—nay, grows!—for the rest of human civilization.“ Also university admins: “We’re noticing that books are kinda out rn? So we’re 86’ing three of the four libraries.“

Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Just had Canvas stop working as I was typing comments on a student paper. I now can’t access anyone’s work or grades. Strangely, this never happened back when I used a grade book and had students email me their papers, a system no shareholders extracted money from.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 3mo ago

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Daniel C. Smith@dcsmith.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Question for my NT colleagues: does anyone have easy access to the Jewish Annotated New Testament and could tell me the print page numbers of David Frankfurter's Revelation introduction?

Daniel C. Smith@dcsmith.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Senior thesis advising has to be the most rewarding part of undergraduate teaching. And now that I think of it, that is probably why the work functionally amounts to unpaid labor.

Greg Given@greggiven.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The TA is, far and away, the strongest NTT faculty union contract I've ever seen. Includes not just the 20% raises (as if that weren't enough!) but: - Paid prof development leave (i.e., sabbaticals) - Course releases for union service - Union security (fair share fees) - PI rights - Academic Freedom

Dan Greene@dmgreene.bsky.social · 4mo ago

A thousand NYU contingent faculty went on strike Monday and today they have a real contract with real security in one of the most expensive places on earth

Dan Conway@magisterconway.bsky.social · 5mo ago

So, um... this is bad. Really bad. I looked at the letters that were translated by the AI, and the very first one I found was almost entirely hallucination. Thread:

Sarah E. Bond@sarahebond.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The new project mapping 7,000+ ancient letters is impressive: romanletters.org . The database & geolocation (although noting Pleiades rather than just AWMC would be nice) are great. But I absolutely cannot get over use of AI—however transparent—for translation. 🚨 Value human translators 🚨

AI translation transparency Modern English translations were produced using Claude (Anthropic), working from either the Latin/Greek original or an existing 19th-century English version. Translation work was guided by two internal documents: a translation guide covering late antique epistolary conventions, rhetorical register, and how to handle common formulaic phrases; and a modern voice guide specifying tone, vocabulary level, and how to avoid archaism while remaining faithful to the original. Al-generated translations are clearly marked in the interface. They are provided for accessibility and research convenience, not as authoritative scholarly translations. The original Latin or Greek is preserved alongside every translation, and 19th-century English versions are shown where available. Corrections from domain experts are welcome.
Sarah Porter@portersf.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Parts of Antioch's cemeteries were erratically excavated in the 1930s. I gathered that data and published it, most of it for the first time. If your research touches on Antioch's cemeteries, have fun exploring this piece and the supplementary appendices! ajaonline.org/article/exhu...

Exhuming the Archive: Examining the Cemeteries of Antioch-on-the-Orontes Through Legacy Archaeological Research | April 2026 (130.2) | American Journal of Archaeology

Parts of ancient Antioch (modern Antakya, Türkiye) were excavated from 1932 to 1939 by a team led by Princeton University. Key findings were published in five volumes, but much more data remains in th...

ajaonline.org

Sarah E. Bond@sarahebond.bsky.social · 5mo ago

My latest for @hyperallergic.com is on Egyptian Blue—& a new study by Mishael Quraishi which prices out the Roman cost & manual labor needed to paint the “Blue Room” at Pompeii. Shout outs & thx: @hilarybeckertxny.bsky.social , @diffendale.bsky.social , @chapps.bsky.social, @valentinadl.bsky.social!

How Much Did It Cost to Paint a Pompeii Room Egyptian Blue?

The price of covering a room in the prized pigment was equal to between 50% and 90% of a Roman legionary's annual salary, a new study estimates.

hyperallergic.com

Daniel C. Smith@dcsmith.bsky.social · 6mo ago

My colleague @rhcraig.bsky.social is in the next issue of JAAR with a fascinating comparative study of Early Christian preaching manuals, African-American homiletics, and early Buddhist preaching: academic.oup.com/jaar/article...

Preacher and Audience Studies: Reading the Dharmabhāṇakaparivarta and Sukhavihāraparivarta of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra as Homiletic Manuals

ABSTRACT. The study of homiletics, preachers, and their audiences constitutes an important subfield in Christian studies. In Buddhist studies, the study of

academic.oup.com