Welcome to the live tweet of this week's meeting, led by @rympasco, where we will discuss Erik Robinson's "'The Slaves were Happy': High School Latin and the Horrors of Classical Studies" for Eidolon, as well as a @splcenter article, "Teaching Hard History."
Robinson's article can be found from @eidolon_journal here: bit.ly/2PL2GDv
The @splcenter article is on their website, here: bit.ly/2BLKLS5
The @splcenter article is on their website, here: bit.ly/2BLKLS5
@rympasco begins by addressing Robinson's article, asking us to think about potential issues about how Latin is taught now, how we would teach ancient slavery generally, what our emphasis would be, and what's at stake.
@rympasco asks us to also consider how the way we teach ancient slavery bears on modern slavery; when our students hear the word "slavery," they think of modern slavery. We have to be aware of that always.
The use of the passive voice in some of these examples stresses the whitewashing here of agency of the enslaver, watering down the experiences/realities they discuss. (cf. Latin for the New Millenium, pp. 51-2)
Some textbooks (cf. Athenaze) cite Aristophanes as potential source material for the experience/id of slaves--very obviously problematic. Scenes are given as "slapstick" that actually contain more insidious realities than their sanitized translation would imply.
Robinson's article discusses, above all else, the depiction of slavery in the Cambridge Latin Course. @rympasco asks: what were OUR experiences learning about ancient slavery in Latin/Greek courses or otherwise?
@leannalovee and @i_nurmi both share that they had little to no exposure to ancient slavery in beginning Latin; no real exposure until upper-level courses. @Brododaktylos agrees that, even starting languages in undergrad, slavery didn't come up until upper-level courses.
@rympasco points out that the CLC does address the brutality of slavery in the textbook, but it's much later on, after the reader has already been immersed in a sort of "happy slave" narrative.
@Brododaktylos shares the fact that she's had to often remind students that you can't translate "servus" as "servant." The "happy slave" narrative is important to knock down because it is still something people try to use today about modern slavery.
@rympasco "some people would like to see ancient slavery as something distant and strictly in the past." Textbooks run parallel to racist discourse that insists upon the "good" conditions under which ancient slaves were kept.
@rympasco when we teach our students about slavery in the ancient world and to pick up on the problematic depictions of them in textbooks, we equip them to knock down racist arguments/jargon they see in the real world--or at least to recognize them.
@mercury_witch raises questions about how to teach things like Plautus; has never taught for a professor that REALLY discussed depiction of slaves/slavery in Plautus; more often professors have said the depiction of slaves would have been "cathartic" for slaves in the audience
@rympasco minstrel shows/the jim crow character are not dissimilar to the way slaves act in ancient comedy or the way slaves are depicted in textbooks.
@duxfeminafacti9 points out that Wheelock actually doesn't talk about slavery. @Brododaktylos shares that she has taught Wheelock before, and actually wrote her own Latin stories for students to read to discuss slaves/slavery.
@rympasco returns to Robinson's article and his discussion of teaching Caesar. What do we think of teaching Caesar? @ala_Camillae teaching Caesar for AP was a disservice to Caesar as well as the Aeneid, which was rushed in alongside it.
@ala_Camillae approaching Caesar's commentaries is incredibly difficult; describing Caesar as a kind of Anthropologist is a "cop-out"; he's not an anthropologist, he's a colonizer.
@rympasco it's not just things or stories from cultures Caesar's bringing back to Rome with him--it's people. @ala_Camillae since Caesar is a relatively easy and relatively "boring" text, it's that much more difficult to get into the complexities of the actual atrocities therein
@ala_Camillae the true horror of what Caesar is doing is waved away because students internalize similar phrases that are repeated throughout the commentaries (sacking a city etc).
@rympasco shares experience with a teacher who taught Caesar by essentially ridiculing him--the arrogance of what he's doing etc.; but though that might make things more interesting for students, it completely undercuts the horror of the actualities of his campaigns.
@rympasco we use Caesar as a fun jumping-off point into Latin literature that we like @ala_Camillae or history that we like. Students gravitate towards his role in politics and his murder, not the details of his campaigns. Keeping their interest makes it tempting to gravitate...
...towards focusing on the more "fun" aspects of teaching Caesar rather than going into details of the texts they're reading themselves. @Brododaktylos discussing why he wrote what he did means you can also talk about why he makes his texts so impersonal.
@Brododaktylos Caesar gives us a distant account, and as an instructor you can interrogate that. Why is Caesar downplaying/depersonalizing his own actions such that they become almost mundane? Interrogate that.
@ala_Camillae the AP exam also poses huge problems to high school instructors. You're restricted in what you actually have time to teach, let alone really discuss, and students are studying two very difficult texts--one prose, one poetry (the Aeneid).
@mercury_witch there is no Latin text, period, that isn't implicated in these same issues. You can't read any ancient author that doesn't tie into these discussions. And if you want your students to read Latin "in the wild," you need to address these issues in the text.
@mercury_witch other "easy" Latin authors are no less implicated in ancient atrocities than Caesar himself; your role is to interrogate the text as you teach it, have the difficult conversations as you go, no matter what you're teaching.
@Brododaktylos the problem isn't what *texts* you choose in the ancient world, it's how you choose to approach them. @i_nurmi we pride ourselves on teaching students the humanities; we can't boil Latin down to definitions & grammar.
@ala_Camillae we need to stop using Caesar as a grammar textbook. Not "Caesar is great for teaching the ablative absolute" etc. Caesar also /killed people./ He enslaved people. An "unreal amount" of people.
@rympasco Caesar's not just *a* colonizer. He is *the* colonizer.
@mercury_witch a big problem in Classical Studies in general is that it tends to separate language courses from Classics courses. Until students are ready to be in a seminar-type course, they tend to learn how to read language and grammar, not how to do a close reading.
@mercury_witch There is no reason you can't have these discussions simultaneously while discussing the grammar constructions and translation of a text. In fact, you're doing students a disservice by *not* combining those skill sets. That's what they need to study Classics.
@rympasco this is where we have agency to come forward to departments and try to make a change in how these things are taught across the board. @ala_Camillae when it comes to using original historical documents, we have resources we don't often use as we should--e.g. graffiti
@ala_Camillae we have lots of texts, but things like graffiti provide a lens we are otherwise never given. We should stretch our perspective not just to the text but to complements of the text, even introductory language courses.
@duxfeminafacti9 recently did an exercise using graffiti and included graffiti written by slaves. Students surprised to read things written by slaves, thinking there are no documents by them.
@ala_Camillae to say we don't have any "documents" from slaves and women erases the same history that the Romans tried to erase simply b/c we are preoccupied with elevating the texts we read/analyze for the AP exam (etc.)
@mercury_witch the SPLC article was important too because our students will absolutely bring associations with modern slavery with them to the classroom when learning about ancient slavery. The anxiety many classicists/textbooks display to distance ancient slavery from modern...
...slavery is not only not useful, but really harmful. @i_nurmi the way we harp on this parallels a lot of the same teaching errors the SPLC article points out--particularly the idea that "we tend to subscribe to a progressive view"; e.g. we always teach Spartacus
@rympasco textbooks will try to make Romans in particular look like "progressive enslavers"--citing rates of freeing slaves, ways people are enslaved etc; also focusing too much on the economic basis of slavery, undercutting brutality.
@rympasco the emphasis on the differences between modern and ancient slavery is all too often used as an apologia.
@ala_Camillae instead of focusing on the differences, perhaps we should start off by stressing the similarities, stressing those, and then discussing some differences.
@Brododaktylos raises a question to all of twitter: How many of you have thought about writing a textbook? And if a lot of people have, why is this something people never talk about? #classicstwitter #teachancient Responses encouraged!
Thank you as always for reading this week's live tweet, brought to you by @mercury_witch . We'll see you next Thursday for more discussion of pedagogical issues! #teachancient
