What Is a Jewish Classicist?: Essays on the Personal Voice and Disciplinary Politics

— —

Simon Goldhill (Cambridge University, UK) Thomas Harrison (University of St Andrews UK)

What Is a Jewish Classicist?

Essays on the Personal Voice and Disciplinary Politics

Simon Goldhill (Cambridge University, UK), Thomas Harrison (University of St Andrews UK)

$36.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Bloomsbury
08 September 2022

Autobiography: general; Literature, Poetry & Criticism; The self, ego, identity, personality

Series: Rubicon

In recent years, there has been no issue that has convulsed academia and its role in society more stridently than the personal politics of its institutions: who has access to education? How does who you are change what you study and how you engage with it? How does scholarship reflect the politics of society – how should it? These new essays from one of the best-known scholars of ancient Greece offer a refreshing and provocative contribution to these discussions.

What Is a Jewish Classicist? analyses how the personal voice of a scholar plays a role in scholarship, how religion and cultural identity are acted out within an academic discipline, and how translation, the heart of any engagement with the literature of antiquity, is a transformational practice. Topical, engaging, revelatory, this book opens a sharp and personal perspective on how and why the study of antiquity has become such a battlefield in contemporary culture.

The first essay looks at how academics can and should talk about themselves, and how such positionality affects a scholar’s work – can anyone can tell his or her own story with enough self-consciousness, sophistication and care? The second essay, which gives the book its title, takes a more socio-anthropological approach to the discipline, and asks how its patterns of inclusion and exclusion, its strategies of identification and recognition, have contributed to the shape of the discipline of classics. This initial enquiry opens into a fascinating history of change – how Jews were excluded from the discipline for many years but gradually after the Second World war became more easily assimilated into it. This in turn raises difficult questions for the current focus on race and colour as the defining aspects of personal identification, and about how academia reflects or contributes to the broader politics of society. The third essay takes a different historical approach and looks at the infrastructure or technology of the discipline through one of its integral and time-honoured practices, namely, translation. It discusses how translation, far from being a mere technique, is a transformational activity that helps make each classicist what they are. Indeed, each generation needs its own translations as each era redefines its relation to antiquity.

By: Simon Goldhill (Cambridge University UK)
Edited by: Thomas Harrison (University of St Andrews UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 214mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 12mm
Weight: 280g
ISBN: 9781350322530
ISBN 10: 1350322539
Series: Rubicon
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 08 September 2022
Audience: Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Undergraduate , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Foreign Secretary of the British Academy. Among his numerous publications are Reading Greek Tragedy (2008), The End of Dialogue in Antiquity (2009), Love, Sex & Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives (2015) and How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today (2020).

Reviews for What Is a Jewish Classicist?: Essays on the Personal Voice and Disciplinary Politics

In these self-reflective essays Simon Goldhill tackles big issues of our era: race and religion, exclusion and belonging, privilege and minoritization. He interrogates the past and present of classics and poses some serious questions to its future. -- Katherine Harloe, Professor of Classics and Intellectual History, and Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, UK [This book] repays reading because of its illumination of Jewish responses to prejudice and challenge. * Classics for All *