Introduction: Classics after COVID

Abstract

Introduction: Classics after COVID Joshua Billings and Irene Peirano Garrison founded shortly after the civil war, TAPA and its predecessors have weathered world wars, depressions, pandemics, and social and political upheaval of all kinds; its pages have documented the transformation of Classics in the United States from a relative scholarly backwater to a vibrant field of study; and the journal has witnessed the growth of the Society for Classical Studies (formerly the American Philological Association) from a small, insular group of men on the east coast to an increasingly global and diverse membership. Much of the content of TAPA today would seem surprising (and perhaps even alarming) to its founders, but they would also recognize substantial continuity in the commitment of the journal to publishing distinguished research across the field of Classics. They would recognize, too, significant aspects of the yearly gathering of the Society, even as the role that technology now plays might come as a shock. It is a challenge to find evidence of past global crises in TAPA. The yearly “Report of the Editor of Publications” during the years of World War II regularly notes delays caused by wartime conditions, but attests to no greater disruptions to the business of scholarship. Perhaps this is as it should be: even with the fate of millions in the balance, scholarship has its own momentum, which ensures continuity through disruption. But the pandemic of the past two years has made maintaining this continuity significantly more challenging. COVID has disrupted the work of scholarship and teaching in a way and to a degree that may be entirely unprecedented in the more than 150 years of the journal and the Society. Even more, it has obliterated any neat division between global crisis and disciplinary continuity by rendering access to materials impossible for many, imposing unexpected demands on the time [End Page 1] of scholars (especially those with children), and making the simple business of daily life dangerous. COVID has reminded us of the way that scholarship is dependent on a hierarchy of needs—safety (mental and physical), time, and access—and on a host of institutions, academic and otherwise, that make research possible: libraries and universities, but also families, schools, health care providers. The upheavals of COVID have given new meaning to the “permanent crisis” of the humanities and caused many to ask searching questions about the meaning and value of their work as teachers and scholars. These crises of academic life have met, moreover, with exogenous social and political crises, which have placed into doubt the possibility and the desirability of continuity in the institutions that surround life in the academy. The past two years have made us newly aware of the ways that racial and economic injustice divides and oppresses, and have reminded us of the potential for violence to upend politics and civic order. At the same time as technology has operated, in the wider society, as a wedge increasing division, it has also enabled adaptations that have had intensely salutary effects in bringing together communities— both academic and non-academic—and creating new avenues for learning, sharing, and organizing. The pandemic has brought extremes of hope and despair on a global and a personal scale, and caused us to question what “normal” should look like. Returning to the status quo ante seems doubly impossible; even if we could go back, we would not choose to. The section “Classics after COVID” marks a revival of TAPA’s regular feature Paragraphoi, which we intend to devote to exploring issues that relate research in Classics to broader questions of discipline. While we do not anticipate every issue of the journal including a section like this one, we hope to spotlight some of the disciplinary questions that most engage us, and welcome ideas and feedback from our colleagues. This effort responds, in part, to the way that COVID has exposed the precarity of the very possibility of a “research journal”: now, more than ever, we cannot take the boundaries of “scientific” scholarship for granted. In highlighting issues of disciplinary self-understanding and reflection, we join what we feel is one of the most salutary trends to emerge in Classics of recent years...