I wanted to have a place to write a bit more about this form that I made, for a database I hope to assemble. It all started with this tweet, from David Wright.

A lot of people were enthusiastic about the idea, because it offers a really great opportunity for us to show our students that Classics is a big, broad field and just because a student may not see themselves in a particular classroom or department, that doesn’t mean that Classics isn’t for them. (see the bottom of this post for some other ways to do that)

I had a particular hesitation though, which I shared


To which Rogue Classicist replied:


And that basically catches y’all up to now. I made a Google Form that people can fill out, as a way to have a list of people who are willing and able to guest lecture as a way of showing that Classics is a place for a lot of different people. I love this idea, but I’m also super aware that this means putting more unpaid labor on the people who are, statistically, already doing most of the unpaid and/or emotional labor in their departments and in the field. Every classicist of color I know is constantly being asked to be on diversity committees or panels, or being asked to mentor students. And that’s all important work, but it’s also work that our field doesn’t really reward in any meaningful way. Service beyond a certain point doesn’t give you bonus points for a tenure file — you can’t convert 5 committee memberships into a publication, even though they might take the same amount of time and energy. This applies, in varying degrees, to all marginalized and underrepresented folk — women, queer folks, and BIPOC are overrepresented in service positions.

Add to that, if you’re constantly feeling tokenized as “the [insert identity] classicist,” being asked to lecture as that classicist may be the last thing you want to do. I hear that. I tried to frame this as something that was about visibility (as in, you’re there to talk about your research specialties, and you just happen to be part of an underrepresented demographic. But you’re there to be an expert in the topic) and not about tokenizing people. But I may not have succeeded (in which case I really do apologize, and I would appreciate your feedback).

Anyway, the Google form is here. I envision having a list that I can send people who say they’re interested in a guest lecturer, and if you (as an underrepresented person) have things you don’t want publicly disclosed, I will keep it confidential and will forward their request on to you. You can choose if you feel comfortable sharing that part of yourself.

Finally, having a guest lecturer isn’t the only way to show that the field is more diverse than your Classics classroom or department is. Here are a few thoughts that I have, but I’m sure there are more that I forgot:

  1. Include readings from non-white, non-male authors on your syllabus. And include first and last names — I have to admit that (and I hate that I do this) when I see a first initial, I assume it’s a man. I put first names on all my bibliographies because it makes this a little less likely to happen.
  2. Expose students to the wonderful writings that already exist about the experience of navigating the field as a person of color or otherwise non-normative. Eidolon has loads of great writing on this topic, but there are a lot of good things elsewhere. Here’s the few that were freshest in my mind, but this is by no means the extent of these writings:
  3. Related to #1, use diverse scholars and authors prominently in your lectures. I throw in a little “[Author] had this really great interpretation of this text — she is one of my very favorite people who works on this text!” all the time. It’s ten seconds of digression before talking about the brilliant contribution they made, but it spotlights the author’s gender. Sometimes I show a picture. Hell, I fangirl about my favorite scholars elsewhere (Sidenote: I am so sorry if I’ve ever done this to you in person at a conference. I have definitely embarrassed myself by having zero chill when I’ve met academic heroes of mine), and there’s no reason not to bring that into my classes. This gives more visibility to younger and more diverse scholars, because a lot of the cool, new interpretations I want to include are recent things I heard at a conference or something, and that tends to mean that the people I’m using are more diverse. A side benefit is that it shows students that academia is a constantly evolving place when you say something like “I just heard a really wonderful talk on this topic by so-and-so” — ESPECIALLY if so-and-so happens to be a graduate student, and you mention that fact. Some of the coolest, most original work I’ve heard about lately is from graduate students, and I think we do a service to everyone when we mention the fact that important research is being done by people in all different places and stages of careers.
  4. Highlight how the field of Classics has changed as a result of increased diversity. We’re better at reading texts when we have a wider range of perspectives looking at them. We have our own biases that form blind spots and there are things that only someone else with a very different lived experience can see. I see this a ton in Sophoclean scholarship, because “the Sophoclean Hero” that Knox (and Whitman before him) clashes with my own reading of these characters. I can feel the differences between myself and these older, male scholars in the ways that we read the same text. If you need a more shareable version of this point, Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey is a great place to explore this. It’s a great place, incidentally, to explore this with students. This is a great way to lead students to the realization that scholars aren’t disembodied brains that may as well be computers. We’re embodied people with lived experiences that shape our scholarship. If you and/or your students aren’t entirely sold on the merits of diversity in its own right, there’s a very tangible example of why diversity matters. Here’s a few readings that I’ve bookmarked to use the next time I teach the Odyssey, to get at questions of translation and identity and perspective (I’m planning to contrast these articles with some of the wildly misogynist reviews her work has also received).

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