Teach Me How to Say Goodbye
My Penultimate E(i)ditorial
How can I spend my energy reading Greek and Latin when a pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans? How can I read and think slowly and carefully when there’s no justice for the murderers of Breonna Taylor and countless others, and when the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg means that our judicial system will be even more an enemy of real justice in the future? How can I write coherent sentences when I think about the growing danger of an autocratic coup by the Trump administration? How do I tell myself that it’s important to learn about and focus on the ancient Mediterranean when ash is falling from an orange sky and I need to keep my children inside for weeks on end? How does anyone have time for anything aside from self-care, activism, and treading water?
When the world feels like it’s on fire, how do I study Classics — or anything, for that matter? I’m not using that well-worn editorial trick here of posing a rhetorical question and then spending the rest of the article answering it. I don’t have an answer.
I’m not saying that there aren’t good answers to these questions. Many would say that I’ve created a false dichotomy here: studying Classics can itself be self-care or activism, or even both. I’ve made that argument, many times, and pointed to the 500+ articles we’ve published in Eidolon as evidence. People can and do find solace in reading ancient literature, and others feel energized to challenge and subvert oppressive institutions.
But it’s been a long time since I’ve been one of those people. So, after five and a half years, I’ve decided to step down as Editor-in-Chief of Eidolon. And after several months of discussions with the editorial team and board, we’ve decided the publication should end operations when I depart.
This choice has been extremely difficult for me, because in many ways the work that Eidolon does feels more necessary right now than ever. Eidolon ran a special issue on the topic “The End of the World” at the beginning of 2020, right before the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States. In the ensuing months, the pandemic has exacerbated many of the underlying inequities in the academic system that we have published articles about. Our parenting special struck a chord with many readers in 2018, and revisiting it now has added poignancy in an environment that is particularly hostile to working parents (and especially working mothers).
One of the strengths of Eidolon over the years has been that anyone who has a good idea and a strong voice could write for us, regardless of seniority or connections in the field; our writers didn’t need to have spent years building up their own audiences through social media or blogging. I’m saddened at the thought that this venue will no longer exist for classicists to address the issues that are bound to arise as the academic professional landscape becomes even more precarious and exploitative.
But I’m also exhausted. Running Eidolon is a lot of (largely uncompensated) work for me and for my team. With our rigorous editing process, publishing between 50 and 100 essays a year has been fairly labor-intensive, although it’s been a labor of love. But the past six months have sapped my emotional reserves and put extraordinary demands on my time and energy, and my work has suffered as a result. I didn’t feel that I could handle this job and my other responsibilities.
When I told the editorial team and board about my decision, we discussed what an Eidolon without me as Editor-in-Chief might look like. Ultimately, we weren’t able to visualize it. My position as an independent scholar with the resources to run this publication is highly unusual, and we felt that under a different kind of leadership the publication would probably change to the point where it wouldn’t really meaningfully still be Eidolon. After much debate, we decided that it would be better to make a clean break and hope that we’ve paved the way for new publications that can push the field forward in exciting ways that we haven’t even thought about yet.
In practical terms: as of November, Eidolon will no longer be publishing new content. Essays we’ve published will remain online, though, as long as Medium continues to exist. Our store is closed, and we’re shutting down our Patreon account this month. We have a few more articles in the works, and then we’re planning to end on a high note, possibly with a few articles written by people who have been especially involved with the publication over the years. My final e(i)ditorial will reflect on what it’s been like running Eidolon and what we think we’ve done well and could have done better — along with sharing our hopes and dreams for the discipline of Classics moving forward.
Thank you to everyone who has written or read or taught or shared or commented on an Eidolon article in the past five years. Our community has been one of the best parts of running Eidolon, and it’s been a true privilege to share so many wonderful articles with you. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to share my vision for a more personal, progressive, and equitable Classics.
Donna Zuckerberg is the Editor-in-Chief of Eidolon and author of Not All Dead White Men (Harvard University Press 2018). She has a second book under contract on feminist reception of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.
