don't miss out! the deadline for proposals to the ever amazing, annual Queer and Trans Studies in Religion conference is ONE MONTH from today, August 15! studyofreligion.ucr.edu/holstein-cha...

CW: sexual assault On my second rewatch of Nolan’s Odyssey I had in mind Dr. Emily Wilson’s critique in her LRB review about the film not having any sex (“There are no sex scenes”). The comment is directed primarily toward Odysseus who does not have onscreen sex with Calypso or Circe. +

Just rewatched Nolan's The Odyssey and I'm firmly convinced that the film, as a whole, is about viewing the Trojan War through the eyes of the subaltern (Athena = the enslaved woman), a perspective that Odysseus gains as he sees the consequences of his cleverness and must reinterpret his world. +

How can slavery studies reshape the ongoing quests for the historical Jesus? We invite paper proposals to the conference "Jesus and Slavery: New Quests, Methods, and Perspectives" to be held in 27–20 August 2027 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Proposals are due 31 August.

I'm currently in Northern Ontario doing some archival work on a project about the teaching of the bible at residential schools in Canada in the 19th century. Did you know that residential schools were not a phenomenon unique to Turtle Island? Check out this helpful resource:

Residential Schools and Indigenous Peoples: From Genocide via Education to the Possibilities for Processes of Truth, Restitution, Reconciliation, and Reclamation

Residential Schools and Indigenous Peoples provides an extended multi-country focus on the transnational phenomenon of genocide of Indigenous peoples through residential schooling. It analyses how suc...

routledge.com

Hey faculty! A colleague is teaching their very first undergrad course. What one piece of advice would you offer? 📚

Keegan-Michael Key: Huh What

Alt: Keegan-Michael Key as teacher asking Huh What, Black man with very receding hair line wearing white collared shirt with brown tie and blue pen in shirt pocket

static.klipy.com

Dissertation: submitted ✅

The diarrhea lettuce company, Taylor Farms, uses slave labor contracted from the Arizona Dept. of Corrections. The backbreaking labor is often performed by imprisoned Mexican nationals who would be otherwise ineligble to work in the US. They are paid $1.50 an hour.

The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor

The lettuce-producing Taylor Farms was linked to the widespread use of prison labor before its involvement in a cyclospora outbreak.

futurism.com

Everyone's comparing Nolan's Odyssey to Homer, but I think there's much more richness The ancient Greeks adapted the Odyssey into ART While these images might appear static to us, I want to walk through how an ancient Greek saw art: AS DYNAMIC STORYTELLING like our films 1/13

Spider-Man is 100% worth it.

Available for free download through Aug. 3rd -- Phillip W. Stokes's "The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature," in the Cambridge Elements series. #Classics #AncientBlueSky www.cambridge.org/core/element...

The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature

Cambridge Core - History of Religion - The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature

cambridge.org

Ha! We need an academic book blurb version of this

Jon Adcock@jonadcock.bsky.social · last wk.

Book blurbs deciphered #booksky

Very pleased to hear the news that I received a two-year SSHRC Insight Development Grant from the government of Canada for my research project on the importance of death by suicide in early Christianity.

I have a master's degree in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, I've studied the 'Odyssey' in Ancient Greek, and I've been writing about the ancient world for over a decade. This is my exhaustive review of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'. #Odyssey #classics talesoftimesforgotten.com/2026/07/23/a...

An Ancient Historian's Breakdown of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' - Tales of Times Forgotten

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is perhaps the most highly anticipated new film of the 2020s. It has already received near-universal acclaim from film critics and earned more at the box office in its ...

talesoftimesforgotten.com

Interested in martyrdom? Virginia Burrus just published a new Cambridge Element book called “Martyrdom as Witness in Late Antique Christian Literature.” It’s free to download until Aug 4th! Check it out: www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature

Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature

cambridge.org

Appendix B. "Reading is how you learn new words." They do not want to encounter any friction whatsoever when reading. They want their books to be fast fashion. They want disposable, forgettable, ultra processed books. I do not know how to explain this any clearer.

It’s here 📖 ✍️ “Scribal Worlds: Scholarship and classification in cuneiform cultures” is out today from UCL Press— in print & free open access PDF. Co-editing it with Jay and Eduardo, in honor of Niek Veldhuis, has been one of the most meaningful projects. uclpress.co.uk/book/scribal...

Scribal Worlds

Scribal Worlds: Scholarship and classification in cuneiform cultures delves into the history of the earliest writing cultures of the ancient Middle East, bridging disciplines that include ancient hist...

uclpress.co.uk

Excited to have another article published before the end of my PhD! This time in a new interdisciplinary journal from @academic.oup.com. It’s titled “Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Bathsheba and the Geography of Women’s Fear” and is another little insight into my PhD thesis. doi.org/10.1093/9780...

I'm excited to announce that my book, God in the Flesh: Materially and Christology in Late Antique Gaul, will be published with Fortress Press! #medievalsky #skystorians #academicsky #lateantiquity

Out today. it means a lot for this to be published on Juneteenth and before Father’s Day. classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/jav...

The summer PI is out! Erika Valdivieso discusses Latin American classical reception, Virgil & her new book. Then, ancient Cypriot pigeons, a new game board from medieval Morocco, @proflroach.bsky.social remembers Rosamond McKitterick, ancient world journals by @yaleclassicslib.bsky.social & more.

Pasts Imperfect (6.18.26)

This week, classicist Erika Valdivieso discusses new directions in Latin American classical reception, Virgil, and her new book, Empire’s Companion: Virgilian Epics from Colonial Iberoamerica. Then, a...

pasts-imperfect.ghost.io

So this is out in the world! And I get to shout out so many people whose work I admire too (not that they need it) 😀

Do you work in late antiquity? Like church councils? Appreciate northwestern Anatolia? Then you should submit a paper for this Sept '26 online conference on Nicaea hosted by the SBL Greco-Roman Religions unit! www.samreligions.org/virtual-conf...

The best part of being an academic for me is the writing. Amid all of the spelling errors, the jolted syntax, and half-baked ideas, I find myself feeling the most alive, the most joyful, the most human. To trade all of that for a quick product made by GenAI would make me feel useless too. +

This thread! And, ughhh: literally just yesterday an email from an academic I trust implicitly included chatGPT summary of X's argument on Y issue---I'm harder to shock than you'd think but that shocked me

Crystal Fleming クリスタル@alwaystheself.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +

Late-night paper writing. Still incredibly disappointed that Aristotle's "De part. anim." does not feature any party animals.

Ok, this is pretty cool news, & I have some thoughts. #Augustine #sermons #LateAntiquity #MedievalSky www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-...

Two new sermons by St Augustine discovered

In a Latin manuscript from a monastery in Poland, a Latin scholar from Würzburg has found two new sermons by the Doctor of the Church, St Augustine. He is currently working with an edition company on ...

uni-wuerzburg.de

if you're doing a dissertation in trans and/or queer studies in religion, be sure to check out the Holstein Dissertation fellowship -- applications are due soon! aarweb.org/award/holste...

new Element in Religion in Late Antiquity coming your way in August from the one and only Virginia Burrus! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature

Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Martyrdom as Witness in Late Ancient Christian Literature

cambridge.org

let me know if you want a copy!

Yale Classics Library@yaleclassicslib.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Philological Encounters Vol. 11 Nos. 1-2: Special Issue: edited by J. Gregory Given and Daniel Picus (2026) brill.com/view/journal... The Critical Edition in the Infrastructure of Philology @greggiven.bsky.social @drewjakeprof.bsky.social @yitzl.bsky.social @danielpicus.bsky.social