Category Archives: Modern

Posts on events in the last few hundred years

Against Seeing Everything as an Identity

12 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by in Modern, Not an expert

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A chart of the frequency of the word "identity," "nationality," "ethnicity," "race," and "performativity" over time ... "identity" becomes fashionable after 1960 and especially 1985

Google ngrams is a fun toy as long as you dont take its dates too seriously! (They refuse to work with librarians to clean up their data or with paleographers to OCR old books more accurately). https://books.google.com/ngrams/

Some kinds of academics like to talk about “identities.” Literally, that means the things which you point to and say “I am.” But many academics use it to mean other groups that people get sorted in to. In chapter 2 of a book I recently reviewed, Guy Halsall calls class, gender, age, nationality (“ethnic identity”), and free or servile status “identities”. My friend James Baillie (who is absolutely not responsible for this essay) uses the term in the same way to describe different kinds of people in the UK today. The blogger and medical doctor Geeky Humanist wrote the following paragraph on “gender identity”

What do I mean by woman? Short(ish) answer: Any adult whose gender identity is female. For purposes of anti-misogyny endeavours such as International Women’s Day, I would also include a) girls (children whose gender identity is female), and b) anyone who is affected by misogyny as a result of having been determined on the basis of genital configuration to be female, even if their actual gender identity isn’t female. … Transgenderism (and cisgenderism, for that matter) isn’t about ‘choosing’ to identify as a particular gender. It’s about the inescapable fact that nearly all of us do identify as particular genders – not because we choose to, but because it’s a key part of us – and that sometimes a person’s gender identity doesn’t match the gender of their body.

Geeky Humanist has some ideas which are strange to me and which I don’t understand as well as I would like to. I don’t think she is saying that a man is anyone who says he is a man, and she definitely does not think it is any person of the male sex, she seems to understand “gender identity” as something more like sexual orientation. I think that calling gender and class and nationality “identities” and just identities confuses people about how power and societies work.
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Cross-Post: Armour vs. Bullet Tests

10 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by in Medieval, Modern

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The Before Times were good for tests of bows or guns against low-tech armour. I just learned that Sylvia Leever’s tests against two 17th century breastplates is available on YouTube:

Sylvia Leever, For Show or Safety? (2005, posted 3 August 2013)

You can find more information about her project in:

You can see more videos like this:

Enjoy, and when planning your post-apocalyptic raids please avoid Oxford, Long Island, and Delft!

Shameless Plug: War and Soldiers in the Achaemenid Empire

26 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by in Ancient, Modern

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One of my articles which has been in press for some time finally appeared:

“War and Soldiers in the Achaemenid Empire: Some Historiographical and Methodological Considerations.” In Kai Ruffing, Kerstin Droß-Krüpe, Sebastian Fink, and Robert Rollinger (eds.), Societies at War: Proceedings of the 10th Symposium of the Melammu Project held in Kassel September 26-28 2016 and Proceedings of the 8th Symposium of the Melammu Project held in Kiel November 11-15 2014 (Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Vienna, 2020) pp. 495-515

It talks about how The Western Way of War and the radical wing of the Achaemenid History Workshops gave research into early Greek warfare and into the Achaemenid empire the peculiar shape they had in the 1990s and the 2000s. I argue that the ancient historians in the 1990s and 2000s who thought they were rejecting older research actually accepted that research’s narrow vision of what they ought to study and what types of sources counted. It has research history, a ‘snappier’ version of the argument in chapter 1 of my PHD thesis, and the obligatory W.S. Gilbert quote.

If you did not get a copy in your inbox and are interested in reading, please let me know and I can email you one.

Further Reading: Some Thoughts on John Lynn’s ‘Battle’

If You Find “The West” A Confusing Term There Are Good Reasons

15 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

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a set of hardcover books bound in celuloid on a wooden bookshelf

The circle of book life! This copy of Will and Arial Durant’s “Story of Civilization” was in Russell Books, Victoria BC, in February 2020.

Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization (eleven volumes 1935-1975, original planned length five volumes, at the authors’ deaths thirteen volumes were planned) was as famous in its day as Sapiens, Sex at Dawn, or Twelve Rules for Life but represents much more work. It is an ambitious attempt to cover the story of “the west” and if you can find a copy it has some beautiful prose. But when they planned their project, they fell into a trap that people are still throwing themselves into today.

That first volume covers the Near East (Ur III to the Achaemenids), South Asia (to the establishment of the Raj), China (to 1935), and Japan (to 1935). Greece (volume II) ends with the Sack of Corinth by the Romans, Rome (III) ends with Constantine, then a single big volume for a thousand years of Latin Christendom (IV), Italy (V) ends in 1576, Germany (VI) gets the reformation, then its on to the Northern Renaissance (which the Durants call the Age of Reason, volume VII), three on the Enlightenment and one on the age of Napoleon (XI). That is a fine List of Places and Times that We Think Were Pretty Cool, but what determines who is in this list and who is out? And I know of at least three contradictory theories, each of which includes people most people who use this term don’t want to include.[1]
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Laudatio Ed Brayton

11 Tuesday Aug 2020

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From Birger Johansson: Ed Brayton, humanist and scienceblogs.com founder, is dying in hospice in the United States after a long struggle with various health problems. His last post is at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2020/08/10/saying-goodbye-for-the-last-time/

I am with T. Greer: when a Snorri Stirluson comes to tell the tale of the death of the open Internet, they will spend a few moments to sing the rise and fall of scienceblogs and its diaspora into the distant ages. And people in the United States have been dealing with some pretty heavy stuff this decade, its OK if they turn inwards and leave the nerding out to us in other countries.

Harbour Explosions

08 Saturday Aug 2020

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If you are interested in explosions in harbours, check out:

H.J. Reitsma, “The explosion of a ship, loaded with black powder, in Leiden in 1807,” International Journal of Impact Engineering 25 (2001) pp. 507-514 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0734-743X(00)00067-1

and the SS Mont-Blanc incident on 6 December 1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

That is all.

Cross-Post: Medieval Reenactment Event in Utah, 19-30 June 2021

07 Friday Aug 2020

Posted by in Medieval, Modern

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From ‘Jehan de Pelham’ of the Compagnie du Chalis, former holder of the Couter of Chivalry:

My compagnons in the Compagnie du Chalis are minded to hold another Crossroads in Time from June 19 to June 30 2021.

I have begun preparations by conducting a detailed site survey of many campsites east of Cedar City, Utah. I have found many meadows and treed campsites suitable for a medieval re-enactment and living history rendez-vous for up to a hundred or more participants. This will be the fourth such event that we will hold, and I am in communication for a medieval ensemble to provide musical accompaniment for up to four days of the event.

I don’t have his contact information, but I imagine he is on Facebook, reenactors like that site.

A Carefully Worded Footnote

01 Saturday Aug 2020

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A professor in a suit takes aim while a team of volunteers prepares to pull the arm of a trebuchet

Trebuchet test at the University of Toronto Back Campus, 12 April 1991. Figure 1 in W. T. S. Tarver, “The Traction Trebuchet: A Reconstruction of an Early Medieval Siege Engine,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 36, No. 1. (January 1995)

In the early middle ages, Europeans learned about a much simpler technology than the ancient catapult: the trebuchet powered by teams of men and women pulling ropes. This weapon was not so long-ranged or accurate but it had no delicate skeins of rope or expensive metal parts so it suited conditions in a poor and small-scale world. After it entered European history at the Slav and Avar siege of Thessalonike in 597, it quickly became the most popular siege engine in Europe (although it is possible that a few engineers remembered how to make engines powered by giant bows or skeins of rope for long-ranged, accurate shooting). These ‘traction trebuchets’ have not been as often reproduced as ancient catapults, but there have been a few attempts:

In the summer of 1988, after frustrating winter-long attempts to build an arrow-shooting torsion ballista, and having been inspired by Randall Rogers at the Twenty-third International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo (hereafter Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo), I constructed a simple traction trebuchet which could throw a fist-sized rock 120 m. [Several larger versions followed culminating in one which the university authorities did not approve of]. In August, it was tested at Cooper’s Lake Campground in Pennsylvania, where a large field beside an archery range was available and where volunteers could be mustered for the trials.

– W. T. S. Tarver, “The Traction Trebuchet: A Reconstruction of an Early Medieval Siege Engine,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 36, No. 1. (January 1995), p. 147 n. 52

I am sure that there were volunteers at Cooper’s Lake in August at any time between 1972 and 2019, and there will be again in 2021!

Cross-Post: Conference on Antiquity and Immersivity, Bristol UK, 29-30 March 2021

31 Friday Jul 2020

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From Dr. Emma Cole on Medium:

Immersive experiences represent one of the highest growth areas within the UK’s cultural industries. Their centrality to the creative economy was recognised in the UK Creative Industries Sector Deal (2018), which estimated that the immersive content market would be worth over £30 billion by 2025 and pledged to invest £33 million in immersive technologies to ensure Britain maintains a competitive role within this lucrative market. Yet despite the frequent use of cutting-edge technologies to facilitate such experiences, the idea of immersion is not new but goes back to antiquity. We can find instances of literature facilitating moments of immersion in texts from the Homeric epics through to Thucydides’ History and the speeches of the Attic orators, and can find regular examples of ancient critics and philosophers theorising about the sensation as well.

Given this shared interest in the idea of immersion, it is perhaps no surprise to find that modern-day immersive experiences frequently look back to antiquity, including but not limited to the immersive museum experiences surrounding the ancient city of Pergamon, the immersive video game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and the immersive theatrical experiences of dreamthinkspeak, Shunt, and ZU-UK.

This conference aims to bring together an interdisciplinary and intraprofessional group of scholars and artists interested in exploring and theorising the relationship between antiquity and immersivity. It is hoped that the event will foster discussion about theoretical approaches to immersion, for example through cognitive and narratological strategies, and experiential understandings of immersion as it pertains to live experience. The event will highlight the potential for multidisciplinary knowledge exchange to shed new light on research questions about immersion across time.

Contributions are welcome that intersect with the full spectrum of the concept of immersivity including but not limited to:

  • Forms of immersion in the ancient world
  • Methods for analysing instances of immersion in antiquity, including cognitive and narratological approaches
  • The history of the poetics of immersion
  • Antiquity and immersive museum experiences
  • Classical reception and immersive theatre
  • The ancient world and mixed reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality technologies

It is intended that this two-day conference will take place in Bristol, with options for virtual participation available. However, to facilitate a pivot to an entirely virtual conference, should it be necessary, all papers will be pre-circulated. The conference itself will consist of responses and discussion.

Contributions of c. 3000 word papers, shorter provocations, as well as exhibitions and/or demonstrations of prototype experiences are welcome. Contributors should be willing to give a short prepared response to another paper, and should be prepared to pre-circulate their own paper by 1 March 2021. Confirmed speakers include Felix Barrett (Punchdrunk), Prof. Jonas Grethlein (Heidelberg), Dr Colin Sterling (UCL), and the team behind the ARHC project ‘The Virtual Reality Oracle’ (University of Bristol).

To register your interest please submit an abstract of 300 words by 30 September 2020. A limited number of travel bursaries for graduate students, the unwaged, and the precariously employed will be available; if you wish to be considered for a bursary please indicate so on your abstract and include an indicative travel budget.

For further information please contact Emma Cole: emma.cole@bristol.ac.uk.

This conference is generously funded through the AHRC via the leadership fellowship ‘Punchdrunk on the Classics’.

Dr. Emma Cole seems to be a theatre / reception kind of person.