Content & Culture
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A Brief History of “Great Books”
Talia Boylan If you find yourself tasked with teaching a Great Books class (and if you have a Classics PhD, the odds that this will happen at some point in your career are relatively high), you might find yourself wondering where the idea for such a class came from in the first instance. The following…
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Difficult Topics
There’s really no way to avoid difficult topics from rape to incest to infanticide to genocide to suicide in the Classics classroom. These are central to the material we read and study. In my opinion, it is unethical to pretend they aren’t there. So the question is: how do we address them responsibly? By “responsibly”…
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Libyc for Students of Latin
Coming soon. In the meantime, here’s the 20 page handout I used to teach ancient North African indigenous history and the Libyc language to students with no background: —James F. Patterson
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Punic for Students of Latin
Coming soon. In the meantime, here’s a handout I used to teach “Punic” history and introduce students to the language: —James F. Patterson
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Teaching Roman Africa
This five minute video is largely an abbreviated version of the talk I gave at CANE in 2022. <video coming soon>
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From Dido to Elissa
To say that North Africa was integral to the history of Rome is hardly controversial. Much of what has been said about ancient North Africa itself, however, is another story. Overt or implicit colonialist attitudes permeate the Latin and subsequent European literature. In turn, decolonization often informs how Rome is remembered in North Africa, if…
Classics Teaching 