On my dad, “MC Hammer”, and Dikaiopolis

Before I begin this post, let me recommend an excellent video about Aristophanes’ historical context that focuses on Acharnians and Knights: I can’t find the name of the guy who made this video, but he knows what he’s talking about and has a great intuitive sense of where Aristophanes came from and what he was

On the manliness of mathematics, the death of AndrewAndrew, and (not) performing Aristophanes in the woods

Recently I wrote about the way my interests in nature and in ancient Greek and Latin developed and became linked as an evolving complex I call my “ecoclassicism”. In this post I want to reflect on how my involvement with one particular ancient Greek author, Aristophanes, has been linked to my struggle to reconcile my

On the manliness of fishing

I’ve written before about how my childhood experiences of gardening, camping, and fishing with my family, especially my dad (Michael) and granddad (Pawpaw), planted in me the seeds of my current love, worry, and (highly imperfect) care for the planet and all its critters. In this post I want to reflect on how those experiences

On “ecoclassicism”; or, how I started caring about nature and ancient Greece

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we humans come to care about the things we care about, whatever those may be: ancient monuments, endangered species, books, languages, family members, gender norms…. I was already thinking about that before I moved to Cairo last August, but living in a place where people care about

Gender toxicity’s dirty secrets

When I was waiting to get my first dose of the Sinopharm (Chinese) Covid-19 vaccine at the clinic in Maadi tasked with hosting vaccine distribution by the Egyptian Ministry of Health (a task the clinic must have regarded, judging from its neglected appearance and the unhappy crowd packed into its outdoor waiting area, as unwelcome–though

Domination and Dominion: Masculinity as Conquest of Women and Nature (by Nina Lee)

Nina Lee, the author of this essay, is a Master’s Student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at The American University in Cairo, where she currently lives. She was raised in Jacksonville, Florida, where she studied French and Spanish Literature. Her academic interests include anti-colonialism, gender studies, ecofeminism, anti-racism, generational trauma, and popular

Art Reflects Reality: the treatment of non-human animals in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt (by Yousef Koura)

Non-human animals have been part of our lives since the beginning of time. Sometimes as sources of food, sometimes as subjects of research, and sometimes even as lifetime
companions. Examining ancient literature gives us an idea of how some ancient cultures viewed and treated these non-human animals. In this paper I mainly take a look at Aristophanes’ The Birds, Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, and The Stories of Setne Khamwas; these stories give some insight into how the Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, and Ancient Egyptian societies, respectively, regarded non-human animals and how, in turn, they treated them. In addition to those stories, a variety of secondary sources from the fields of literature, law, and philosophy are also examined in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the reasoning behind each culture’s actions and ethical considerations.

On reading ancient Quests ecocritically

The Quest is one of the most common plot forms through which storytelling imagines relationships between human and nonhuman beings. Nonhumans most often appear in storytelling generally as an ‘environment’ surrounding and subordinate to the more important human characters, a nonhuman background to the human foreground. Yet in the Quest nonhumans enter the foreground in