Pasts Imperfect (2.8.24)
Self Care & Academic Research, Ancient Mancala Boards, the Lunar New Year & More
This week, Kelly Nguyen discusses methods for self care for researchers working on distressing topics. Then, a controversial glow-up for the Menkaure pyramid, ancient Mancala boards, firefighting cattle, a podcast on the reception of “Lysistrata,” celebrating the Lunar New Year through food and friends, and much more.
Towards a Methodology of Self-Care for Researchers by Kelly Nguyen
I often get asked how I navigate the pain of researching a history so personal to me and my family since my current book project is on the entanglements between race, empire and the classical tradition within modern Vietnamese contexts. I have shared how this project emerged from a deep desire to rectify epistemic injustice and historical erasure before, but for this post, I want to discuss this question that we as scholars so rarely address: how do we take care of ourselves while conducting distressing research?
Admittedly, I had not considered this in the early phases of my project since it was the pandemic and I was operating purely in survival mode. I had not considered it as we transitioned out of pandemic restrictions and I was able to conduct archival research abroad. I had not considered it even after I had a panic attack in the reading room of the Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer upon reading the notes of the French colonial administrator who had abandoned his child with a Vietnamese woman and sentenced her to a life of poverty and ostracism—the child who would grow up to become my great-grandmother. It was only when I was asked to give a talk on “surviving academia as a scholar of color” hosted by Humanities in Color at Stanford that I finally stopped to reflect on the toll such scholarship takes on our minds and bodies.
The fact that the title of the event had the word “surviving” in it is telling enough of the experiences of scholars of color in academia. What are the criteria for surviving in academia? How do we know if we are indeed surviving? Did the students consider me a “survivor” because I had, against all odds, managed to get a prestigious postdoctoral position and had a tenure-track job lined up? If so, why does Lorgia García Peña’s book on freedom-making in the university, especially for students and faculty of color, also have the word “surviving” in its title? When do we who hold marginalized identities shift from surviving to thriving in academia? And how?
I’m certainly not going to try to answer those questions now, though I do highly recommend García Peña’s book for critical reflections and suggestions on how to make “liberatory spaces” in the academy. Instead, I want to suggest concrete steps towards a methodology of self-care for researchers working on difficult histories. What I share below is by no means meant to be comprehensive or prescriptive. These suggestions are also specifically for when you are working on challenging content; there are, of course, other ways to care for yourself outside of work (and it is extremely important to consider the self beyond the academy). What I offer here are prompts that have helped me navigate the contours of trauma, research, and healing.
Before you embark on your research, reflect on potential pain points.
As scholars, we regularly consider potential obstacles in our research, but mostly in regards to the sourcing, acquisition and interpretation of data (how do we get access to and make sense of the evidence necessary for our research project). We so rarely take a reflexive approach to consider the impact of the data on us (how might the data affect us and our engagement with it). Before you dive into your project, consider what content you may come across that may cause you distress. Are you willing and prepared to encounter them? This will help prep not only your emotional response to such encounters, but also your intellectual one, since you will be more fully aware of your positionality and how it may affect your interpretation.
Do regular check-ins with yourself and give yourself the space and grace to adjust and adapt as you see fit.
As your project progresses, continue to reflect critically on your relationship to the traumatic content at hand. Are you responding in ways that you thought you would during your pre-research reflection? Are there materials that cropped up that you were not expecting? What were your affective responses to them? Do you need to modify your research plans in order to prioritize your well-being?
Take planned and unplanned breaks.
The regular check-ins with yourself are meant to help you calibrate your energy reserve so that you can avoid running low on your emotional endurance and your intellectual vitality, let alone burn out completely. Plan breaks during your research session and take them. Maybe it’s a break every hour or every box of archives. Or maybe you’re just reading a document riddled with violent ideologies and you can feel your heart beating faster and beads of sweat gathering on your forehand. Corporeal responses are powerful—they are our bodies’ way of telling us something is wrong. Listen to them. What has helped me profoundly has been meditation and breathing exercises. When I am feeling overwhelmed, I go outside, sit in the sunshine, and do breathing exercises I learned from zen master Thầy Thích Nhất Hạnh to center myself in the here and now, as well as in the collective power of my ancestors.
Do at least one thing that brings you joy at the end of the research day.
I am a big fan of treating yourself. It does not have to be something elaborate or expensive or something you save for special occasions—it is simply something that will nourish you. This will look different for everyone, and even for each person, it will look different every day. Some days, I crave being in community at the end of the day (I love a good happy hour!), and other days, the only being that could bring me joy is my dog. Sometimes it’s a big feast, other times it's just a milk tea from my favorite boba place. The key here is to listen to yourself and to give yourself what you are asking for. You did the hard work; now, treat yourself.
I hope this list inspires other scholars to think about what their methodology of self-care would look like. As we do with more traditional academic methodologies, I hope that we can also begin to share best practices with each other. Self-care for researchers is crucial not only for our well-being, but also for more critical and nuanced scholarship. It should not be some sort of hidden methodology. As Audre Lorde has so powerfully declared, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Public Scholarship and a Global Antiquity
If you’re like me and you have truly no clue how big the pyramids of Giza are (those History Channel specials never offered any physical perspective…), take a look at this video by the Washington Post about a controversial, archaeological face-lift. Egyptologist Mostafa Waziry has uploaded a video detailing the project, which will focus on the Menkaure pyramid (ca. 2500 BCE).
Thinking about Egyptian material culture in the States, artist H. Sinno has taken inspiration from the Temple of Dendur for their opera Westerly Breath. Reception work is alive and well! Also, check out this clip of John Holiday slaying in the role of Nerone in the opera Agrippina.
Over at the “This American Ex-Wife” pod, Donna Zuckerberg speaks to Lyz Lenz about “Lysistrata,” pop culture, and “the logic [behind] using sex as a shaping force in marriages.”
Congrats to Zachary Herz on the open access publication of his new article: “Straight Talk About Curved Horns and Gay Marriage: A new reading of Juvenal’s Second Satire,” The Classical Quarterly (2024): 1–15 and to Amy Pistone for the publication of “Lesbian nation is Amazon culture: lesbian separatism and the uses of Amazons,” Journal of Lesbian Studies. Finally, the fash bros on Twitter are upset about the new Netflix docuseries on Alexander: The Making of a God because “Within the first 8 minutes, they turned him gay.” But as most of us know, Alexander was indeed bisexual. In any case, brava to historical advisor Jeanne Reames for her work on the series!
Yale News reports on Prof. Veronica Waweru’s work in central Kenya, where her team excavated a series of Mancala boards at the site, dated to ten thousand years ago. I’m imagining a bunch of kids playing with stones at the Mancala arcade several millenia ago. Adorable.
For those who like open data, the DataCons Project has an open-access dataset of late Roman consular dates from 284 to 541 CE. “It aggregates consular materials from publications worldwide. Currently, the dataset contains over 4,800 documents, penned in three distinct scripts, originating from ten ancient regions, and categorised by material type and textual content.” Surely this is just vengeance on Justinian for absorbing and thus ending the Roman consulship proper.
More exciting news on the archaeological front in Amazonian Ecuador: the rainforest has previously obscured the lumps and bumps of 2000-year-old civilizations, but no longer, thanks to lidar (laser-mapping technology)!
This podcast from Scientific American, hosted by April Reese and Tommy Ferreira, has the excellent title of “How Is This Ancient Cattle Breed Fighting Wildfires in Portugal?” and the added benefit of aggressive cow sounds playing in the background. If we are going to fight climate change, at least we can do it with the cows on our side.
She’d never toot her own horn so I (Stephanie) will do it for her: Sarah’s got a great essay out in Hyperallergic about the absolutely bonkers way media outlets write headlines about archaeology.
Let’s admit it: As a culture, we are rather obsessed with celebrity attribution — to a fault.
Amen.
There’s a fair number of superlative adjectives in this article from Will Henshall at TIME, but what’s more fun than reading about something called the “Vesuvius Challenge”—which is not, in fact, about becoming a volcano? It’s actually about AI, paleography, and a tech writer talking about “decoding” a papyrus.
On February 10, 2024, the Lunar New Year begins. It is the year of the dragon (or Naga in Thailand). History professor Yong Chen, author of the splendid Chop Suey, U.S.A.: The Story of Chinese Food in America, notes to the UC Irvine community that eating foods focused on prosperity, such as fish, is important. But the big value to express through food is community:
“Another universally significant theme is togetherness, embodied in foods like sticky rice ball soup (tang yuan) and glutinous rice cakes (New Year’s cake). This theme is all more important during the pandemic when many people are forced into isolated existence. For my family and others in south China, making dumplings was a special occasion that invited the participation and collaboration from everyone.” 🥟🥟🥟
Rest assured that my household, based in southeast Michigan, will be eating all the dumplings we can fit in our stomachs and more. We take culinary tradition seriously around here.
New Antiquity Journal Issues (by @YaleClassicsLib / yaleclassicslib.bsky.social)
Kadmos Vol. 62, No. 1-2 (2023)
Journal of Semitic Studies Vol. 69, No. 1 (2024)
Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 142, No. 4 ( 2023)
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Vol. 86, No. 1 (2024)
Shedet Vol. 12 (2024) #openaccess
Classics@ Vol. 25 (2023) #openaccess Γέρα: Studies in honor of Professor Menelaos Christopoulos
Nova Tellus Vol. 42 No. 1 (2024) #openaccess
Mnemosyne Vol. 77, No. 1 (2024)
Études Platoniciennes Vol. 18 (2023) #openaccess
Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos Vol. 43 No. 2 (2023) #openaccess
Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia Vol. 29, No. 2 (2023)
Ex Novo: Journal of Archaeology Vol. 7 (2022) #openaccess
Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft Vol. 76, No. 3 (2023) #openaccess
Ramus Vol. 52 special issue (2023)Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding's …(Iphigenia): Interdisciplinary Approaches
Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 78, No. 1 (2024)
Early Christianity Vol. 14, No. 4 (2023) Perceptions of Pseudepigraphy across the Ancient Mediterranean
Events, Exhibitions, and Online Lectures
At 1:00 pm ET on February 21, 2024, Narmin Amin and Abdulrahman K. Darwesh present online through ISAW on “Ancient Iraq: From Hormuzd Rassam's Excavations to Latif Al Ani's Images.” Registration is required and you can do so here.
On Friday, March 8, 2024, at 11 am PT, Emma Southon speaks online via the Getty about “A Rome of One's Own: Putting Women back into Roman History.” Sign up here.
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