Tara Mulder shows that abortion debates haven’t always revolved around whether a fetus counts as a human being:

But why should we take for granted that the personhood of the fetus is the primary point of contention? As a classicist and medical historian, I have examined the conceptual categories of “mother” and “fetus” in the ancient world. In Greece and Rome the fetus was not a person, but, nonetheless, the mother was seen as being in an antagonistic relationship with it and abortion was censured.

John Byron Kuhner explains the appeal of Latin immersion:

It certainly seemed incongruous — could there really be a mini-colony of Latin speakers holed up in West Virginia? What were they doing there and what could they possibly be like?

Justin Slocum Bailey explains how to apply the principles of Second Language Acquisition to Latin pedagogy:

Many teachers offer “reading strategies” such as metaphrasing and gapping or rules for reading, giving tips such as “when you see ita ut, anticipate a result clause,” or simply demanding that students constantly review grammar. But these are not ways of increasing one’s ability to comprehend. They are ways of coping with one’s inability to comprehend.

Emily Rutherford gives an historian’s perspective on how elite 18th and 19th century British men appealed to the classical past for models of homosexual relationships:

Wilde may have thrilled and scandalized the British public, but his appeal to the classical tradition existed within a broader context of popular enthusiasm for a carefully-constructed classical past. Today, we see figures like Wilde as part of a story of countercultural struggle. But their queer classics was also a normative nineteenth-century classics — which it might take nineteenth-century historians like me properly to uncover.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta compares anti-immigrant sentiment in Ancient Rome and today:

Then as now, foundation myths about the state as the creation of immigrants articulated and projected deeply felt anxieties about the legacy of past immigrants and the presence of current ones. Then as now, some of those anxieties were worked out through legal-administrative means, with deportation privileged as a technology of control.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta analyzes why the Sword of Damocles myth has proven so attractive and creatively inspiring to hip-hop artists:

I found myself coming back to one question: why these specific references? Teenage and young adult me was (mostly) content to answer that the references were just fly as hell. The Fugees were brainy, well read, sophisticated — exactly what the popular discourse of hip-hop as vulgar and disreputable, gaining in traction and vehemence throughout my teenage years, claimed rappers could not be. But as this Dominican boy from Harlem matured into a professional classicist, the question took on new forms and different complexions. Just what precisely was at stake for Wyclef and the Fugees in invoking the sword of Damocles?

Michael Fontaine examines the evidence for gay marriage in ancient Rome and concludes that it didn’t exist in a way that would make for a meaningful comparison with American gay marriage:

The Classics do have real, lasting cultural currency, of course, and as I have argued before, ancient precedents can be very useful to think with today — provided we have a clear grasp of the facts; otherwise, they can wreak havoc. And since abiding by precedent is a bedrock principle of American law, a look at the reality of gay marriage in ancient Rome offers us a chance to reflect on the risks of appealing to the ancient world for settling modern social questions.

Jason Pedicone announces the Paideia Institute’s new outreach initiative to to find classicists who don’t work in academia and reintegrate them into the discipline:

There are many reasons people might choose to leave a graduate program in Classics or not enter academia upon completing a Ph.D. Some realize the life of an academic is not for them. Others undergo major life changes like marriage, children, or the loss of a loved one, and their priorities change. Others try their hardest to make it to the tenure track but don’t, not necessarily because they don’t deserve to, but because there simply aren’t enough jobs for all the qualified candidates. Yet almost all of these people could observe the priamelic structure of this paragraph. They are all still classicists, and we shouldn’t forget about them.

Sarah Scullin addresses the difficult question of how to approach Holt Parker’s scholarship in light of his child pornography arrest:

As I read the descriptions of child pornography and Mr. Cruel Daddy’s online activity I felt the immediate and visceral disgust that I imagine most members of our culture feel when a fundamental taboo is transgressed. A selfish thought soon joined my feelings of revulsion, however, bringing with it a feeling of guilt that I can’t entirely shake: “But his scholarship is so good! How am I supposed to cite it, let alone assign it to students?”