Aight, we doing it again.

How katabasis, Jordan Peele's "US", and Euripides' choral lyrics make the case for studying Greek tragedy as horror genre.

A Thread: First of all: katabasis (literally "going down" or a descent) can refer to different types of descent--I'm most used to studying it in the form of underworld journeys in ancient myth across the Mediterranean (not just Greek and Roman, but Egyptian and Akkadian/Sumerian as well).

There Were Brown People In Ancient Rome (Which Was A Multicultural Empire) And So Artistic Depictions Of (Yes, Even Aristocratic) Roman Poets Where They Have Dark Skin Are Fine And People Need To Calm The Fuck Down.

A Thread: First of all, let's start with the Fayum mummy portraits! When it comes to elite Roman representation--why is it more seemly to look at modern day Italians rather than the iconography from Roman Egypt?

Here's the full video of the digital discourse program Coming to Know that I partook in at @HKW_Berlin last Friday as a part of the A Slightly Curving Place exhibition. It was such an honor to be in the node on Tuning and to talk about lunar tuning!

hkw.de/en/programm/pr… My presentation is from c. 2:15:00-2:25:00 (ish) but I would highly encourage everyone to also listen to both Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Phiroze Vasunia, my wonderful co-presenters who I'm couched between--I've enjoyed coming to know their work through this exhibit...

"Those who claim the superiority of Western culture are entitle to that claim only when Western civilization is measured thoroughly against other civilizations and not found wanting, and when Western civilization owns up to its own sources in the cultures that preceded it." (1/4) "A large part of the satisfaction I have always received from reading Greek tragedy, for example, is in its similarity to Afro-American communal structures (the function of song and chorus, the heroic struggle between the claims of community and individual hubris)..." (2/4)

...

you know, given how much my landlords insist that they were not my parents and needed me to be an independent adult in their living space (which...duh?), it’s a little frustrating that I have to figure out how to nicely tell them that I am their mammy. (For context, I gave my notice for moving out of my NYC room that I’ve been still paying rent on despite not living there since late March bc COVID. It’s more than 30 days notice and I’ve been month to month for two years with as of this final rent)

(1)Eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still on the loose. Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in on year alone in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults;" (2)black women raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken. He smelled skin, skin and hot blood. The skin was one thing, but human blood cooked in a lynch fire was a whole other thing. The stench stank. Stank up off the pages of the North Star, out of the mouths of witnesses,

Ovid’s Met. 6.61-9 🌬🕸🌈 "illic et Tyrium quae purpura sensit aenum
texitur et tenues parvi discrminis umbrae;
qualis ab imbre solent percussis solibus arcus
inficere ingenti longum curvamine caelum;
in quo diversi niteant cum mille colores,
transitus ipse tamen spectantia lumina fallit:

Ways in which the seminal Black horror film "Get Out" by @JordanPeele reflects (and inverts!) aspects of Homer's Odyssey:

A THREAD Alright, I know I actually have to explain this one before diving in.

So recently I've been looking at a large range of Black interpretations of the Odyssey, particularly at a lot of the representations of Odysseus and the Cyclops.

there is a white dude sitting in the seat in front of me on bolt bus and he keeps staring at me while pretending to sleep in the gap between his chair and window I’m stressed y’all if memory serves, this might be the same dude who saw me smoking outside the bus and made a “ah another smoker!” something or other that I nodded to w/o making eye contact

Great resource I wanna dive into: I've been thinking about the "Athena" picture since last night, thinking through all the ways in which American necessitates linking perceived white female identity with specific Greco-Roman goddesses in this country...

https://twitter.com/thinglygrammar/status/1285447874696949760

I was doing a little digging to see if I could find more context around the photo other than folx fawning, and I saw this comment from the photographer's thread:

https://twitter.com/altcarebear/status/1285454743129608196?s=20

cw ableist language in the tweet i'm replying to

Man just once my Virgo ass would like to receive criticism for my writing that I can actually work with! That will actually make my writing better and push me to improve!

https://twitter.com/BayCoalition/status/1282675172563181573

But also since I wrote it in a style mocking Katz's, I just want one criticism that also doesn't apply to his piece as well! I write about him throwing a tantrum and you say I'm doing the same thing, like goddamn can you at least use language that I didn't just directly give you?

I don't think that they're looking for a date, but I would say it's a girl-power song about male engagement (in more ways than one). Peggy cautions against going out into the world because of their patriarch and the dangerous potential of men (violence on our shores).

https://twitter.com/AniseKStrong/status/1280285435718180865

Angelica highlights the creative potential of men (new ideas in the air, a mind at work) and this song acts as the prelude to both her and Eliza's intertwined affections for Hamilton--who they both become engaged with in different ways.

i

love drunk tweeting what's up y'all it's all about the evolutionary belief system of conspicuous consumer culture y'all, grounded in chthonic-agricultural afterlife mythology, that's how we got here y'all, that's AMERICA

ἦν δὲ ἡ μὲν κόμη μέλαινα καὶ πολλή, τὸ δὲ σῶμα ἐπίκαυτον ἡλίῳ· εἴκασεν ἄν τις αὐτὸ χρῴζεσθαι τῇ σκιᾷ τῆς κόμης

...bruh is daphnis black and i've just literally never noticed until now this is putting chloe sweatin during the bathing scene in a whole new light i'm literally crying rn

So in honor of #Juneteenth how about #ClassicsTwitter drops the white morality act and actually listens to and learns from the #BlackInClassics voices already making waves in the field:

https://twitter.com/theoctopiehole/status/1271470567737028609

Over in ancient Africa we’ve got @BumbaughSolange and @RomanAegyptiaca - two female scholars doing wondrous work in a field usually secluded to the interests of stuffy old white men.

okay it is not often that i put a genuine ask for myself out into the digital sphere.

that being said, i left my copy of kevin young's "the grey album" in nyc and it's kind of central to my research and i definitely thought i'd have it back by now... ...so if anyone has an extra physical/digital copy they'd like to send me, i'd uh...really appreciate it during these times.

Thank you #ClassicsTwitter for your replies. I did have a few reasons for putting this question out there.

1. It’s easy for classicists of every age and people who are interested in antiquity to talk to one another—you just have to start with the root questions.

https://twitter.com/theoctopiehole/status/1262788659276738561

2. There’s a diversity of ways people become interested: books, movies, language courses, tv shows, comics, relationships, tangents, etc. Reception tends to draw in the most people, which is why I think it’s hard for classicists to critique what got them initially interested.

The first two talks of #resdiff I think have danced around a topic that’s been frustrating for me to deal with as a student of classical ideology—our field has lasted this long because it relies on self-mythologizing networks and structures. But those identity politics... ...are replicated in the field itself. An example: as a queer black woman, in order to really “see myself” in the field, I have to take three separate classes because an identity with as many intersections as mine is not important to contemporary society OR antiquity.

How does one even begin to describe the ouroboros of being a black classicist in america who grew up in the american public school system and is still a classicist in graduate school?

https://twitter.com/pocinclassics/status/1215558180887040003

I guess first you have to establish the overarching ideological power that the American school system has as one of the primary power structures in this society, and one so intrinsically tied with indoctrination/legacy and identity.