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Hannah Čulík-Baird

@opietasanimi.com

♑️🌕 Associate Professor, Classics at UCLA. Cicero and the Rhetorics of Race, co-authored with Mathias Hanses, under contract with Yale University Press. Co-founder and editor, Res Difficiles, The Journal. She/her. resdifficiles.com opietasanimi.com

2091 Posts2369 Follower546 Folgt
Curtis Dozier@curtisdozier.bsky.social · last wk.

Last Spring I met a scholar who had been collecting references to ancient Greece and Rome in the Epstein files. There's a lot there and I invited them to write it up for Pharos. Content warnings apply. pharos.vassarspaces.net/2026/07/27/j...

Ancient Greece and Rome in the Epstein Files

The Epstein files reveal Epstein's deep fascination with Greco-Roman antiquity, making this notorious sex criminal a sobering illustration of how easily the prestige of

pharos.vassarspaces.net

vijay iyer@vijayiyer.bsky.social · 2mo ago

‘“I no longer consider Columbia University a safe place to work for Jews who dare to dissent from the political agenda of its most ardently pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian donors and trustees,” wrote Joseph Howley, a classics professor, in his claim.’ www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

‘We were attacked as bad Jews’: Columbia faculty who supported Gaza protests file claims with Trump’s antisemitism fund

Faculty who support Palestinian rights are applying for compensation, claiming they faced harassment as Jews for their positions

theguardian.com

Hannah Čulík-Baird@opietasanimi.com · 2mo ago

my latest (!): "The invention of blackness in Ovid's Metamorphoses" - is now out with postmedieval #OpenAccess link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The invention of blackness in Ovid’s Metamorphoses - postmedieval

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.750–2.365), the Roman poet gives an aetiology of blackness via the myth of Phaethon, whose failure to control his father’s solar chariot leads to the scorching of the earth....

link.springer.com

Hannah Čulík-Baird@opietasanimi.com · 3mo ago

just received proofs of my latest article, forthcoming with postmedieval journal: "The invention of blackness in Ovid's Metamorphoses." (a new reading of the Phaethon myth in Bks 1 and 2)

"The invention of blackness in Ovid's Metamorphoses." Abstract: In Ovid's Metamorphoses (1.750-2.365), the Roman poet gives an aetiology for the invention of blackness via the myth of Phaethon, whose failure to control his father's solar chariot leads to the scorching of the earth. This article situates Ovid's myth of Phaethon within ancient discourses of race, contextualizing the sequence within ancient environmental theory, racial affect theory, and the melancholic tensions of Rome's enslaving practices. The article concludes with an analysis of the reception of Ovid's myth of Phaethon in Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth (1994).
Hannah Čulík-Baird@opietasanimi.com · 2mo ago

to say the quiet part out loud: most PhD programs fund grad students with a mix of fellowships and teaching, but mostly through teaching. if TAs are replaced by AI, most PhD programs will cease to exist

Miriam Posner@miriamposner.com · 2mo ago

The implicit “problem” these white papers are dealing with is the TAs’ success at winning a favorable employment contract. The “solution” these white papers propose is to divest from reliance on grad students as teachers. Instead, we’ll use AI, undergrads, and anyone else we can exploit.

Miriam Posner@miriamposner.com · 2mo ago

Among the recommendations in the white papers: 1) increase the use of unpaid undergrad “learning assistants”; 2) use AI to augment TA labor; 3) award control of TA allocation to central admin; 4) ask administrative units to take over TA pedagogy classes; 5) “decouple” grad employment from education

Drew Mackie@drewgmackie.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is my Hi-C-biscus. It’s literally a hibiscus variety created and sold to promote the drink Hi-C. Unsure if that’s a great ad campaign, but I’ve successfully moved and repotted mine and it’s blooming for the first time in two years.

One large pink hibiscus blossom in the foreground, invisible ghost in background.