Anise K. Strong

@anisekstrong.bsky.social

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Roman historian at Western Michigan University, specializing in gender, sexuality, & their reception in television, music videos, games, and film. she/hers/ista Mom of 3. Avid baker and traveler. Always looking to learn from unusual niche subject experts.

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From Liv Yarrow, quoting Cicero A.6.1, a fascinating comment about Flavius publishing the Roman Calendar so that everyone could know when proper business days were. I hate petty oligarchical economically inefficient corruption so much -it's literally the Old Boys Network very much in action in Rome.

Reply to

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

An inscription from a 4th century CE Jewish cemetery in Malta honoring "Eulogia the presbytera," which in comparison to other early references to Jewish women as "presbytera" seems to suggest she was on her synagogue's Council of Elders or otherwise in a leadership role.

5/1941, literally fleeing Nazis. After enlisting & serving as a military doctor in the S. Pacific (the Army having correctly refused Grandpa's wish to "go back and kill Nazis,") worked for 40 yrs as a dr, often taking pay in eggs & veggies as a way of paying kindness forward. Always pro-immigration.

New rule: to comment negatively about immigrants, you have to first disclose why your own family members immigrated to the US seeking a better life, and why people facing much worse shouldn’t have the same opportunity. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

www.washingtonpost.com

I suppose I deserve having raised a kid who wakes me up on Sunday morning to tell me excitedly that #Hades 2 (the videogame) describes Odysseus as both "complicated" and "man of many ways." I still place some mild blame on @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social, though.

So this snake couple, the female with cancer, come to Saint Simeon the Stylite's pillar for help. But they split up & she goes to the women's section(!), so the male serpent has to approach; everyone flees but St. Simeon says "no, he just wants his wife healed" & gives the guy snake some holy clay.

Happy #Juneteenth! Today I celebrate Edmonia Lewis, one of the first known African-American woman sculptors, queer pioneer, and also, in particular, her sculpture of Hagar, both as a woman escaping from slavery & brutal treatment & in remembrance of those dying from heat during the Hajj right now.

This Father's Day, I remember my Dad, who targeted his protests at the Harvard administrators forcing T.As to give Bs & Cs to students when that would render them eligible for the draft & likely sent to Vietnam. But apparently that doesn't count as "inarguably heroic" anymore b/c it threatens Deans.

Genuinely shocked to read this from a Dean.

Faculty Speech Must Have Limits | Opinion | The Harvard Crimsonwww.thecrimson.com Faculty Speech Must Have Limits | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

Reply to

Dr. Sabrina Mittermeier

Forthcoming Fall 2025, I salute your weirdness...

75Y ago today, my then 6YO Dad Tracy wrote this letter from Nanjing, China. The letter shaped my path as a historian, b/c this wasn't Great Man history that reinforced stereotypes; it was a child's view that "the Communits aren't as bad as we thought they would be," b/c they gave electricity. #DDay

I regularly teach the unreliability of witness statements in my job as a history professor. Somehow I've managed to do that for 15 years or more _without traumatizing any students_ with simulated shootings and armed robberies! Honestly this Doonesbury cartoon works pretty well:

“While teaching a class to high school students on Wednesday, Burlington police officers staged a surprise demonstration in which a masked gunman burst into the room and pretended to open fire.”

Burlington Police Terrified High School Students With Mock Shootingm.sevendaysvt.com Updated at 2:31 p.m. While teaching a class to high school students on Wednesday, Burlington police officers staged a surprise demonstration in which a masked...

I keep being reminded about how 1 of the late Roman Empire's many systemic problems was the reliance on the whims of individual rich people to provide basic social services like clean water & education. Some cities get 1 day of free food a year, some get an aqueduct, some get "freedom from boredom."

Not great!!!!

Reply to

Sarah E. Bond

I fangirled a bit over Surfing Jesus at the revamped Yale Art Gallery exhibition last weekend, so I hear you!

The most frustrating thing I have seen today on the Internet, after 14YO asked me to look up the official government webpage for one of his heroes, Lina Khan, Chair of the FTC. This is, indeed, on the front page. www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/co...

The required readings include this gem, which I suspect violates most religions/cultures in the world: " If you do not know how you got your values or why you (still) have them, how do you actually know that these are your values? How do you know that you haven’t just adopted someone else’s values?"

This is amazing example of the modern neoliberal university. This idea that complex situations can be solved by the application of online quizzes purchased from a third-party vendor.

Reply to

Anna Kornbluh

If your kids are <12, you should absolutely take them to the Best (Possibly) Playground in the world, in Les Halles, a mini-world surrounded by high gates that every hour lets in exactly 100 7-12YO kids, _with no adults allowed except 5 pros_ for 1 hr of multicultural mysterious shenanigans.

Really interesting statement from UCLA Hillel. @alttext.bsky.social “We can not have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus. Do not fund any actions on campus. Do not protest on campus. Your actions are harming Jewish students.”

I'm gonna guess that any of the 3 spring 2024 #Columbia University classes focused on terrorism might have had this as assigned reading, although I can't confirm that independently... doc.sis.columbia.edu#subj/INAF/U6...

"a book on TERRORISM. These are not the tools of students protesting, these are the tools of agitators...." Looks like the deputy commissioner has confused a course text in its third edition with the Anarchist's Cookbook.

Reply to

Jane Sancinito

They're all over - here's one from U Mississippi, ironically named:

Happy Floralia! I am Officially on Sabbatical! I'll be researching in film archives in L.A., Palo Alto, Madison, & NYC, & available as a guest speaker on feminist/queer classical reception in games/music videos, Roman serial polyandry, wife-initiated divorces in successful empires, & the Floralia.

So, just to check, we as professors are supposed to _inform_ the "young people" that they're going to be cursed by God? I hate to think how that Rep. would react to me teaching my students about the Bear Charm That Accomplishes Everything or the Magic Tool Bag of Pompeii:

"You people are being indoctrinated by professors to believe this stuff, and they have no idea that they’re going to be cursed by God, the God of the bible," said a congressman at the Columbia hearing. No one from Columbia pushes back. This is such a travesty.

Yes. There are only so many extra hats I can keep piling on top of my head without simply collapsing under the weight, & meanwhile those hats should be keeping three or four other colleagues warm & stylish. [True Story: I got to see Geisel's Hat Closet as a kid & a bunch of them fell out on me...]

"This 'burnout' that secure scholars are feeling is phantom pain where their colleagues should be. Or, to use a term that every other normal worker in the US uses to describe their workplace under these conditions: you are suffering from the effects of intentional systemic understaffing."

A Profession, If You Can Keep Itcontingentmagazine.org Imagined meritocracies mean little to extractive institutions.

Reply to

Sarah McCuan Stephens

Here's the whole text:

Fellow #Skystorians, any idea what the words after them in are (followed in the recipe by "Waters"? Both my students and I are stumped. #paleography #womenalsoknowhistory #butsometimesnotcookingwords

In the category of "why we need human translators and not just AI," Facebook/Google auto-translated the Parco Archeologico #Pompeii's news release about the amazing new frescoes & graffiti as "what seems like a huge stylized failure." The Italian:"un enorme fallo stilizzato" - or Really Big Penis.

I was recently horrified to see that the Governor's Reception Room of the New York State Capitol displays a painted Confederate battle flag in a position of honor, while relegating the 20th U.S. Colored Troops Civil War flag & the Harlem Hellfighters WWI flag to a hallway. Happy Appomattox Day!

Happy Easter and Happy Trans Day of Visibility! I am choosing to view my improbably shaped egg as a sign of both joyous occasions.

Reply to

Anise K. Strong

With 58%, our first seed, the infamous yet beloved Aldborough wolf with a silly grin, the back end of a horse, possibly shady Victorian reconstructions, and two totally random chilling babies representing Romulus and Remus, is the 2024 Champion of the Ancient Animals and Medieval Monsters Bracket!

Final Ancient Animal s& Mythical Monsters Contest! Ancient Animal - the famously derpy Aldborough "Wolf," apparently made by a mosaicist who had never seen a wolf - but had a horse VS the Dutch 14th century arm fish, thought to be a representation of a squid. commoninja.site/dafe9607-343...

Final Four in the Ancient Animals and Medieval Monsters Bracket! Judge objectively or blindly support your home team, #AncientSky and #MedievalSky! commoninja.site/dafe9607-343... #Romanists/ #Classicists, the Aldborough Wolf is in danger of losing its position as top seed!

In the category of historical reverse engineering problems: