It was a huge privilege to be in the room last Monday, as scores of hands were raised and the Women’s Classical Committee was voted into existence. I’m really pleased that I got to be a part of such a wonderful day, and I wanted to put down a few thoughts about the day before I forget too much of what happened – much of the day was live tweeted (#wcclaunch), so I am relying a bit on my tweets from the day as well.
 
To begin with there was such a wonderful atmosphere right from the start of the day. Women from every level of higher education were represented – from undergraduate to professor – as well as school teachers, and ‘alt-ac’ classicists. It was really great to meet so many people, including many amazing women I’ve been chatting with on Twitter for the last year and now can put more-than-a-profile-picture to names!
 
We began with an introduction, from Liz Gloyn, about what we were doing there (in short, she said, ‘it’s all my fault’). They set out the aims for the WCC to be as inclusive as possible. Then Victoria Leonard and Irene Salvo went through the results of the survey that the WCC had done (we are told that these will be released at some point, so I will update this post when that happens), and the overall picture was kind of depressing. Common themes included issues with the casualization of higher education, inability to plan for the future, lack of support for parenting and other caring, women not being taken as seriously and being paid less (and the ever-present ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Dr’ thing…), and a huge number of respondents reported mental health issues.
 
We then broke into four groups: mental health and disability (which I joined), parenting and caring, PhDs and ECRs, and Implicit Bias. I do rather a lot of talking about being an early career academic (even in public, see my post on the label ECR on jobs.ac.uk, for instance!) and about being a parent and my role in academia, so while I would have probably been able to contribute to those discussions I thought I would rather be involved in a dialogue I don’t normally have. Our group was able to go into a more private area, and so we did have a very personal conversation as a result, and because of the nature of the topic I obviously won’t go into any detail about it, but we did come up with some things to report back to the group about the need for increased support for both mental health and physical disability, and decided that we wanted to completely reform the landscape of higher education (starting with the PhD) so that it is more mental health friendly. I think these are really good starting points, and I’m sure I don’t need to comment on the prevalence of mental health concerns in HE).
 
The other groups came up with equally urgent issues to address, including the over-casualisation of higher education and the precarious position of newly-finished PhDs and ECRs on temporary (often teaching only) contracts. They suggested that the WCC could mediate some kind of institutional affiliation for those who are in the post-PhD limbo, which I think is a wonderful suggestion (after all, I have gained much from my post-PhD institutional affiliation as a research associate at the Institute of Classical Studies). The Implicit Bias group waded through the depressing ideas of promoting self-awareness and the way that we (all!) think about women (and other minorities in the academy), and suggested that being reflective actually benefits everyone (this was a huge theme of the day, actually!). The parenting/caring group suggested the establishment of a database of good practice guidelines for institutions, which is a phenomenally good idea, and touched on the vast possible differences between institutions, and between career positions (having caring duties as an ECR is significantly different to having those same duties as a professor!)
 
We moved on to the spotlight talks (which, for reasons of space, I am not going to go through here). It was really great to hear talks about current research being done with feminist perspectives, though, and it made me think about how great a format the short-and-snappy talk is.
 
The next part of the day was a roundtable, where we heard from Rebecca Langlands, Stella Sanford (of the Society for Women in Philosophy), Susan Deacy, Fiona Macintosh, and Alison Sharrock. It was inspiring and humbling to hear these women talk about their own perspectives, progressions, and careers, and I wish I could do their views justice. The big take away from this whole section was that we need to figure out what it is we want the WCC to be and do, and how we (as the membership, and the WCC as the executive) envision the WCC working and advocating.
 
The biggest thing that I personally took away from the day is that Classics (broadly defined) is a diverse and wonderful subject, and we need to stand up and say ‘I’m a Classicist, and this is what we are like!’ otherwise the ‘traditional’ old-white-man-elite is going to prevail. And as a discipline we’re so much more than that.
 
I got home and felt so uplifted, like something truly wonderful had occurred. And, I felt like it was a special thing to be there and to be involved, and a privilege to watch the WCC be born.

(Click here for part one)
​
It’s Thursday, and I have (re)submitted my article, and I am now exhausted.

So, here are my big takeaways from this experience:
 

1. It’s great having a knowledgeable person read over your work before you submit it. Quite a few people read over this article, and the reviewers still picked up things no one else had considered. The point, I think, is that maybe I should cast my net of readers a bit wider to begin with. Although I obviously don’t know who the reviewers are, so have no way of knowing what kind of background they have.
2. My writing isn’t bad. One of my Master’s examiners really ripped into my writing and my style (the other one actually praised my style, but you never take the good stuff away, do you?!?). Since then I have been really, really anxious about how I write. One of my reviewers commented that this article was ‘well written’, so that kind of lifts the stone a bit.
3. I know stuff, I think stuff, and I should say so. What I mean is that when you (read: ‘I’) are learning to construct new arguments, then you inevitably want to show the reader (or, very likely, the examiner) that you have thought about all the things and you have read all the things. You build an argument step-by-step and then at the end you meekly say ‘and so given all of this, I think that it’s probably kind of reasonable to assume that maybe xxx’. Sorry, self, that’s not convincing. So, state what you want to say and own it. This is the thing! Bam! And then you say, and here’s why, a, b, c.

 
In many ways I think this has been one of my big post-PhD learning curves. This may well be the first post-PhD piece of scholarship that I get out and it kind of sets the tone for how I will deal with other pieces of writing. At least in the immediate future. I’m sure each piece will bring an opportunity to develop something new. And, perhaps that’s what so exciting about this process.
 
For now, I have plenty to crack on with, so I am well and truly in the ‘fire off and forget’ stage of the process. For now the work is done, and we’ll see what happens.

In the last few months, I’ve received two rejections following peer review. Both were fairly positive, in that the reviewers were positive about the actual research, and made concrete and relevant suggestions for improvement.
 
The story of the first one is short. I have, for now, shelved the research. The article was based on my Master’s thesis. The reviewers were positive about the central idea, but the article needed restructuring. My research has moved on a lot, and honestly my heart isn’t in doing the extra work required right now.
 
The story of the second one is this: how I am dealing with those comments and the second-life of the article, from read-through to re-submission. I haven’t looked at the article since I submitted it in August, so I think there’s been enough time for me to come back fresh.
 
The Plan
I’ve already briefly read the comments from the editor and reviewers, so I know broadly what they want to see changed. I’ll spend today ‘peer reviewing’ the article myself – trying to be objective, and critical. Then I’ll tally up my own revisions with those of the reviewers and decide which ones to tackle. At that point I’ll decide where to resubmit the article, and start on the revisions. And that will either be the end, or the start of another round of revising. Let’s see!
 
Tuesday, lunchtime.
I’m just on half-way through the article. One of the comments I received was that my treatment of the poetry was, in some places, a bit superficial. Particularly in comparison to treatment of the historical and material evidence. I focus more on historical evidence in my research generally, so I wasn’t surprised to read that. With the benefit of some distance between me-the-writer and me-the-reader I can see exactly what the reviewer was referring to, and in some places I already know how to add a proper layer of analysis underneath it. Other places will require some more reading and thought. The good thing is that I already have some concrete suggestions to improve this article. I return to poetry at the end of the piece, so it will be interesting to see what the discussion is like there. I’m still feeling good about the work itself.
 
Tuesday, late afternoon
I’ve finished my read-through, and I’m going to go through the reports in detail and make a list of revisions that need to be done and new research that needs to be added. One reviewer picked up on a pretty huge omission in the bibliography, something I thought I’d included, so I will need to double check that, and if it’s really not been cited I will need to cite it (and if it has, I will need to put it in the bibliography!). I’ll start rewriting on Thursday.
 
Thursday, afternoon
I spent this morning working on my research proposal and am now coming back to the article. I’ve just read through the reviewers reports a few times and jotted down the things I agree will make the article stronger from my own read-though on Tuesday. I’m about to open a new document and crack on with re-writing the bits that don’t need significant change. There are two sections that I’ll do some more research on, and I’ll tackle those later. If I can get all the superficial stuff done today, then I should be in a good place to get this back out by the end of next week.
 
Friday afternoon
All the superficial stuff is done so I’m now doing a little extra reading and a bit of rewriting. I’m about to spend half an hour reading the poem I discuss at the beginning of the article again, and thinking about framing that discussion in a more nuanced way. One of the reviewers commented about that ‘the conclusion [of this section] seemed right… but the argument was not well developed’ so I’m going to try and plan out that small sub-section with the rest of the afternoon.
 
I’ll start part-two of the ‘Diary’ next week, and hopefully will have resubmitted the article by the time you hear from me again!
 
I’d love to hear about the way that others tackle reviewers’ suggestions and the article re-writing process, so feel free to get in touch!
​(click here for part two)

Yesterday, the wonderful Dr Marple tweeted about monthly resolutions. One of the things I find difficult about year-long goals at the moment is the uncertainty of the future, so I am going to give monthly resolutions a go. Starting now. Although, I am going to stick with goal-related vocabulary.
 
So, goals for this month are simple:

1. Finish my application for Fellowship to the HEA. This is due to be submitted in March, but I want to have the actual application finished very soon, so as to get my references sorted out as well. (Look forward to some fun future posts about teaching and self-reflexivity!)
2. Work on the long version plan for the Next Big Project. This is the ‘master copy’ of the research programme that gets edited down for various applications and includes various things like an abstract, a year-by-year plan, differences between two and three year versions of the project, what the outputs will be, and of course what the actual project is about, and some representative examples, which keep being added to as I keep reading.
3. Work on job applications.

 
I am also going to work though some of my (various length) goals in a Goals Journal, which I will start today. I am the kind of person who likes to write things down, and this seems a bit naff even to me. But, I am going to give it a shot, and see if committing my goals to paper, and setting definite end-dates for various things will help or not. Does anyone else keep a goals journal? How do you organise it, or what tips do you have for others thinking of starting one?
 
In other news (and related to my previous blog post here) I am now blogging on the Post-PhD Life blog over at jobs.ac.uk. My author page is here, where you can find all the post I have written (currently one, but soon more).

Recently I was reminded about the strange circumstances that led to my being an Ancient Historian. The University of Nottingham Classics Department ran a Twitter hashtag #itsaclassic, which asked people to post a picture of a book, person, or site that influenced them to study Classics. As you can imagine there were lots of things about reading myths as a child, or historical fiction, and the like. I’m sure there are more than a few current undergrads who were influenced by movies like Troy, Gladiator, and 300.

I was never influenced like that. Growing up I intended to go to art school and be a painter. My last two years at school were all geared up for this. For various reasons that mainly had to do with being caught out in a year where government mandated admissions requirements were changed, I repeated the last year of school to boost my overall mark (what was then in Victoria called an ENTER score). One of the subjects I took was Classical Civilisation. It fit into my timetable, sounded interesting enough, and was weighted up. We studied Iliad 22, Trojan Women, and something political that I (embarrassingly perhaps) can’t remember.

At the end of the year, as I was putting my folio together I added a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University to my application. I had been to the open day to look at their Fine Art programs. I met Jane Griffiths, who was the convener of the Classical Studies program there. But my first choice was the Drawing program at the Victorian College of the Arts, and because of the way admissions to art schools work I ended up getting two offers. One from Monash, and one from the Drawing program at VCA. I had thought about this happening and decided that I would obviously go to VCA. I filled out the program acceptance form, but I didn’t post it. I don’t know why I didn’t, but the more I considered it the less sure I felt.
I reached the deadline, and I still couldn’t decide.

I flipped a coin.

I flipped a coin and twelve years later I have a PhD in Classics and I live in London.

I flipped a coin and I constantly wonder what would have happened to me if I had flipped differently. If I had posted that form.

​I still have the form. Filled out. Sealed in an envelope. A parallel life that might have been mine.

Update: 14/01/2016
While in Australia over Christmas I pulled the acceptance letter out its box to take a look. I hadn't looked at it in a (very) long time. It was strange how detached I felt from it - I am a different person now, really. Not an artist, but an ancient historian. Perhaps writing this post has allowed me to let go of that alternative life?

What?!? Yes, it’s all true. No matter what you've been told, or read, the ‘katabasis’ of in Odyssey 11 is not an actual katabasis!
 
A katabasis is a descent. In this context it’s a descent into the Underworld, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. And there are a bunch of famous katabases that we all know and love: Herakles going down to steal Kerberos, Orpheus heading down to rescue Eurydike, Theseus and Perithous’s attempt on Persephone. But, Odysseus isn't one of them. Katabasis stories involve physical travel into the Underworld, not realistic religious rituals. And the dead are not used as intermediaries. Odysseus's so-called 'katabasis' does involve a religious ritual and he interacts with the dead.

Odysseus starts in the living world, he digs a pit in the earth and pours his offerings into it. The dead rush up to greet him. This all shows that Odysseus is performing a necromantic rite, but there is a little bit more. So, let’s have a look at the actual necromancy itself (Homer’s Odyssey 11.20-47). This translation is from the Chicago Homer, where you can also find the original Greek.
​
We beached our ship when we got there, unloaded                                            20
the sheep, and went back ourselves along Ocean's stream
until we reached the place Circe had described.
“There Eurylochus and Perimedes held the sacred victims,
and I drew my sharp sword from beside my thigh,
dug a pit a cubit's length this way and that,                                                          25
and poured a libation to all the dead about it,
first with milk and honey, thereafter with sweet wine,
a third time with water, then sprinkled white barley groats upon it.
I repeatedly entreated the helpless heads of the dead,
that when I got to Ithaca I'd offer a cow that's not yet calved,                            30
my best one, in my palace, then I'd fill the pyre with good things,
and that I'd sacrifice separately, to Teiresias alone,                                             
a solid-black ram, that stands out among our sheep.
After I'd implored with prayers and vows the tribes of corpses,
I took the sheep and cut their throats                                                                    35
and the cloud-dark blood flowed into the pit. Up out of Erebus
they gathered, the souls of the dead who'd died,                                    
brides, young men never married, old men who'd suffered much,
tender maidens with hearts new to sorrow,
and many wounded by bronze spears,                                                                  40
men killed in battle, holding armour stained with gore.
They stalked about the pit in throngs from one place and another                   
with an awful screeching, and green terror seized me.
Then at that moment I urged and ordered my comrades
to skin and burn the sheep that lay there slaughtered                                         45
by ruthless bronze, and to pray to the gods,
to mighty Hades and dread Persephone.               
​
​Offerings to the Olympic gods were (usually) upward focused. Sacrifices were burnt with the smoke rising up, and prayer conducted with arms raised into the sky. It makes sense that it happened this way – the gods are up, so offerings need to go up. So too with Underworld gods, except they are down and the offerings need to go down. In this section of the Odyssey, Odysseus digs a pit with his sword, and pours his offerings into it – including the blood of his sacrifice – and they sink down through the earth to the Underworld gods. The same thing happens in historical supplication to Hittite Underworld gods, where there is evidence for temporary, downward facing altars made by digging a pit in the earth. Sometimes this happened on a riverbank, and there’s evidence that pits might have been dug out with daggers (see Collins 2002, linked above). While there’s a strong link here, there’s a stronger link to Greek necromantic rites.
 
Odysseus is told, by Kirke, to go and find answers about his journey home from a dead seer, Tiresias. The place she sends him to matches the location of the Oracle of the Dead near the Acheron, in Thesprotia. Pausanias, much later of course, tells us that Homer knew that he was writing a description of the site at Ephyra (Od. 10.508-514):

But when you drive through Ocean with your ship,
there will be a rough headland and groves of Persephone,
tall poplars and willows losing their fruit.                                                   510
Land your ship at that spot, by deep-eddying Ocean,
but go yourself to the dank house of Hades.
There Pyriplegethus and Cocytus, which is a branch
of the water of the Styx, flow into Acheron

​Much later Pausanias (1.17.5) says that Homer had been to the Nekyomanteia here and used it in his description:
​
I think Homer had seen these places and boldly ventured to describe Hades’s realm in his poem and further named the rivers after those in Thesprotia.
​Of course, ‘Homer’ himself doesn't say anything on the subject, but the topographical and archaeological evidence suggests that where Odysseus goes is indeed the location of the historical Oracle of the Dead. Homer could have included this because there was a cult of Hades close by (but that’s a story for another time).
 
Although this is only a short exposition of the issue, the two main points certainly illustrate that Odysseus doesn't descend into the Underworld. He isn't described as being in the Underworld, but the dead are described as rushing up, out of the Underworld, to him. And the site described by Homer is the site of an Oracle of the Dead.