May Reading List and an update on my 2022 reading goal

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Back in January I set out a goal to read one article every working day that was not explicitly linked to my research. The idea was that my academic reading had become too narrowly focused on books and thus that I was missing out on some of the richness of the field.

One article shouldn’t be too onerous, I thought. And yet, I found even one article increasingly unmanageable as the semester wore on, particularly when many of the articles that looked interesting (how I tended to choose what to read) were forty or more pages long—or, in some cases, required ILL requests to access them.

I had hoped that my energy for this project would return with the end of the semester, but the reality is that the start of my summer has been characterized by an all-consuming combination of busyness and torpor brought on by the exhaustion of the semester. The five articles I read in May (listed below) turned out to be the last gasps of my semester routine. While I have made good a good start on other reading goals, I have yet to read a single article in June.

In the spirit of doing less, along with a number of more pressing tasks on my to-do list, I am putting this project on hold for the remainder of this summer and will revisit it in the new semester. In the meantime, I’ll keep tracking what I read and consider anything from this summer bonus.

The May List

  • Scott Lawin Arcenas. “The Silence of Thucydides.” TAPA 150 (2020): 299–332.
  • Mira Green. “Butcher Blocks, Vegetable Stands, and Home-Cooked Food: Resisting Gender and Class Constructions in the Roman World.” Arethusa 52, no. 2 (2020): 115–32.
  • Alexandra Bartzoka. “The Vocabulary and Moments of Change: Thucydides and Isocrates on the Rise and Fall of Athens and Sparta.” Pnyx 1, no. 1 (2022): 1–26.
  • David Morassi. “War Mandates in the Peloponnesian War: The Agency of Athenian Strategoi.” GRBS 62, no. 1 (2022): 1–17.
  • Morgan E. Palmer. “Time and Eternity: The Vestal Virgins and the Crisis of the Third Century.” TAPA 150 (2020): 473–97.

April Reading List

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Surprise, there isn’t one!

I am actually not surprised by this development. I have tracked my reading by month going back to 2013 and, on average, April is my second-worst month for reading, ahead of only October. April tends to be when a lot of work obligations come due and so I find myself both scrambling for time and utterly exhausted. This year was no different and my ambitious reading goal fell by the wayside. As penance, I have posted a cat picture to conclude this post.

Now that the semester is winding down, I have already resumed progress toward my goal for May. Although I am hoping to use this summer mostly for rest and recovery (more on this in a future post), I also expect that the more languid patterns of summer will provide ample opportunity to read.

Previous months: January, February, March

Merlin and Nimueh demonstrating proper resting form.

March Reading List

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Back in January I laid out an ambitious reading goal for 2022: one article per working day, and resolved to write a wrap-up monthly recap post for accountability. March proved a challenge for a whole host of reasons so the total is much lower than I would have liked. April is looking worse, if anything, but I’m hopeful that I can get back on track over the next week.

Without further ado here is the list, divided once more into my favorite articles (honorable mentions) and the rest of the list.

Honorable Mentions

  • Sofie Remijsen, “Only Greeks at the Olympics? Reconsidering the rule against non-Greeks at ‘Panhellenic’ Games,” C&M 67 (2019): 1–61.

The rest of the list

  • Marcaline J. Boyd, “Sleeping with the Tyrant: Thebe the Tyrannicide and the Death of Alexander of Pherae in Plutarch’s Pelopidas,” Histos 15 (2021): 131–49.
  • Peter A. O’Connell, “How Often Did the Athenian Dikasteria Meet? A Reconsideration,” GRBS 60, no. 3 (2020): 324–41.
  • Piotr Głogowski, “Cyrus the Younger and his Persians: the dynamics of power,” GRBS 60, no. 2 (2020): 165–91.
  • Elizabeth Carney, “Royal Macedonian Widows: Merry and Not,” GRBS 59 (2019): 368–96.
  • Sarah Morris and John Papadopoulos, “Of Granaries and Games: Egyptian Stowaways in an Athenian Chest,” Hesperia Supplements 33 (2004): 225–42.
  • Loren J. Samons II, “Herodotus on the Kimonids: Peisistratid Allies in Sixth-Century Athens,” Historia 66, no. 1 (2017): 21–44.
  • Anastasios Nikolaidis, “Revisiting the Pylos Episode and Thucydides’ ‘Bias’ Against Cleon,” C&M 69 (2021): 121–50.
  • Cinzia Bearzot, “Political Murder in Classical Greece,” Ancient Society 47 (2007): 37–61.
  • Timothy Sorg, “Agyrrhios Beyond Attica: Tax-Farming and Imperial Recovering in the Second Athenian League,” Historia 64, no. 1 (2015): 49–76.
  • Joshua D. Sosin, “Ransom at Athens ([Dem.] 53.11),” Historia 66, no. 2 (2017): 130–46.
  • Etka Liebowitz, “Female Monarchal Succession in Hellenistic and Jewish Society in Antiquity: Parallels and Contrasts,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 49, no. 1 (2018), 30–48.

Previous Months

January, February

February Reading List

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Back in January I set an ambitious reading goal for 2022, one article read per working day, and resolved to do a monthly wrap-up for accountability. I am generally happy with the returns even though some busyness in my schedule at the end of February caused me to fall a little bit short this month as well.

Without further ado, here is the list and a handful of honorable mentions for the favorite things I read.

Honorable Mentions

  • David Lewis, “Near Eastern Slaves in Classical Attica and the Slave Trade with Persian Territories,” Classical Quarterly 61 (2011): 91–113
  • James Roy, “The Son of Pharnabazos and Parapita, A Persian Competing in the Olympic Games: Xenophon Hellenica 4.1.39–40,” Classica et Mediaevalia 68 (2020): 119–34
  • Dominique Lenfant, “Eunuchs as the Guardians of Women: Orientalism and Back Projection in Modern Scholarship,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 61 (2021): 456–74

The List

  • Anna Novokhatko, “The Wetted Sponge, the Wretched Rho, and other Greek evidence for Scribal Work,” Glotta 96 (2020): 148–73
  • V.L. Konstantinopoulos, “The Persian Wars and Political Conflicts in Athens,” British Institute of Classical Studies 124 (2013), 63–5
  • Rachel Bruzzone, “Killing the Past in Thucydides’ Plataean Debate,” Classical Philology 110 (2015): 289–300
  • Andrew G. Scott, “Spartan courage and the social function of Plutarch’s Lacaonian apophthegms,” Museum Helveticum 74, no. 1 (2017): 34–53
  • Andrew T. Alwine, “Freedom and Patronage in Athenian Democracy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 136 (2016): 1–17
  • Christina Skelton, “Greek-Anatolian Language Contact and the Settlement of Pamphylia,” Classical Antiquity 36, no. 1 (2017): 104–29
  • Garrett Ryan, “Building Order,” Classical Antiquity 37, no. 1 (2018): 151–85
  • John O. Hyland, “Contesting Marathon: Billows Krentz, and the Persian Problem,” Classical Philology 106, no. 3 (2011): 265–77 (review article)
  • Richard Rawles, “Lysimeleia (Thucydides 7.52, Theocritus 16.84): What Thucydides Does not Tell us about the Sicilian Expedition,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 135 (2015): 132–46
  • Christian Mann, “Campaign Agones: Towards a Classification of Grek Athletic Competitions,
    Classica et Mediaevalia 68 (2020): 99–117
  • Mait Kõiv, “Greek Rulers and Imperial Powers in Western Anatolia (8th–6th Centuries BC),” Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 27, no. 2 (2021): 357–72
  • Aynur-Michele-Sara Karatas, “Greek Cults and Their Sacred Laws on Dress Codes,” Classical World 113, no. 2 (2020): 147–70
  • Krzysztof Nawotka, “Seleukos I and the Origin of the Seleukid Dynastic Image,
    Scripta Classical Israelica 36 (2017): 31–43
  • Marloes Deene, “Naturalized Citizens and Social Mobility in Classical Athens: the case of Apollodorus,” Greece and Rome 58, no. 2 (2011): 159–75
  • Benjamin M. Sullivan, “In the Shadow of Phoenicia: North Syria and “Palestinian Syria” in Herodotus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 138 (2018): 67–79

Previous Months

January

A Reading Goal For 2022 and the January List

Posted on by Josh Nudell

In recent years I have become almost obsessive about tracking what I read. I have kept a running list of what I read for “fun” since 2013 (and intermittently before that) and started tracking the books I read for academic purposes in 2020. Beyond mere obsession, this habit allows me to visualize my reading diet, which has led to a dramatic shift in what I read over the past few years.

In December last year, it occurred to me that my academic reading skewed overwhelmingly to books. I read articles, of course, when they are related to my research, but I had largely gotten away from reading articles as a regular practice. Coming into the year, therefore, I set an ambitious reading goal to fix this, but withheld saying anything until determining whether it was even remotely doable.

The goal is this. Every work day this year—roughly every week day outside of holidays and vacations—I aim to read one article. If I am successful, this will amount to roughly 20 articles a month, or 240 articles for the year. Some of these will be research related, many others will go toward informing how I teach, and I am prioritizing articles from the past decade. I suspect that I will fall often fall short (I did in January), but, as with many of my other reading goals, this is as much about building habits as winning a prize. My reward is being a better teacher and researcher.

At the end of every month, I will publish the list of articles I read and highlight a few honorable mentions.

Here is January’s list:

Honorable Mention

  • Debby Sneed, “Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece,” Hesperia 90 (2021): 747–72
  • Matthew Simonton, “Stability and Violence in Classical Greek Democracies and Oligarchies,” Classical Antiquity 36 (2017): 52–103

The List

  • Bill Caraher, “Documenting Wesley College: A Mildly Anarchist Teacher Encounter,” [posted to his blog]
  • Samuel Ellis, “Greek Conceptualizations of Persian Traditions: Gift-giving and Friendship in the Persian Empire,” Classical Quarterly 71 (2021): 77–88
  • Walter Scheidel, “Building Up Slaveries in Ancient Italy and the African Savanna,” [posted to Academia.edu]
  • Deborah Levine Gera, “Themistocles’ Persian Tapestry,” Classical Quarterly 57 (2007): 445–57
  • Jessica Romney, “Women in an Ancient Greek History Course: From Cameo to Part of the Whole,” Classical World 114 (2021): 227–48
  • Daniel Unruh, “Loaves in a Cold Oven: Tyranny and Sterility in Herodotus’ Histories,” Classical World 114 (2021): 281–308
  • Georgia Proietti, “War and Memory: The Battle of Psyttaleia Before Herodotus’ “Histories”,” British Institute for Classical Studies 58 (2015): 43–54
  • Naoise Mac Sweeney, “Regional Identities in the Greek World: Myth and Koinon in Ionia,” Historia 70 (2021): 268–314
  • Julia Kindt, “Personal Religion: A Productive Category for the Study of Greek Religion?,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 135 (2015): 35–50
  • Valeria Pratolongo, “The Greeks and the Indigenous Populations of Eastern Sicily in the Classical Era,” Mediterranean Archaeology 27 (2014): 85–90
  • Denise Demetriou, “What is an Emporion? A Reassessment,” Historia 60 (2011): 255–72
  • Lela M. Urquhart, “Competing Traditions in the Historiography of Ancient Greek Colonization in Italy,” Journal of of the History of Ideas 75 (2014): 23–44
  • Nicolette Pavlides, “The Sanctuaries of Apollo Maleatas and Apollo Tyritas in Laconia: Religion in Spartan-Perioikic Relations,” Annual of the British School at Athens 113 (2018): 270–305
  • Graham Shipley, “Sparta and its Perioikic Neighbors: a century of reassessment,” Hermathena 181 (2006): 51–82
  • Charlotte Dunn, “Messene Besieged,” Acta Classica 61 (2018): 190–200
  • Valerij Goušchin, “Solon’s Law on Stasis and the Rise of Pisistratus,” Acta Classica 59 (2016): 101–13

Publications Notice 2018

Posted on by Josh Nudell

This year saw some of my work go out into the world beyond the ecosystem of this blog, in the form of two peer-reviewed articles and one book review. In reverse order, they were:

“‘Who Cares About the Greeks Living in Asia?’: Ionia and Attic Orators in the Fourth Century,” CJ 114 (2018), 163–90.

In this article I used the extant speeches of the Attic Orators as a window into Athenian public discourse about Ionia. Where a superficial distance between Athens and Ionia appeared at the start of the fourth century, these speeches, I argue, contain evidence a complex and ongoing relationship between the two even as their composers directed the attention of their audiences elsewhere.

“Oracular Politics: Propaganda and Myth in the Refoundation of Didyma,” AHB 32 (2018), 44–60.

This article challenges the widely-held position that the presence of Alexander the Great caused the restoration of the oracle at Didyma, which had lain in ruin for almost a century and a half since the end of the Persian Wars. I reinterpreted the ancient evidence for this spurious association, arguing that crediting Alexander served the political needs of the Milesians and of Seleucid royal family.

“Nudell on: P. Briant, The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire,” trans. N. Elliot (Harvard University Press: 2017).”

In January my review of Pierre Briant’s book about the reception of Alexander in Early Modern Europe, published in English as The First European appeared in CJ-online. The short version is that the book is excellent (Briant is one of my favorite ancient historians working), but I took issue with the title chosen for the English-language edition.

Each of these is a piece of scholarship, meaning that while I tried my best to keep the writing clean and readable, a certain amount of background context is assumed on the part of the reader. That said, I am happy to share copies with any interested readers, scholars, or students. If the numbers of off-prints are limited, priority goes to students and academics. Send an email to inquire about receiving a copy.