Hot Latin for Guys & Guys: Martial, Epigrams 9.63

Ad cēnam invītant omnēs tē, Phoebe, cinaedī.
     Mentula quem pascit, nōn, putō, pūrus homō est.

All the cinaedi invite you to dinner, Phoebus.
     A man whose dick feeds him is not, I think, pure man.

LATIN YOU CAN USE!
Mentula quem pascit - "His dick feeds him," he's a sugar baby, he puts out in exchange for a meal, jewelry, tickets to Evita, cash, etc.

Trotting Glossary
Ad, to
cēnam, dinner
invītant, they invite
omnēs, all (modifies cinaedī)
tē, you (object of invītant)
Phoebe, Phoebus (a man's name, the addressee of the poem)
cinaedī, (the) cinaedi (effeminate men presumed to enjoy submitting to anal penetration by other men; here, they are the subject of invītant)
mentula, (his) mentula (obscene word for "penis")
quem, (he) whom
pascit, feeds
nōn, not
putō, I think
pūrus, (a) pure
homō, man (usually in the sense of "human being," but here clearly "man")
est, is

Vocabulary
ad (prep. + acc.), to, toward
cēna, cēnae, F., dinner
invītō (1), invite
omnis, omnis, (adj.), every all
tū, tuī, (pron.), you
Phoebus, -ī, M., Phoebus (a man's name)
cinaedus, -ī, M., cinaedus (pl., cinaedi; a generally pejorative term for an effeminate man presumed to enjoy submitting to anal penetration by other men)
mentula, ae, F., mentula (pl., mentulae; an obscene word for "penis")
quī, quae, quod (pron.), who, which
pascī, pāvī, pastus (v.),  cause to eat; feed, pasture
nōn (adv.), not
putō (1), think
pūrus, -a, -um (adj.), clean, pure, uncontaminated
homō, hominis, M., human being, man
sum, esse, futurus sum (v.), be

Commentary
This little epigram is very dear and important to me, not only because it is brilliant, but also because it is a beautiful example of my thesis that a queer camp aesthetic prevails in much Roman poetry that has traditionally been viewed as harsh homophobic invective.

In this poem, Martial (that is, the poet's poetic persona) is addressing his friend Phoebus (we know they are friends from another poem that I will post in another Hot Latin for Guys and Guys). His name is a cult epithet of the god Apollo, and means "the radiant one." His name is thus the basis for the word play (perhaps "pun" is too strong a word) at the end of the poem,  where Martial says that he does not think Phoebus is in fact so pure and uncontaminated as his divinely inspired name would suggest.

What Martial is getting at here is twofold: (1) Phoebus is a hustler who plays the top to effeminate men who like to be penetrated by masculine men; but (2) if Phoebus earns his keep by hustling—that is, if his penis "feeds" him—he would seem not to be so masculine a man after all.

Traditionally, this poem has been viewed as an example of Roman attitudes toward masculine gender identity and male sexuality. That is, we learn from this poem that it is good for men to be masculine and sexually dominant (as Phoebus seems to be on the surface, at least), while it is bad for men to be effeminate and sexually submissive (like the cinaedi who invite him to dinner, clearly intending Phoebus himself to be the dessert). More than that, we understand that Martial severely disapproves not only of the effeminate sexual submissiveness of the cinaedi, but also of Phoebus' thinly disguised sexual solicitation.

But to this traditional reading I respond (à la Seth and Amy): Really!?!

I mean, sure, the starting point for this poem is the normative structure of male gender identity and sexual role play: (1) dominant/top is good, (2) submissive/bottom is bad, and (3) ministering to the pleasure of others for profit or gain ("dinner" is, I believe, a synecdoche for "money") undermines a man's respectability, and ultimately his masculinity.

However: the idea that the poetic speaker here expresses earnest moral censure is, I think, an "outsider" reading; that is, that's the way the poem is going to be understood by a "straight" reader who does not understand the dynamics of Rome's homosocial and indeed homosexual subculture. An "insider" reader is going to understand that Martial is winking and nodding at both Phoebus and the cinaedi even as he pretends to reprove them. In effect, the poet belongs to the same group that his poetic invective seems to target for moral censure.

This kind of feigned moral sincerity, standing in for an actual rejection of normative morality (particularly as regards normative sex and gender) is the quintessence of camp, the performative mode associated with homosexual subcultures at least from the time of Oscar Wilde. Indeed, since the middle of the twentieth century, camp has often been called "the gay sensibility."

What I've just written is basically the argument both of my dissertation and of my subsequent scholarly research and writing. This argument for a camp aesthetic at work in Roman invective poetry that targets male effeminacy and homosexuality is, in a word, what my entire scholarly project is all about.

Stay tuned to Hot Latin for Guys and Guys for more examples of poems that I believe fit into this category of Roman camp.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 15, 9:18 a.m.

Excited about today. Looking forward to teaching Horace, Odes 1.11, "carpe diem," at the optional lunchtime sight reading session. The greater Asclepiadean meter is very Lerner and Loewe, very Rogers and Hammerstein, circa My Fair Lady, circa South Pacific.

Even excited about afternoon review for Monday's exam. We'll be reading a continuous passage of about 150-200 words, in relatively simple Latin (but with plenty of sophisticated syntax), about the last days of Cicero and his death.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 14, 9:42 p.m.

Long day, and yet I was not very busy. Colleague got stuck on the subway so I ended up administering the daily quiz and teaching the first hour of drill when I was not scheduled to do so. He, having arrived, then relieved me for the second hour of drill, for which I had originally been scheduled.

Actually, I spent a lot of the morning online following the breaking news about the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). 

Then it was lunch time. I taught the lunchtime optional grammar review. Prepped for various things in my office while our students attended a two-hour afternoon grammar lecture—a change from the schedule in recent days, when we had one hour of grammar and one hour of a Catullus poem.

Unit 12, however, is simply too long to squeeze into one hour, covering independent uses of the subjunctive (jussive, hortatory, potential, deliberative, optative); direct questions; indirect questions; the pronoun/adjective īdem, eadem, idem; the pronoun/adjective quīdam; the intensive pronoun/adjective ipse, ipsa, ipsum; and the demonstrative pronoun/adjective iste, ista, istud.

After the instructional day is over, I have been meeting with my fellow Latin teachers to presess (Institute speak for "prep") the selections in the prose survey that will begin when we have completed the 18 units of Moreland and Fleischer.

And, of course, answering questions from students.

Then coming home, watering gardens, feeding kittie cats, having dinner, checking my email, and...

...answering questions from students.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 13, 7:08 p.m.

Twelve days ago, on DAY 1, when I gave the pronunciation lecture, we used Catullus 101 as a pronunciation exercise, and our students read it merely as a series of sounds, words without meaning that had their accent on either the penult or the antepenult. I told them then that in 12 days they would read that poem again, with comprehension. Today was that day.

Today, in the second hour of afternoon lecture, I led our students in reading and translating Catullus 101, an elegy in memory of the poet's deceased older brother, structured as a direct address by the poet to the "mute ashes" of his brother's body. It was our fourth and final Catullus poem during afternoon lecture (we've previously done Poems 13, 9, and 51). Students still struggle with the scansion, the reading, and the translating, but they get it, word by word, phrase by phrase, line by line. Then, after each student has translated a line, haltingly, with much prompting from the teacher and much assistance from weary fellow students, each student translates his or her line again, this time as fluidly as possible, one student picking right up from the last, so they can all hear the flow of the lyric from beginning to end. It begins. It flows. It ends. It makes sense. They have made sense of a Latin poem. It is a beautiful thing.

I am training the next generation of classical philologists. It's all I ever wanted. It feels good.

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 13, 8:14 a.m.

Went home a bit earlier than usual yesterday to vote in an extremely important Congressional primary in my district (my guy won). Thought I was going to show our rental unit to a prospective new tenant for the fall, but that got postponed until today. Then I watered gardens in the back and front of the house. Found the following lily in bloom out front:

OK...more later...off to lead morning optional review of homework...

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 12, 3:21 p.m.

Who am I to say, but I thought my Unit 10 grammar lecture (my first of the summer) was a smashing success. Got through ablatives absolute, the "UNUS NAUTA" adjectives, ferō and its compounds, ablative of cause, and ablative or genitive of description in about 30 minutes, leaving a full 30 minutes for drills from the text book (Moreland and Fleischer), which is as it should be.

My colleague Aaron Shapiro led an awesome hour on Catullus 51, the adaptation of Sappho 31 ("That man seems to me to be equal to a god...").

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 12, 10:48 a.m.

Just had a fabulous first hour of morning drills on Unit 9 sentences, covering comparison of adjectives (regular and irregular), comparison with quam and the ablative of comparison, ablative of degree of difference, comparison of adverbs (regular and irregular) and the partitive genitive. Whew!

This afternoon = my first grammar lecture. Well prepared but of course a bit anxious nonetheless. Unit 10, covering ablatives absolute, the "UNUS NAUTA" adjectives (adjectives with genitive singular in -īus), ferō and its compounds, ablative of cause, and ablative or genitive of description.

My goal for this week is to push our students to smoother translations, faster, while retaining or improving accuracy. They need to stop thinking out loud before they translate a word. As the late great Seth Benardete once said at the Advanced Summer Institute on Tacitus, regarding a sentence at Annals 6.28 about the generation and regeneration of the phoenix being translated by a slightly squeamish student: "Squirt...semen! Just say it!"

FYI, Tacitus' Latin phrase is "vim genitalem adfundere," which I must admit I would be inclined to render as "to pour forth genital force," but I remember quite clearly that Professor Benardete was quite insistent that the student say "squirt semen." Maybe it was just his way of having fun, sort of the way he loved to tell stories about British spies who were blackmailed on the basis of their homosexuality. Gotta love the memory of that man.

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 11, 8:16 a.m.

Week 3 begins. Second weekly exam this morning. Unit 9 this afternoon: comparison of adjectives (regular and irregular), comparison with quam and the ablative of comparison, ablative of degree of difference, comparison of adverbs (regular and irregular) and the partitive genitive. Whew! But you're used to that by now.

Yesterday was Gay Pride Day in New York City. I carried my cell phone to the parade as usual, but my Moreland & Fleischer for the first time. I took a couple of calls from students with Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, or marching tunes blaring in the background and scantily clad go-go boys dancing on floats. I think that's a 40-year Institute first, but if anyone knows otherwise, please let me know via comment or email.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Weekend 2

This is my second weekend off from the Summer Latin Institute. It's also Gay Pride weekend. Jason and I went to Pride Shabbat services last night at the lesbian and gay synagogue, drawn by the special guest appearance of pioneering transgender activist Kate Boornstein to give the drash, which was a wonderful story of how eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil initiated Adam and Eve into binary thinking, and the rainbow that greeted Noah after the flood ushered in plural, spectral thinking. Only it's more fun when she tells it.

I wish I had slept later this morning, but I got up around 6:30 a.m. when my cat Christine (who is a boy with a girl's name because he was name for the Julia Louis Dreyfus character in The New Adventures of Old Christine before we knew he was a boy) started asking for breakfast, as he does every morning. Christine is very vocal.

I went for my run, from Nostrand Avenue in Bed Stuy to South Oxford Street in Fort Greene, then to my favorite Bed Stuy cafe, Bedford Hill, for a small Americano and a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Then Jason and I went to Costco off the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn, mostly for dry cat food (Costco's Kirkland Signature brand is quite good, despite the recent recall for salmonella). Then we went to Red Hook for brunch at The Good Fork, where we finished the Sunday crossword in the New York Times, and then onto Fairway for our weekly grocery run. Then Golden Touch car wash on 4th Avenue (which is sort of in Park Slope, but the part of Park Slop that used to be a no man's land between Gowanus and Boerum Hill where you took your life into your hands; ah, the new Brooklyn). Then home. And finally my nap on the living room sofa to make up for the ungodly hour at which Christine got me out of bed in the morning.

When I got up from my nap we watched a couple episodes of United States of Tara while Jason fixed dinner: a baby spinach salad with Annie's Woodstock dressing and grated Parmesan cheese, followed by beef and barley soup from Fairway, and hot sausages.

Tomorrow is Gay Pride Day. Jason and I are having our third annual brunch at Cook Shop near the High Line in West Chelsea with our friends Hugh and Alex, then watching the parade for as long as we can stand it (how many Speedo-clad go-go boys on parade floats can you ogle in one afternoon?).

As far as Latin, the Institute, and my students go...I haven't heard too much from them yet this weekend, beyond a couple of phone calls with some nicely pointed questions about verb morphology. We advise them not to do any Latin on Friday nights, and to begin studying for their weekly exam after sleeping in on Saturday. Perhaps I will get more calls tonight and tomorrow, or perhaps our little chickadees have spread their wings and learned to fly.

I have to make up a bunch of quizzes this weekend for week after next. And I have to prepare to teach Unit 10, the ablative absolute unit, on Tuesday—my first grammar lecture. My colleague and fellow SLI newbie Patrick Glauthier did an astounding job with his first grammar lecture last Thursday, Unit 8, where we cover third declension adjectives, fourth and fifth declension nouns, the imperative, the present system of the verb eō, and some assorted noun syntax all in one hour!

The program is, of course, becoming more and more routine, as I become less of a newbie and more of an experienced Institute teacher every day. I like that. I like being able to focus more on my students and their needs and less on the onslaught of new logistics and the demands of our rigorous pedagogy. And of course I love seeing the lovely Rita Fleischer every day. And our administrative assistant Leila. And Latin/Greek Institute Director Hardy Hansen (my first Greek teacher). And my fellow teachers of both Latin and Greek.

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 10, 6:38 a.m.

Already started my work day, answering a question from a student who called while I was sipping my morning coffee and making breakfast for Jason (an omelet that I will hide from the kittie cats in the microwave and he will eat when he gets out of bed in an hour).

How I answered my student's question illustrates well the Institute method. His confusion was about the apodosis of a present contrary-to-fact conditional sentence, "nunc omnēs eam populum bene regentem canerent." He did not know what to do with "eam." "What part of speech is 'eam'?" I asked. He correctly identified it as a demonstrative pronoun referring back to the queen (rēgīna) in the protasis, but he was still stumped about the syntax. "What part of speech is 'omnēs'?" I asked. Adjective, he said. Modifying what? Nothing. So what use of an adjective is this? Substantive. So what's it's syntax? Nominative subject. Of what verb? Canerent. Yes! Now, what's the syntax of "eam"? Accusative direct object. Of what verb? Canerent. Yes! Now what part of speech is "regentem"? It's a participle, a verbal adjective. Yes! Modifying what? "Eam." Yes! Good! Now translate. "Now all men would be singing of that woman ruling the people well."

You did it! Now go drink your coffee and call me back when you have another question.

And then I too went back to my own coffee and finished making breakfast for Jason. And wrote this blog entry. So now I need to jump in the shower.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 9, 6:45 p.m.

Great day at the Summer Latin Institute. Selfishly speaking. Because I got to teach Catullus 13, the first unedited, unadapted, unaltered, complete work of Latin literature our students have read from beginning to end with comprehension (all 14 lines of it).

I got to talk about Catullus, his adulterous relationship with his girlfriend Lesbia, his boyfriend Juventius, his sexual relations with slave boys, and, of course, his Phalaecean hendecasyllables.

I taught our students how to scan and elide. We went around the room reading a line each in Latin, with elision. Then we translated the poem tag-team style, with some students being called on to translate, others being encouraged to chime in with help when their fellow student got stuck on a word or phrase.

Fortunately I touched base with program administrator and text book co-author Rita Fleischer before I started teaching my hour. She gave me some handouts that I did not know were in the files. One was a line drawing of an ancient graffito showing a man's face with a nose in the shape of a penis, which is completely relevant to the concluding lines of Catullus 13 (see this translation and you will understand why). Our students got the connection immediately and loved the illustration (and no doubt thought their teacher was pretty cool for giving it to them). The other handout included two fabulous translations, one by Frank O. Copley (1907-1993), the other by Horace Gregory (1898-1982). I first read them aloud and then distributed copies. These very divergent renderings demonstrated to the students both the art of translation and the value of being able to read the poem for themselves in the original Latin. My understanding is that recent Latin Institute faculty have avoided sharing these translations with the students for pedagogical reasons that remain unclear to be. For my money, the translations were a very valuable part of the lesson, and I am grateful to Rita Fleischer for providing them to me (on the sly as it were) and to Floyd Moreland, whose idea I assume it was to include them in the curriculum many years ago (they were handed out to me as an Institute student in 1982).

We are nearing the end of the second week. From here on out, there will be less and less new morphology and syntax, more and more real Latin poetry and prose. We have baked a hearty cake. Now comes the sweet and delicious icing.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 8, 7:18 p.m.

I did learn from my mistakes (see yesterday's blog post). This morning in drill I got through all of my sentences, finished right on time, and included appropriate drills on yesterday's third-declension noun morphology and indirect statement syntax.

One student has left us. As attrition rates go, that's really not bad. We have a couple of others who are struggling, but we're doing all we can to retain them, and they are making sure progress.

Today was our last 2-hour grammar lecture. Starting tomorrow, we have one hour of grammar and one hour reading a poem. In fact, I'm starting off the poetry survey tomorrow with Catullus 13. Very exciting, both for the students and for me! This is the stuff that led me to pursue a doctorate in classics in the first place, so many years ago. And I'm just as thrilled by it now.

I don't really have a lot of charming anecdotes to share regarding today. It was fairly routine. I worked with students individually in my office first thing in the morning; I led one hour of morning drills; I conducted the optional lunch-time sight reading (a liberally adapted passage from Cicero's first Catilinarian, which students will read in full, in the original, unadapted, in a few weeks); and I worked with students individually in my office last thing this afternoon. They're paying me to teach Latin all day, every day, in the best intensive Latin program in the country—what a racket!

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 7, 10:55 a.m.

I'm going slightly rogue right now. Ideally I should be hovering outside the doors of the classrooms where the second hour of morning drills is taking place, learning how to be a better teacher by observing my colleagues.

Instead, I am in my office with a fresh cup of Starbucks tall dark. I'm wiped. I need some me time.

Last night I was on the phone with a student from 10:00 to 11:45 p.m. This morning I was with students in my office from 8:30 to 9:20 a.m. Then I administered the quiz to my drill group and did the first hour of morning drills. I was slow; that is, we were supposed to get through sentence 8, and we only got through sentence 4 by the time 10:30 rolled around. We do not like to keep students late. They need their me time, too.

Being slow is kinda bad. It means the colleague who follows me has to pack even more into the second hour of drills than was already planned. On the other hand, you can only push the pace so much before you are just pushing verbal spaghetti through students' mouths. My guys (of both sexes) are having a hard time wrapping their heads around participles (who doesn't?), and I have to walk them through it with patience and persistence. It takes time.

I will learn from this experience and, one would hope, be able to push harder and go faster the next time a similar situation arises. Yes, I say that; but I'm not really sure...maybe sometimes you just don't get through all the sentences, and that's that, and that fine.

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 6

DAY 6 was yesterday, June 18, 2012.

It was the day of our first weekly exam, covering Units 1-4. Thus, a 3-hour test on the equivalent of one month of college Latin (arguably more) learned in one week.

The exam is a rigorous test of students' knowledge of morphology and syntax, including a synopsis, identification and transformation of isolated verb forms, Latin-to-English translation with syntax questions and transformation (five sentences), and two English-to-Latin sentences (Latin prose composition).

Exams are team-graded, in the same spirit that the entire program is team-taught. Each faculty member grades specific sections or questions on all papers, rather than grading the entire exam of a few students. At the end of the day, we add up each student's score, finalize the grades, and meet to discuss student progress.

There was of course a range of performance from nearly perfect to far from good. Some students may end up leaving the program if they do not improve by the next weekly exam next Monday. It is up to the faculty to recognize the achievement of the best students; encourage those in the middle to get over their hump; and work as hard as we can with those at the bottom to keep them in the program or help them make a realistic decision about leaving when the time comes. There is no point in a student's subjecting him- or herself to the intensity of this program if it is not working for them, if they are experiencing mostly failure and frustration rather than success and satisfaction, if they are not learning Latin.

After the exam, students have lunch, and at 1:00 PM, it's right back to the regular learning routine: another two-hour lecture on another unit with new morphology and syntax, a new list of vocabulary items, a new set of exercises to complete and perfect before the next morning's drills.

Yesterday afternoon, DAY 6, was Unit 5: participles, the active and passive periphrastic conjugations, dative of agent with the passive periphrastic, dative of the possessor, and the irregular verb possum.

I worked with some students in my office yesterday evening and on the phone last night. Once again, they feel overwhelmed. That's the thing about the Summer Latin Institute (and the Summer Greek Institute). I know; remember, I was a student in this program in 1982 (and Greek in 1983). You feel overwhelmed the whole time. In a continuous, progressive, repeated manner: I am overwhelmed, I am being overwhelmed, I keep on being overwhelmed (that's a verb aspect joke, haha). At your best, you feel both overwhelmed and extremely satisfied by all the progress you are making, all the Latin you are learning, how you are getting faster and more accurate at recognizing noun and verb forms, identifying them, translating them, identifying their syntax, and reading with comprehension. But the two feelings go hand in hand: the feeling of being overwhelmed, and the feeling of being extremely satisfied with the program, with yourself, with language in general and Latin in particular.

In my office yesterday, one of my students lamented, "OMG, if it's this bad when I'm doing sentences written by Floyd Moreland and Rita Fleischer, how bad is it going to be when I start reading Catullus?" To which I replied, "We'll find out on Thursday, when I'm teaching you guys Catullus 13 in the second hour of afternoon lecture." You should have seen the look of joy, surprise, anticipation on the face of that student! As if I had promised her a trip to Disneyworld or the Van Leeuwen ice cream shop in Cobble Hill. That's why these students are in the program—that love of literature and that joyous anticipation of being able to read Roman poetry and prose in the original Latin with comprehension. That's whey we are all here, sleep deprived, anxiety ridden, occasionally demoralized, often thrilled.

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Weekend 1B

Sunday, June 16—Father's Day, Bloomsday, and my first Sunday off from the Summer Latin Institute.

There is an optional 2-hour review session at the Graduate Center this afternoon for students who want additional support in advance of tomorrow's first weekly exam. And of course all faculty remain on 24-hour phone call for questions from all students.

I did get to go for my run yesterday, and Jason and I went on a thrift run (donating some of our clutter to Housing Works), in connection with which we had a great little meatball hero at some meatball place, of which I do not remember the name, on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, and some yummy ice cream an Van Leeuwen on Bergen Street in...I dunno...Cobble Hill? The rest of the day consisted of a lot of laundry, napping, some 46-year old reruns of Dark Shadows on Netflix, and a nice little dinner that Jason cooked.

I spoke by phone with one of my students who was reviewing his Moreland and Fleischer from the very beginning. We reviewed some morphology and translation drills. Later last night we spoke again about a verb synopsis of a first-conjugation verb. He's on his way to the optional review now, and I expect we will be speak again later today.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Notes Toward A Post-academic Humanism

A corporate entity that provides salary & benefits for humanists to pursue theory & practice that speak to specialists, generalists, and the interested public alike.

This is what humanists need as an alternative to the current incarnation of academia in which humanists have lost social, political, & institutional support.

This is not to say that humanists endorse the withdrawal of support for the humanities in the traditional academy. Indeed, we decry it, & we would encourage & welcome a return of the support we used to enjoy.

But the currently dominant line of argument is that (1) a college education / degree is now required, no longer optional, for professional success, and that (2) the content of that education must be STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) or business. 

This line of argument being prevalent, humanists have two choices. We can mount resistance to the overwhelming STEMification of the academy; or we can create a new institutional space where the humanistic enterprise is the central mission.

The former course may indeed be worth pursuing. The latter course, however, may well be the shape of a post-academic humanism yet to come.

Non-academic foci of humanistic endeavor of course already exist: libraries, museums, theatre organizations, opera companies, ballet companies, symphonies, festivals of music, art, & literature, among others.

These are wonderful organizations that demand & deserve continued support & patronage.

But the central focus of libraries is the preservation of documents, while the central focus of all the other types of organizations listed—arts organizations proper—is the production & distribution of the plastic arts on display & the lively arts in performance.

Again, indeed, these are precious & wonderful resources & activities that demand & deserve continued support & patronage.

But none of these organizations has as its central focus the creation of an non-academic institutional space in which humanists can conduct research, produce writing, & connect with other specialists as well as interested generalists & members of the public through programming, whether in the form of talks, exhibits, performances, workshops, or other forms of accessible, enjoyable, & meaningful human interaction.

Such an organization is, to borrow three luminous words from F. Scott Fitzgerald, "quivering on the horizon," and the time is now to reach that horizon. The time is now for that new day of humanism to dawn.

NOTE: This is by no means yet a full-on manifesto, but perhaps the beginnings of one. I will continue to add ideas in other posts and perhaps pull all of these ideas together on a single page. Stay tuned. Add your comments, thoughts, ideas. 

Summer Latin Institute - Weekend 1A

Today is my first day off from the Summer Latin Institute. Slept till after 8:00 a.m.

Yesterday, DAY 5, included morning drills as usual, and optional lunchtime grammar review and sight reading as usual, but no new grammar in the afternoon. Instead, we reviewed for Monday's exam by doing some verb synopses and sight-reading some sentences designed to illustrate all the main grammatical forms and constructions we studied during the week.

Afterwards, we had a little wine and cheese reception for all of our students, Latin and Greek alike. We let our hair down (except for Carlos, who had all of his shaved off on Thursday night), drank, nibbled, and chatted. Interestingly, all of my conversations with students ended up being about Pedagogishness-type material—the plight of the humanities, the current state of academia and public education, the future of humanistic endeavor. And it was not I who pushed the conversation in those directions; these are the issues our students are interested in, even passionate about. 

Came home about 6:00 p.m. and took a little nap on the living room sofa while All Things Considered played on the stereo and I waited for Jason to come home. A few minutes after 7:00, our friends Hugh and Alex arrived, and after a couple of IPAs from the local deli, we went to dinner at Do or Dine, one of several artisanal eateries that have sprung up around our Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood in the past couple of years. After dinner, Jason and I drove Hugh and Alex back home to Astoria, and then we came home and went straight to bed. Today I hope to go for a run and find some time to sit with Jason in a local cafe and do the New York Times Sunday crossword.

Of course, my phone will be on all weekend; students are studying for their first Latin exam.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 5, 6:23 a.m.

Sipping coffee on my first Institute Friday morning. I made it. Our students made it. Here we are. No new morphology or syntax today. Morning drills followed by an afternoon review of all Week 1 material, Units 1-4, in preparation for our first weekly exam on Monday, June 18, DAY 6.

Yesterday was quite a day for verb morphology. Essentially, the rest of the verb system, except for imperatives, participles, and the active and passive periphrastic conjugations (oh, that). They got the present system of second, third, third i-stem, and fourth conjugation verbs, as well as the entire passive voice (both present system and passive system, indicative and subjunctive). Oh, and the ablative of personal agent, too.

I don't think there is a single student who isn't feeling at least somewhat overwhelmed right now. It's virtually impossible not to feel that way. Nevertheless, most are swimming along; a few are treading, but in no danger of sinking; only one or two are flailing dangerously. We hope we can keep them all, but there is invariably at least some attrition within the first couple of weeks of the program. This level of intensity works for many, but not all students.

As for me, right about now I'm thinking this is the best teaching experience ever. It's great for my Latin, it's great for my classroom technique, it's great for my pedagogical methodology. I'm learning a lot on all those fronts and more. Interpersonal skills. How to support students cognitively and, to a degree, emotionally. How to balance unconditional love with tough love in the pedagogical setting. No, you are not "too slow," but yes, we want you to get faster, and we expect you to get more accurate, memorize your principal parts, etc.

I'm pretty sure my husband thinks I'm crazy, but that's OK. When we met, Jason used to tell me how pleased he was to be dating a classicist, and I would counter, with not a little pique, that I was a former classics student, not a classicist. Well, that was 12 years ago. In the interim, I seem to have morphed into precisely what Jason wanted me to be: there's no more complete way to be a classicist than to be teaching in the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute. So he'll just have to accept the consequences of getting his wish!

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 4, 9:19 a.m.

Just spent about 45 minutes in my office at the Graduate Center drilling second declension nouns, first-second declension adjectives, and noun-adjective agreement with a student, then moving on to sequence of tenses, relative time, purpose clauses and indirect commands. Our struggling students are so self-conscious about their speed. We must constantly remind them: Latin is a marathon not a sprint.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 4, 6:44 a.m.

Floyd Moreland's genius, 40 years ago, was to put Latin grammar together like a jigsaw puzzle in which pieces of morphology alternated with pieces of syntax, and heavy morphology days alternated with light morphology days. So, while we slammed our students with most of the present active verb system in the first two days of the program, yesterday, DAY 3, was a gentle romp through second declension nouns, first-second declension adjectives, substantive use of the adjective, sequence of tenses, relative time of the subjunctive, purpose clauses, and result clauses. Yes, of course, it still sounds like a lot, and it is; remember, the Institute is always at least one week of traditional classroom Latin in one day. Nevertheless, thanks in part to the brilliant lecture technique of my colleague, Aaron Shapiro, all of this new morphology and syntax went down like a refreshing cup of frozen yogurt from a midtown luncheonette, and there was even time to work through some of the Unit 3 drills.

I had fun leading the optional lunchtime sight reading, the second installment in a simple prose version of the story of Dido and Aeneas (our students will be reading the real thing, Book 4 of Vergil's Aeneid, in four weeks).  By the middle of next week, the optional sight will be a liberally adapted passage from Cicero's first Catilinarian, and by the end of next week, it will be unaltered selections from Catullus and Martial. One of the highlights of my own Institute experience as a student at the Latin Institute in 1982 was reading Catullus 58 on DAY 7 with Rita Fleischer, especially the verb glūbit, which the text defines as "bark, peel, skin," but which Rita defined for us as (and I quote absolutely verbatim), "It can mean s*** or f***; you pays your money, you takes your pick."

Rita Fleischer, dea mihi es!

OK, time to shave, shower, dress, and get to work.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 3

I really needed to catch up on some sleep last night. I was in bed by about 9:30, with my cell phone and my Moreland and Fleischer by my side in case any students tried to call me.

At 10:48, one of my advisees called (students are apportioned among the faculty for advisement)—we faculty had encouraged our advisees to check in with us nightly during the first week even if they did not have any specific questions (but they usually do have specific questions). She was bubbling with energy and enthusiasm, as well as a certain tone of fear, anxiety, and desperation characteristic of the Institute.

She told me what she had studied, and what she had yet to study, and assured me that she was prepared to pull an all-nighter if need be (note the ascending tricolonic structure of that last sentence, something our students will be seeing in spades when they begin reading Cicero's first Catilinarian in a few weeks). Then we went over one future-less-vivid conditional sentence together. She did a beautiful job of following our prescribed approach to attacking these sentences: (1) identify the tense and mood of the verb of the protasis and the verb of the apodosis; (2) determine the type of condition; (3) review your translation formula; (4) now and only now are you ready to translate.

I went back to sleep and had pleasant dreams; not, as I recall, about Latin or the Institute. 

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 2

As I wrote in a previous post, the rule of thumb is that one day at the Institute is like one week in a traditional classroom. I think today our Latin students packed in somewhat more that one week.

Today we covered the entire perfect active indicative system, including the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect indicative active, as well as the perfect, pluperfect, and imperfect subjunctive active for all conjugations, and the present subjunctive active for the first conjugation. In the first hour of the afternoon lecture. In the second hour, we covered conditional sentences, including simple conditions, future more vivid (with and without emphatic protasis), future less vivid, present contrary-to-fact, past contrary-to-fact, and mixed conditions. Oh, and the genitive of the charge (or penalty), just for good measure. My colleague did a great job providing a very clear and concise lecture that left enough time for some drill.

I did an hour of morning drill and the short afternoon presentation of vocabulary notes. Tomorrow I am doing the optional lunch time sight reading.

Our students are an amazing bunch of hard working and enthusiastic young men and women who are bearing up beautifully under a huge load of information presented in a very high-pressure (albeit also highly supportive) pedagogical environment.

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - DAY 1

Yesterday was DAY 1 of the CUNY Summer Latin Institute (and the CUNY Summer Greek Institute).

I had a great day. My morning lecture on Latin pronunciation, syllabification, and accentuation went very well. Our students learned about long and short vowels, diphthongs, problematic consonants ("b" before "s" is devoiced and sounds like "p," as in urbs, city), the law of the penult, and they took turns reading aloud beautifully the Latin of Catullus 101.

In the afternoon, our eager (if somewhat dumfounded) students learned the present active system of first and second conjugation verbs, as well as the first declension. That's system, not tense: they learned the present, imperfect, and future indicative active. All in two hours.

The rule of thumb around the Latin/Greek Institute is that students do about a week's worth of learning (by traditional classroom standards) every day. We faculty, in addition to meeting with our students individually after class if they need help, are on call 24/7 by telephone to answer questions. I spoke with several students last night and clarified issues they were having with principal parts, identifying stems, conjugation, declension, and how to navigate their way through a sentence.

It's a lot to ask, but students have done it with great success for 39 summers, and we expect they will do it for a 40th summer as well.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

The New Identity Politics?

This article in today's New York Times really fascinates me. It makes me wonder whether we are seeing the emergence of a new kind of politics in which intersectionality prevails over difference as the basis of identity-based political organizing and identification. If so, that would be a pretty powerful shift in American society and culture: a new identity politics.

Intersectionality is the idea that the classic categories of modern social and political identity, including race, class, gender, and sexuality, may perhaps be viewed in distinction for theoretical analysis, but in real life practice are always all going on at the same time. It is a concept of particular interest to people who study and work on forms of discrimination, and therefore another way of putting it is that axes of oppression and privilege are overlapping, not distinct. One is not either black or gay, for example: one is both black and gay. As obvious as that may seem once I say it, this idea has only been gaining ground in academic and activist circles for about 20 years.

Indeed, in its classic 1990s form, identity politics was precisely about the need to choose which aspect of one's complex identity would form one's primary allegiance. Am I going to work on women's rights or lesbian rights? lesbian rights or civil rights? transgender rights or disability rights? That is, which is more important to me as a female-to-male transgender person in a wheelchair: access to a urinal that accommodates my wheelchair, or access to a gender-neutral bathroom that accommodates my gender?

Of course, it was usually not people who were black and gay, female and lesbian, transgender and disabled, etc, who wanted to make these painful and difficult choices. Rather, advocacy organizations, from leadership down to rank and file membership, tended to force these choices for the sake of their  movements. As Julian Bond notes in the Times article cited above, people in the civil rights movement in the 1960s knew that Bayard Rustin, one of their major strategic and tactical architects, was gay, but in order to maintain the movement's focus on civil rights, Rustin had not only to stay closeted, but to make sure that his concerns as a gay man were kept completely distinct from his concerns as a black man. His blackness could be a public matter, but his gayness had to remain private, even secret, and indeed, I would suspect, more than just a little shameful, except perhaps within a very tight circle of very close associates (including Dr. King? maybe yes, maybe no, to judge from published statements and sources).

To be continued...

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 1

Classes begin TOMORROW. Today is DAY 1 minus 1.

Not a lot to report today. I will revise my notes for my blackboard for my pronunciation lecture in accordance with the suggestions I received from my colleagues when I rehearsed it on Friday. And I will do my best to get a good night's sleep.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 2

Classes begin on Monday, June 11. Today is DAY 1 minus 2.

I think I'm ready. I feel ready. I'm anxious, to be sure; that is probably inevitable. But I know what I'm doing, and I know how to do it.

There is no lurking on the sidelines, as on some level I hoped I might be able to do, at least for a few days. I am giving the one-hour lecture on pronunciation, syllabification, and accentuation on Monday morning. My colleague is presenting a review of grammatical terms and concepts (parts of speech, clauses, etc) for both Greek and Latin students together right after registration, but I am presenting the first bits of Latin the Latin students are going to see. It's kind of a big deal, in my mind at least.

On DAY 2, I will be doing the Vocabulary Notes, a sort of daily mini-lecture (like, ten minutes) where we go through that night's vocabulary word by word, pointing out any special features (the verb dō has unusual principal parts for a first conjugation verb, and a short "a" in the stem throughout most of the present system). It's also a nice place to point out English derivatives (nauta, nautae, M, sailor...yeah, that's where we get "nautical").

On DAY 3, I will be doing the daily optional sight reading, when we will be reading the second installment in a continuing saga of Aeneas and Dido presented in simple prose with lots of vocabulary and syntax help in the notes. These optional sight sessions allow eager students on top of their game to do something additional and challenging. At the very same time, another teacher is always leading an optional grammar review, a place for struggling students, or even just-getting-by students, to get additional help with the previous day's new morphology and syntax. I'm actually not scheduled to lead an optional grammar review during the first week, but I am scheduled for two optional sights. Hmm...should I interpret this one way or another? Better not!

Newbies like me do get spared from full-on, two-hour grammar lectures for the first two weeks, Units 1-8. My first lecture will be Unit 11, the deponent verbs chapter. I need to start thinking about that now.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 3

Day 1 minus 3 was Friday, June 8.

FINAL DAY OF PRESESSING. Classes begin on Monday, June 11. Real students learning real Latin. Real teachers, real teaching. No more mockery.

I rehearsed my pronunciation lecture scheduled for Monday morning, with emphasis on how I was planning to handle the Latin accentuation rule known as THE LAW OF THE PENULT. I was very proud of the way I fit all the information about pronunciation, syllabification, and accentuation on the board. My more Institute-experienced colleagues, however, urged me to take a lot of that information off the board for what our lead teacher calls my "starting position," and we talked about ways I could unfold some of the information in the course of the one-hour lecture.

Of course, in a traditional classroom, I would not worry too much about any of this, and just scribble the information on the board as I presented it orally. But again, for the umpteenth time, the Institute is a unique learning (and teaching) environment, tightly scheduled, highly compact, where every board and every lecture needs to be carefully planned and structured. Not that planning isn't always a good thing when a teacher walks into a classroom; but some settings demand more minutely careful planning than others, and this is one of those settings.

Later in the afternoon, Latin and Greek faculty met with each other and with Hardy Hansen, the director of the Institute, and Rita Fleischer, the administrator, to go over some logistical details for the summer and DAY 1. Then we read students' files to get a sense of whose smiling (or terrified) faces would be greeting us on Monday morning. And finally, off to Keens Steakhouse on West 36th Street for drinks. The first of many Friday afternoon martinis to come.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 4

So just to clarify, Day 1 minus 4 was Thursday, June 7.

Another good day of presessing. Some mock-teaching, some mock-lecturing, some actual discussion with program administrator (and text book co-author) Rita Fleischer about registration procedures come Monday, June 11. I'll be registering students in the Summer Greek Institute whose last names begin with N through Z.

In the evening, the Latin faculty had dinner at a Japanese buffet in Koreatown (the Korean neighborhood bordered by 31st Street, 36th Street, Fifth Avenue, and Sixth Avenue—hugging the CUNY Graduate Center to the north, south, and west).

I woke up this morning thinking, "How am I going to get students to translate 'Nēmō est tam senex' as 'There is no man so old' rather than 'No so old man exists'?" At least I was awake. In the past few weeks, morning drills have not infrequently found their way into my very dreams.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 5

So just to clarify, Day 1 minus 5 was Wednesday, June 6.

Had what I thought was my best presession yet. No notes to assist with my drilling of morphology and syntax questions, although I did use notes on small slips of paper tucked into my text book for the morphology I wanted to put on the board: I know from experience that what I can do with nearly 100% accuracy as a student, I often mess up as a teacher simply from performance anxiety. Better to refer to notes and get it right than to stubbornly cling to my imperfect memory and get it wrong, confusing students in the process. Of course you run the risk of having students think, huh, I have to memorize this, why is he allowed to look at notes? But if any student were to raise that issue, I would say what I just wrote: I'd rather work from notes and teach you the right forms than rely on my memory in classroom conditions and make a mistake that you might then study and learn as if it were correct.

My work at the blackboard is getting better, too. Board work, like oral drills, needs to be somewhat robotic and mechanical at the Institute, not only because time is so tight, but also because the learning experience is so concentrated, you need to make sure your graphic presentation is always clear, concise, and accurate. In a traditional classroom I often scribble on the board, draw lots of arrows, put things here and there and everywhere, the way you jot notes down on a napkin or the back of an envelope. And in a traditional classroom, where you have a more relaxed pace and can explain your scribblings at relatively greater length, that might be fine. But it doesn't work at the Institute.

Well, I think that's enough for now. Within a few days (cf. ablative of time when or within which), you will be reading about my actual classroom experiences with actual students, not mock-teaching of mock-students. I'm looking forward to that, not without a trace of residual anxiety, but still, I am looking forward to that. I hope you are, too.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 6

I meant to write this post yesterday, but in the evening I went out for drinks with friends—something I rarely do—and once again I got home simply exhausted, but this time with much better reason.

Presessing went better yesterday. When I mock-taught (a much more dignified term, I think, than "fake-taught"), I used no canonical notes, no notes on a note pad, just the textbook with certain words underlined to indicate where I wanted to ask mock-students questions about morphology or syntax. And it worked.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 7

I meant to write this post yesterday, but in the evening I was just EXHAUSTED...hopefully from the megadose of azithromycin I took for an eye infection I finally saw a doctor for, and not from the wear and tear of the Latin Institute, because frankly, except for some prep at home with my textbook, pad, and paper, all I did was fake-teach a 40-minute morning drill on Unit 8. If yesterday is any indication of my real level of stamina, I'm in B-I-G trouble this summer. I'm pretty sure this was an aberration and I'll be fine. I've hewed to busy schedules before. I'm old...but I'm not that old.

Fake-teaching is going better. My colleagues had mostly positive things to say. Still not perfect by any means, but getting better. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have transitioned from working with my colleague's notes on homework sentences to making my own notes, sometimes asking different questions in different ways or in a different order than the traditional faculty notes suggest. That's been working for me. Now, however, my colleagues say my notes are slowing me down. I cannot disagree; I do spend some awkward seconds consulting my notes before moving on to the next morphology or syntax question or moving on to the next sentence. My colleagues say it is time to make another transition, this time to using no notes at all, just working from my text with key words in each sentence underlined and perhaps a few other marginal notes to remind me when I want to put something on the board, etc.

I really have changed. I always find change amazing: wow, we change. But I mean, back when this whole thing started, I resented the highly prescriptive list of questions contained in that sheaf of faculty notes. My attitude was, I have been teaching Latin with Institute-inspired methods for years. I emphasize syntax, give daily quizzes, assign verb synopses: why can't I just go through the sentences in my own way, as I would in a traditional (non-Institute) classroom?

Now that I've gone from resenting the notes, to making my own notes, to moving towards just a few notes jotted in my text, I find that I am asking the questions that I was supposed to be asking all along. Yes, I have taught Latin using Institute-inspired methods for years. But I was not doing it precisely the way Institute faculty do it during the summer. Now I am starting to. And it makes sense. I feel like I have learned and grown. I'll admit, I still chafe a bit at the idea that the experience has changed me; that my colleagues might have been right about something to which I was so resistant. But that's how change is sometimes.

I'll give you one quick example that might occur early in the summer. Say my students were looking at the sentence, Fēminae in viā clāmābant (the women in the street were shouting). I might have asked my students at the University of South Carolina to "identify" fēminae. To identify a noun means to tell me the gender, case, and number. My students would have said "Feminine, nominative, plural." I would have said, "Good!" and might have moved on to ask "What's its function in this sentence?" Now, there's nothing wrong with those questions, and I might ask them at the Institute as well. But at the institute, at least early on DAY 2, I will ask a student to "Give me the dictionary entry" for fēminae. The student will be expected to say "fēmina, fēminae, feminine" (that last word being the gender of the noun, not its meaning). My follow up should be: "Good! What declension?" To which the response should be "First." My next follow up should be" "Good! Let me hear those first declension endings...in the singular (question posed to student number 1)? Good! In the plural (question posed to student number 2)? Good!

See what I mean? It's nothing radical by any means, and it gets at the same information that I habitually have gotten my students to focus on. But triggers like "dictionary entry," "declension," "endings," "singular," and "plural" are part of the Latin Institute tradition. As I've said in previous posts,  there is an automatic, robotic quality to all of this that is not inhuman, but rather methodical. I like to think I have always been methodical in my Latin teaching. But I have to admit, I have always been methodical and also somewhat casual, perhaps intentionally, to try to foster the impression that nobody should stress out too much about any of this stuff. The Institute is a little different. In fact, we are trying to foster a bit of productive stress: to be supportive and nurturing of our students, but also to keep them on a little bit of a tight wire all summer, to keep them on their toes.

Now that I'm getting more comfortable with it, I think I may, just may, be beginning to enjoy it.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 8

Nice to have a weekend where I did not have to think too much about the Institute. This evening, however, I prepared to fake-teach the first hour of morning drill for Unit 8 and the introduction to Latin pronunciation, syllabification, and accentuation.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 9

Presessing (Institute-speak for when the teachers prep prior to the start of the program) has been a mixed bag for me. In these sessions, we faculty members take turns "fake-teaching" homework assignments: one of us plays the role of teacher, and the others play the role of students. Generally speaking, I have left these sessions feeling a bit disheartened, which is probably to be expected, since I have not taught in this program before, and the Institute methodology involves a lot of very specific syntax questions formulated in very specific ways and anticipating very specific answers from students. But yesterday was what I thought has been my best pre-session to date. I walked out smiling for the very first time (to meet my husband, the poet, teacher, and scholar Jason Schneiderman, in the Graduate Center lobby to go have dinner and see Evita on his birthday; show was great by the way: Elena Rogers is amazing, Michael Cerveris is fantastic, and Ricky Martin did a yeoman job as Che. Orchestra and staging were flawless).

What made yesterday's presession different is that I came with my own notes. All spring, we have been working with a list of syntax questions potentially to be asked about each and every sentence we assign for homework throughout the summer. This list has been described by one colleague as "Talmudic," an accrual of every question that has been asked about each sentence over the preceding however many summers. The list is invaluable, but I have not always found it completely helpful, simply because it does not always match the way I think about a Latin sentence and how I would be inclined to lead students through the drill on a particular homework assignment.

It was a big and difficult step for me to take, but in preparation for yesterday's presession, I grabbed a pad of paper, sat down with my Moreland and Fleischer, and made my own list of questions for each and every sentence. I certainly referred to the "traditional" notes while I did so, and made sure that I covered all the same points, but I did it in my own way, in my own style, in my own order, deciding to leave out some questions that were in the notes, and adding others that I thought were pedagogically important but not previously included. Very transgressive! Very scary!!

But when I fake-taught my chapter this time around, I felt much better about the whole thing. Afterwards, when it was time for my colleagues to critique my efforts, they certainly had some things to say about my performance. It was by no means flawless. But this time, the criticisms had to do with choices I had made, and therefore that I felt in control of modifying, if (and only if) I thought the criticism was valid and required me to change my approach. Some criticisms were valid and I made a mental note to change my practice is light of them. Other criticisms may have been valid, but did not, in my opinion, require me to change my approach. For example, in the eyes of some, I may have seemed a bit overly pedantic about some things (the Institute is quite a pedantic environment to begin with, but every teacher has his or her own sense of how far is too far). Depending on the situation, I'm fine with my students thinking I'm a jerk about something now and then. I don't actively want them to hate me, and I do actively want them to have a good overall experience, but I am not there primarily to be liked: I am there primarily to teach them Latin. In my experience, students like it when you have high expectations of them and insist that they follow a particular procedure completely and consistently. Even if they groan under the weight of your demands for the moment, at the end of the course, those points of pressure are the things they remember as the highlights of their educational experience.

And what I have just said above is in fact completely consistent with Institute methodology as I understand it, and I think my colleagues would agree with how I characterize the situation. But as I said, what I feel comfortable being pedantic about may be different than what one or more of my colleagues feels comfortable being pedantic about. And as far as I'm concerned, that's fine. As I've stated in other posts in this category, the Institute to a great extent involves, for both students and teachers, a certain amount of automation and robotics: becoming a "syntax machine," as it were. But, as improbable as it may seem, this still leaves plenty of room for individual variation in faculty personality and teaching style.

I think in the past week I experienced once again a phenomenon I have experienced before: I tried doing it (whatever "it" is) someone else's way because it's in my nature to please others and be a team player. But it's not in my nature to remain a team player, 100% that is, if I don't think the team's approach is the best way for me to get my job done. And so I "took back my power," as my old Gestalt psychotherapist might have said, and started doing things my own way: not staging a complete revolution or becoming totally uncooperative; but just tweaking things around the edges to suit my own personality and style, consistent with my experience and judgment, which is, I must say, not immaterial or insignificant.

I like the results.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.

Summer Latin Institute - Day 1 minus 10

As we head into the last week before classes begin at the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, I am on an emotional roller coaster between freaking out and feeling fine about it all.

Why should I freak out, when I've been teaching Latin, on and off, for 25 years, have a doctorate in Classics for which I wrote a philologically rigorous dissertation about Roman satire, and just taught two sections of second-year Latin at the University of South Carolina last fall?

Well, teaching at the Latin Institute is not like other teaching. At the Institute, Monday, June 11, is not Monday, June 11, it is DAY 1, and certain things have to happen on DAY 1, certain things that must come off like clockwork, without fail. Sure, I know my Latin. Sure, I have lots of classroom experience. Sure, I taught from the Latin Institute text before (Latin: An Intensive Course, by Floyd Moreland and Rita Fleischer). But do I "have it all down"? Can I move my students through their drills quickly and efficiently, hitting all the phonological, morphological, and syntactic points I need to hit in the time allotted? There's no room for error, because when my 50-minute drill session is over, and my students come back from their 10-minute break, another teacher will be waiting in that room to take them through the next hour of drill, and he (it's an all-he summer for the Latin faculty) expects us to be where we were supposed to be, according to a schedule that has been in place for 39 previous summers, and must remain in place for this fortieth year of the Latin Institute.

So yes, I'm freaking out. In our fake-teaching sessions I'm still a little slow, still talking a little too much, still being just a bit too "Socratic," spending a lot of time eliciting answers, while my more experienced colleagues remind me that morning drill is not teaching, it's drilling. Mechanical. Robotic. Clockwork. Tic-toc, tic-toc. It goes against virtually all my instincts as a teacher, a critical thinker, and a compassionate human being. But it works. I know it works, because I was a student in this program 30 years ago, and I learned my Latin like gangbusters.

So I am not thinking, yeah, what do you know? I'm thinking, damn, I need to get my act together in the next week. Because DAY 1 is approaching, and those students have a lot of Latin to learn. And I am going to teach them.

More soon... 

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.