Greeced Lightning! Episodes 1 and 2

Happy #MythMonday, everyone! The pilot episode of Greeced Lightning released January 9th, and Episode 2 dropped today. If you haven’t checked us out yet, you can have your own personal Homerathon today with these first two episodes! In the first episode, Luke and Sam and I chat about the legends and myths around the Trojan War — the identity of Homer, the epic cycle of which the Iliad is just…

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Announcing Greeced Lightning!

It’s automatic, systematic, myth-o-matic…why it’s Greeced Lightning! What better way to welcome 2023 than with a new podcast? After months of planning, researching, and recording behind the scenes, I’m SO excited to finally share that I’m co-hosting a new podcast called Greeced Lightning! We’ll release our first episode this coming Monday, January 9th — the first #MythMonday of 2023!  This has…

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The Beautiful Sweater from Hell

The Beautiful Sweater from Hell

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Scary Monsters, Super Creeps: Autumn Reads

Scary Monsters, Super Creeps: Autumn Reads

Happy autumnal equinox, my friends! This—this darkening, cooling-off, hunkering-down season—is my favorite time of the year, not least because my favorite holiday is just around the corner. I don’t know about y’all but I am very ready to say goodbye to summer this year and move into this season of transitions and spooks and baked apple desserts and pumpkin-flavored everything. And what better way…

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August, Die She Must

August, Die She Must

August is here again, bringing that familiar bittersweet feeling of endings and beginnings as we try to soak up every last bit of summer possible before school starts again and the days start getting shorter and colder. For the first time since I was four years old, I will not spend August preparing for a new school year. It’s a weird feeling. I always loved school and I have a deep and abiding…

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It's a new dawn, it's a new decade

I guess I'm thirty flirty and thriving now?

Today is my 30th birthday. OOF. That feels weird to write — I’m 30. Thirty. I am no longer in my twenties. I took stock yesterday, the last day of my twenties. I have a few extra gray hairs these days, for which I blame the dissertation, but some of it is certainly my family’s early-gray genetics kicking in. I happen to (mostly) still wear the same size clothing as I did when I turned 20, but…

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It's Okay, I'm a Doctor

It’s Okay, I’m a Doctor

Well folks, it’s done! Last month, I successfully defended my dissertation, and the experience was way more fun than I had expected it to be. Last week, I finished the minor revisions requested by my committee and submitted the final version of the dissertation to the Graduate College (final deposit is anticlimactic, despite its finality). And my defense committee and university administrators…

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The Return of the Palatine Medea

The Return of the Palatine Medea

It’s been a hot minute since I posted here! It’s been a very busy 3 months behind the scenes: in addition to starting a full-time job as a managing editor (hello, semi-decent pay and retirement fund), I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my dissertation and preparing for my defense. But first, a super fun bit of news: a couple weeks ago I was delighted to be a special guest on Hanksy…

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MORE Myth Retellings To Read

MORE Myth Retellings To Read

Tis the season…to escape holiday madness with a book that takes you far outside your own world! We’re back with more ratings and reviews of recently published retellings and reimagining of Greek myths (yes, all Greek this time). The reviews are more mixed this time around, including one DNF. *gasp* The Women of Troy: A Novel by Pat Barker (2021, Doubleday) Rating: ★★★☆☆ To be honest, this…

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The Broke Grad Student's Holiday Gift Guide

The Broke Grad Student’s Holiday Gift Guide

Two years ago, I offered some gift ideas to brighten any tired, broke grad student’s holiday. But what if you are the tired, broke grad student? How can you possibly keep up with the expectation to purchase gifts for all your family and friends when you barely have any slush in your monthly budget? I feel you fellow DIYers ready to advise that we make our gifts if money is tight. Handmade gifts…

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Add These Myth Retellings to your To-Be-Read List

Add These Myth Retellings to your To-Be-Read List

If you’ve been here a while, then you know that I am a bona fide Madeline Miller fangirl. I’ve written two posts about Miller’s bestselling retellings of classical myths, Circe and The Song of Achilles, both of which I cannot recommend highly enough. But Miller is not the only one reimagining ancient stories from new perspectives: in fact, classical mythology has been having a bit of a moment in…

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A Drinking Game for Classics-Themed Film

Get ready for #moviemonday (is this a thing? I'm gonna make it a thing.) | A Drinking Game for Classics-Themed Film

If you have ever studied ancient history or Greek myth, then you know that both are melodramatic, violent, and raunchy AF. Roman political history during the civil wars of the 40s and 30s BCE reads like a damn soap opera. The Iliad and the Odyssey have sex and violence out the wazoo. These stories were practically made for the big screen, and yet often when Hollywood decides to adapt one, it ends…

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Campus Wildlife Encounters: The Grad Student

Campus Wildlife Encounters: The Grad Student

As a new school year gets underway, one enigmatic creature will be reappearing on university campuses across the country: the graduate student (scholasticus laboriosus). Frequently mistaken for their cousins the undergraduates (scholasticus iunior) and faculty members (scholasticus beneficiarius), graduate students make up a vital part of the university ecosystem. Let’s learn a bit about the…

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All My Covid Knitting Projects

All My Covid Knitting Projects

If you know me, you know I’m always either knitting or thinking about knitting. I love to knit, for a variety of reasons — it’s fun, it’s productive, it keeps me focused in situations where I’d otherwise get bored or sidetracked (looking at you, evening lectures), and it’s soothing enough to effectively act as therapy for me. All these reasons to love knitting were only amplified by the pandemic…

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A Few Thoughts on Virtual CAMWS 2021

A Few Thoughts on Virtual CAMWS 2021

Just a couple of weeks ago we wrapped up the 117th CAMWS—and the second virtual CAMWS—annual meeting. I thought this year’s virtual conference was a huge success, thanks in large part to the amazing team of CAMWS tech volunteers who helped keep everything running smoothly. In both the panels I attended live and the ones I watched after the fact, there were very few tech hiccups—no more than we…

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A Long Time Coming

A Long Time Coming

The task of processing everything that has happened over the last few weeks and all my feelings about it seems almost impossible. For me, at least, these historic moments have dovetailed with watching powerful films in curious ways, all of it culminating in a newfound obsession with an old favorite song. Two weeks ago we sat glued to the news for hours watching the aftermath of an attempted…

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Bye, 2020

I don’t think anyone is sorry to be showing 2020 the door this week. This year, the opening of a new decade (depending on your perspective), was seen by so many of us as the time when we would take control of our lives, take on new challenges, bring renewed energy to existing goals, cast off toxic habits and relationships, make dream careers a reality…and then it all came to a screeching halt…

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