Thread by @Hestia_BU

Welcome to the newest live tweet of this week's meeting, led by @mercury_witch, where we continue our discussion on @splcenter's "Teaching Hard History" (cc: @ProfJeffries) & also discuss @danibostick's @Medium article, "Teaching Slavery in the High School Latin Classroom"

@mercury_witch begins by passing out a handout, "SPLC: Teaching Hard History" and recaps our discussion last week, which focused mostly on Erik Robinson's @eidolon_journal "'The Slaves Were Happy': High School Latin and the Horrors of Classical Studies."

Moving onto "Teaching Hard History," she summarizes the "seven key problems:"

1. We teach about slavery w/o context, preferring to present the good news before the bad.

2. We tend to subscribe to a progressive view of American history that can acknowledge flaws only to the extent that they have been addressed and solved. Our vision of growing ever “more perfect” stands in the way of our need to face the continuing legacy of the past.

We tend to clean up ancient slavery - it's not race-based; comfortable postions like pedagogues. What are your perspectives? @i_nurmi answers: yes, we even do it in the ancient world. Romans were better than Greeks wrt slavery. @mercury_witch we also QUALIFY slavery. The WORST

jobs were given to hardened criminals" as if it makes a difference. @rympasco mentions how manumission is often taught, w the idea of making the Romans seem more progressive wrt slavery. @mercury_witch students come in with a very forgiving - even aggrandized - view of Classics

recounts when she taught Seneca: students were very forgiving of Seneca, and she was surprised - students should be ANGRY. Surprised by how willing they were to forgive when American slavery is such recent history

@rympasco if view of history is it gets progressive over time, it's easier to handwave away egs from past

3. We teach about the American enslavement of Africans as an exclusively southern institution.

Thoughts: @mercury_witch we teach slavery like it doesn't exist anymore

@rympasco we view it as a "fact of existence" - @mercury_witch even neutralize it - since slavery was a major factor in society @Brododaktylos brings up the argument often used against American slavery: how Africans sold their fellow Africans into slavery.

@mercury_witch: the fact that manumission exists almost seems to sterilize it. @Brododaktylos everyone was doing it. Yeah it wasn't racially based, yeah, by some definition everyone was doing it, that doesn't mean it's okay???

@mercury_witch bringing up modern slavery when teaching ancient slavery is nerve-wracking - worried you might f*ck it up - but @danibostick's article shows how the two can complement each other very well

4. We rarely connect slavery to the ideology that grew up to sustain and protect it: white supremacy.

@mercury_witch this is terrifying, bc we do this to CHILDREN. @ala_Camillae recounts experience from middle school, where she was made to reenact the Underground Railroad:

she walked in a group, head down, through the woods, while adults yelled constantly, to get students to lift heads/react so they could be sent back to the plantation @i_nurmi recounts how experience where his middle school "reenacted the Holocaust," where teachers were the Nazis

@leannalovee recounts experience where her class was split between Jewish people and non-Jewish people, to reenact the Holocaust trains - "Jewish students" were shut into CLOSETS with music playing
@mercury_witch

5. We often rely on pedagogy poorly suited to the topic.
6. We rarely make connections to the present.
@Brododaktylos how to you approach modern slavery as a white, untrained graduate student @rympasco I guess you train yourself @mercury_witch that's still very difficult

@rympasco there's scholarship out there to gather and other scholars to talk to (s/o @dugankp). @mercury_witch thinks she learned most about slavery in middle school, when not emotionally ready for it

7. We tend to center on the white experience when we teach about slavery.
@mercury_witch when applied to the ancient world, we tend to center on the slaveowners. @i_nurmi since we don't have many preserved writing from slaves tendency is to focus on the authors, unfortunately

@mercury_witch seems like a crutch, instead of putting into work to uncover thoughts/lives of slaves - @i_nurmi like scholars uncover lives of women - why not use Pliny's letters on bad slaveowners to decenter text/refocus on enslaved persons (@ala_Camillae tried in intmd prose)

@duxfeminafacti9 used an exercise in World of Rome (source @ala_Camillae) that compares different letters Pliny writes about slavery

Suggestions for doing better:
1. Improve Instruction About American Slavery and Fully Integrate It Into U.S.

2. Use Original Historical Documents

@mercury_witch talks about how we teach ancient comedy and the horrifying idea that slaves viewing performances as cathartic @i_nurmi Terence was most certainly a slave; Plautus was likely a slave;

3. Make Textbooks Better

@mercury_witch what can we do to improve textbooks; references how Roman c @Brododaktylos ? last week - who wants to write textbooks, and how to do we do this; @rympasco collaborate with others - make a communal document - things that are always taught,

to ensure we teach it well/future grad students don't struggle w it @Brododaktylos references BU students' communal study guides and uploading curricula, exercises, syllabi - @mercury_witch testimonia! - etc. For most of her time in program, teaching has been solo enterprise

but doesn't have to be the case

@mercury_witch moves onto "Teaching Slavery in the High School Latin Classroom" - article made it feel v accessible, even easy, to do this. She summarizes some of @danibostick's initial exercises: 1. Having students write about assoc w "property"

2. introducing concepts such as "social death" and "absolute domination" (source: Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson’s "Slavery and Social Death") @i_nurmi so impressive, since it encapsulates the reality of enslaved persons so much better than "enslavement" - it IS death

@mercury_witch links it to "infamia," another concept like social death @i_nurmi ramifications of slavery don't just die w death of institutions - trauma, institutional measures, etc. no less true of Roman @ala_camillae also consider the lives of freedpersons post-manumission

freedpersons are social outcasts, are forced to stay in contact w the enslavers, @duxfeminafacti9 even to work for their enslavers for specific days during the year, @i_nurmi and even have to take enslaver's name. @ala_Camillae Not the mention the power difference bw them

& their children, and the same the free child of a freedperson might feel. e.g. Pliny, in his letter about Larcius Macedo, mentions how he either "remembered too little that his father was a slave, or remembered too much" @i_nurmi Horace was also v anxious abt being ostracized

bc his father was a freedman. Back on the topic of comparing ancient & American slavery, a cohort talks abt the importance of emphasizing their difference, since the conflation of the two was so essential to white supremacist ideology;

cohort also stresses how slavery continues to exist bc the 13th amendment allows for the enslavement of convicts (cf. @13THFilm) @mercury_witch also mentions the impact of these discussions, since some students may have been trafficked

cohort: teachers should never forget about the experiences of students; cohort never identified as Jewish, never identified as enslaver, bc there may be students in class who identify w difficult aspect of ancient world/individuals that were oppressed.

@mercury_witch mentions how, when teaching Juvenal in World of Rome, she paused to point out the casual antisemitism in the text and discuss how difficult the lives of Jewish people were in Rome

cohort: talking about ancient and American slavery allows you to talk about colonialism. Making the connection bw slavery and supremacy of one ethnicity and culture in economic and physical enslavement objectification

@Brododaktylos British empire considered itself as the descendents of the Roman empire/Roman colonialism - comes alongside idea of Neoclassicism, which always seems to have problem of taking precedent from ancient world to justify horrific act

cohort: how free are you to make comparisons b/w ancient and American slavery? what is your goal for drawing comparison? re the second question: @mercury_witch: it's a way to desanitize depictions of slavery and decenter the conversation from the enslavers

@ala_Camillae: it’s also something students are naturally curious about. Every time she’s taught World of Rome, a student has asked about the connection. @Brododaktylos: students already have a frame of comparison based on their prior education wrt slavery.

& it's important to close the distance bw the ancient reality & modern perceptions @ian_nurmi it gives students a way to contextualize the past & the present. It’s our responsibility as teachers to help students see enslaved persons as people/consider the consequences of slavery

cohort offers a future discussion idea: taking into account minority religions and how we encounter them in texts, discuss them, and teach them

Thank you for reading our thread, brought to you by @ala_Camillae. We hope you enjoyed the discussion and welcome further discussion! Also, stay tuned for our next meeting after Thanksgiving (Nov. 29), when @dreadfulprof will discuss consent in Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon!