Teaching Uncomfortable Subjects in the Classics Classroom

Abstract

We propose a workshop designed to follow up on the very successful roundtable and workshop on teaching rape at the 2008 and 2009 meetings of the APA. We wish to broaden the discussion to encompass a wider range of uncomfortable issues – uncomfortable for teachers or for students or for both. Ancient texts raise a variety of issues - slavery, infanticide, adoption, abortion, abuse, incest and domestic violence as well as rape - that may be difficult to discuss in a classroom where some students will have had personal experiences that might generate distress or make discussion difficult. The emphasis of the session will be on raising awareness of unforeseen difficulties and sharing strategies for dealing withose difficulties. Four brief presentations from classicists teaching in the UK and the US, both senior and junior scholars, men and women, will tackle a range of sensitive issues, as follows.Paper #1: ‘How to Teach Gender and Crime in Ancient Greece’ This is a report from two UK scholars on their experience in teaching an MA level module on ‘Gender and Crime in Ancient Greece’, whose syllabus includes rape, infanticide, domestic violence, and ‘honour’ killings. These scholars are undertaking a funded research project to investigate techniques and strategies employed by teachers of sensitive subjects in other disciplinary areas such as Psychology, Social Anthropology, Education and Criminology. Paper #2: ‘Homophobia, Homoeroticism, and Handling Charged Discussions in the Classroom’In this presentation, a young US scholar will suggest some guidelines for dealing with issues of homophobia, homoeroticism, and pederasty in the classroom.Paper #3: ‘Slavery in the US classroom’A senior US classicist will explore the guilt, denial and anger she has observed when the topic of slavery arises in her classroom. She proposes that a more complex and nuanced understanding of the racializing of slavery in modernity is available through an examination of ancient slavery and its theorization.Paper #4: ‘Teaching Ancient Comedy: Race Matters’In this presentation, another senior US scholar will propose ways of presenting slavery and the torture of slaves when teaching ancient comedy along with strategies for getting students to confront these topics in a productive way. Following the four 15 minute presentations, the two organizers will act as respondents to the presentations and will then stimulate discussion from the audience. We would request a room with a non-hierarchical seating arrangement, ideally a round table, as experience suggests that that maximizes the participation rate. Judging from last year’s experience at the workshop on teaching rape, the audience is just as likely as the presenters to have valuable material to share.