Our Books - Ideas That Shape Scholarship

‘Teaching and Learning Classics at the University Level, Vol. 3’ focuses on the teaching of mythology, arts, and archaeology in Greek and Roman antiquity, with a particular emphasis on cultural expression, visual and material culture, and interdisciplinary approaches. The 9 chapters examine the approaches to teaching key topics including Greco-Roman astrology, classical and comparative mythology, Greek art, numismatics, experimental archaeology, and the study of ancient topography and landscapes, as well as performance and reception through the ancient dramatic chorus and Greek tragedy. The volume also addresses the role of artistic, archaeological, and comparative perspectives within the Humanities, highlighting how visual, material, and performative sources contribute to a broader understanding of antiquity and its reception. Presenting teaching as a reflective and research-informed activity, this volume is intended for university lecturers, teacher trainers, and graduate students interested in mythology, art in its broader sense, archaeology, and the reception of Classical antiquity in higher education.

‘Teaching and Learning Classics at the University Level, Vol. 2’ focuses on the teaching of social, cultural, and religious aspects of Greek and Roman antiquity. The 11 chapters examine the approaches to teaching key themes in ancient society including ethnography, the human condition and the afterlife, Roman religion, violence, sacrifice, slavery, love, and medicine, as well as aspects of daily life such as play, sport, and bathing culture. The volume also addresses the place of social and cultural history within the Humanities, highlighting how these topics contribute to a broader understanding of antiquity and its relevance today. Presenting teaching as a reflective and research-informed activity, this volume is intended for university lecturers, teacher trainers, and graduate students interested in classical civilization, ancient history, and the cultural and religious dimensions of Greek and Roman studies in higher education.

'Teaching and Learning Classics at the University Level, Vol. 1' focuses on the teaching of Greek and Latin, with a particular emphasis on language, linguistics, and teacher training. The 13 chapters examine the approaches to teaching Greek and Latin for beginners and advanced students, including metrics, historical and descriptive grammar, linguistic typology, translation, and prose composition, as well as the role of Latin in the Humanities and in specialized fields such as medical terminology. The volume also addresses the training of teachers and lecturers in Classics, exploring how linguistic expertise and pedagogical practice are developed within the university context. Presenting teaching as a reflective and research-informed activity, this volume is intended for university lecturers, teacher trainers, and graduate students interested in classical language pedagogy and the future of Greek and Latin instruction in higher education.

El amor personal, como realidad profundamente humana, ha sido poco explorado filosóficamente, pese a su centralidad en la existencia personal. No basta comprenderlo como pasión o sentimiento, sino como condición esencial que integra todas las dimensiones de la persona. En esta línea, Julián Marías, uno de los grandes filósofos españoles del siglo XX, ofrece una reflexión original y rigurosa sobre el amor como fundamento de la vida personal. Su pensamiento, enmarcado en la tradición personalista, permite comprender el amor como acto propio del ser personal, raíz de la plenitud, la ilusión y la felicidad humanas. A lo largo de su extensa obra, Marías aborda el amor como eje transversal de su antropología. Para él, la cuestión amorosa está vinculada a los grandes interrogantes del ser humano: “¿Quién soy yo?”, “¿Qué va a ser de mí?”, “¿Hay algo más allá de esta vida?”. De ahí que el amor revele la verdad profunda de la persona, su ser como “quién” capaz de amar y proyectarse. El presente estudio busca sistematizar esta categoría dentro del pensamiento mariasiano, articulando tres niveles de análisis: la estructura analítica de la vida, la estructura empírica y, finalmente, la vida personal. En todos ellos, el amor aparece como principio de sentido, proyecto y donación. Marías concibe la condición amorosa como una instalación vectorial que orienta la existencia hacia la plenitud y la trascendencia. Esta investigación pretende mostrar que, para Marías, el amor no es un tema accesorio, sino el núcleo que otorga consistencia a la persona y sentido a la vida. Desde una perspectiva personalista, su reflexión constituye una vía fecunda para comprender el amor como experiencia radical, fundamento de la autenticidad, la felicidad y la esperanza humanas.

'Recovering Lost Voices' explores what recovery work looks like in the twenty-first century and why its continued practice is necessary. This collection is concerned with the volume of lost British texts and authors of the nineteenth century and offers a practical and personal approach to the act of recovery and the continued practice of re-recovery. Spanning the course of the nineteenth century, the included recovered works provide glimpses into the forgotten lives of poets, playwrights, and authors, enriching the working understanding we hold of this period. Our contributors explain their unique and original personal methods and experiences of discovering their lost work and detail the process of re-recovery. This volume ultimately functions as guidance for university students and early career scholars interested in uncovering what recovery and re-recovery work entails through personal accounts. The included contributions approach recovery in archives, street markets, digital access, and manual transcribing. Re-recovery takes the form of applied lenses of analysis, such as queer, post-colonial, gender, disability, and trauma studies.

The central question that this volume seeks to answer is: What are the similarities and differences between how human beings know language and how artificial intelligence knows language? The recent development and popularization of artificial intelligence systems called Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) have led to a proliferation of opinions regarding the relevance of these systems beyond the practical purposes for which they were designed. It is not uncommon to find statements in social networks and popular magazines, as well as in academic publications, to the effect that these language models have solved the problems that sciences such as linguistics aim to solve, that their success in generating text can be seen as a refutation of some particularly influential theories of language, or that Language Models are actually scientific theories of language. These statements seem to be based on the premise that the linguistic knowledge acquired by these systems is comparable to that developed by humans. This book aims to evaluate whether this assumption is warranted. To this end, the opinions of renowned linguists and other cognitive scientists have been gathered to answer questions such as what kind of language knowledge these artificial systems have, to what extent they are faithful models of natural language knowledge, and what we can learn about the human language faculty by examining their inner workings. Anyone interested in the nature of human language and mind and in artificial intelligence can follow the eight chapters of the book without being an expert in linguistics or computer science. This is the first comprehensive work to present the views of experts in linguistic theory on the relevant questions mentioned above, and to provide an accessible presentation of current research on the nature of artificial knowledge of language.

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that Cathar doctrine is the main source of Dante's poem and to encourage readers to approach this work with fresh eyes, beyond the interpretative frameworks that are often worn. With detailed references to Dante's text, persuasive arguments, lucid and concrete exposition, and a direct and easy-to-follow style, Maria Soresina progressively presents the links between the ‘Divine Comedy’ and Catharism, which she has been investigating since the end of the last century. The text analyzes Cathar characters with respect to the doctrine. The Cathars were Christians, but their beliefs were very different from those of the Catholic Church. The author analyzes their philosophy, followed by verses of Dante that demonstrate agreement with it and distance from the Catholic Church. In addition to the great doctrinal questions, there are many Cathar beliefs and customs, all of which, such as their being vegetarians, find precise confirmation in the verses of the ‘Divine Comedy’. The Cathars had only one sacrament, the ‘consolamentum’. A long chapter is dedicated to demonstrating that Dante's journey through Purgatory corresponds to the various phases of this sacrament, within which the figure of Beatrice has a particular meaning, a woman whom Dante probably never met and never loved. This text offers non-Italian-speaking readers the chance to engage with these interpretive theories, destabilizing the canonical criticism and forcing a re-examination of sources and historical context.

Este es uno de los pocos manuales en español enfocados, de principio a fin, en la escritura sobre literatura a nivel universitario, si no es que quizá el único, hasta el momento de su publicación. Influido por el movimiento Writing in the Disciplines (WID), plantea que la escritura sobre literatura es distinta a la de otras carreras, incluso de las humanísticas (p. ej., historia o filosofía), por lo que un estudiante de literatura necesita familiarizarse con las prácticas propias de su campo. Escrito en un lenguaje claro, expone en detalle los temas que un estudiante debe conocer para escribir crítica literaria en español: desde ortografía y gramática hasta los géneros más comunes que los profesores piden en clase, pasando por procesos de escritura, tipos de evidencia en la crítica literaria y los usos y lineamientos del formato MLA en español. Su tesis básica es simple: para escribir en los estudios literarios, debemos leer, pensar y escribir como críticos literarios. Compuesto por trece capítulos, el libro está diseñado para acompañar al estudiante en todo momento de sus estudios: desde los primeros semestres de la licenciatura hasta la tesis doctoral, si es que decide convertirse en académico profesional. El manual está pensado para estudiantes de distintos niveles (pregrado y posgrado), tanto hablantes nativos como no nativos. Parte del hecho de que existen diversos manuales de teoría literaria que enseñan distintos enfoques para leer literatura, pero pocos enseñan a escribir sobre literatura en español. Con una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, este libro explora el punto de convergencia de tres actividades interrelacionadas —la escritura, la lectura y la crítica literaria— para producir textos. Además, argumenta que nuestras emociones —como la ansiedad o el bloqueo del escritor— influyen en nuestra habilidad para escribir, por lo que ofrece estrategias generales para lidiar con ellas y con la procrastinación. Todo esto con el fin de compartir con los estudiantes del siglo XXI el mayor número posible de herramientas para escribir en los fascinantes pero exigentes estudios literarios y hacerlo con éxito.

When asked if being a woman had a negative impact on her ability to succeed as a writer, Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik stated that, even if not a physical impediment, being a woman in a patriarchal society is ‘a tragedy’ in itself. She followed this comment by saying: ‘What matters is what we do with our own tragedies’. Beyond sex assigned at birth, feminized bodies around the world share a similar phenomenological experience, which is dictated by a complicated relationship to space. Before setting pen to paper, the woman writer, a monster herself within patriarchal discourse, must confront the role society has set for her. For a writer in a feminized body, thus, the act of writing never begins with a tabula rasa but with a refusal and a challenge, an ushering out of the supposed ‘eden’ of the domestic. The question of the women-writer’s space is further exacerbated when considering matters of intersectionality. The poetics of space and place change within the confines of different geopolitical structures and their relations amongst each other. How do they shift when the center becomes de-centered and writing stems not from a place of political power but from the quieted voices of minor literature, queer and racialized bodies or subalternized latitudes? This volume will attempt to address these questions with input from a diverse group of scholars dealing with an equally diverse corpus. North and Latin America converse with Europe while ‘genre’ literature, minor literature and ‘gendered’ literatures take center stage. By taking into account a wide array of cultural objects, from poetry and children’s literature to Gothic tales and television shows, this collection of articles reveals the profound link between space and the female experience through the lens of art and literature.