From amazonia@nevertheless.fsnet.co.uk Sun Dec 10 02:25:39 2000 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id CAA360974 for ; Sun, 10 Dec 2000 02:25:38 -0800 Received: from cmailg3.svr.pol.co.uk (cmailg3.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.195.173]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id CAA23520 for ; Sun, 10 Dec 2000 02:25:37 -0800 Received: from modem-153.gold-spangled.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.137.18.153] helo=pbncomputer) by cmailg3.svr.pol.co.uk with smtp (Exim 3.13 #0) id 1453fh-0007Hy-00 for classics@u.washington.edu; Sun, 10 Dec 2000 10:25:33 +0000 Message-ID: <003801c06293$f0eaad00$9912893e@pbncomputer> From: "Kim Shahabudin" To: References: Subject: Re: Classics & Cultural Studies Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 10:27:15 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 >- What *is* "Cultural Studies"? Can someone recommend a particularly I can't answer Prof Lupher's question - in particular, I have no idea what is taught under that heading in the US - but I can explain why I think it's important for classicists not to ignore popular culture. Unfortunately it involves a spot of autobiography, so if anyone out there thinks that's too tacky for words, please pass swiftly on. I came to Classics nine years ago, rather late and not for entirely worthy reasons (they involved the promise of wild parties), following a standard English comprehensive state school education; that is to say, one that did not offer Latin, Greek or ancient history in any form. I left school at 16 and worked in public libraries for some years before returning to higher education. I considered myself reasonably widely (and eclectically) read, but I was astonished by what I was being taught - I felt a whole world been hidden from me until now. However, most of the people around me had a very different background: not only the academic staff, but most of the students who had chosen the subject had been able to study ancient languages and history as part of their normal school curriculum. As this appeared to be the default position, it gave me a lot of catching up to do. At the same time, I found that the chasm was more than just educational - my cultural background was entirely different to theirs. So they were making unwarranted assumptions about the competencies I might have, and I was looking for answers they often couldn't give, simply because the question had never occurred within their cultural frameworks. Caveat: obviously these are sweeping generalisations, do not apply to everyone I came into contact with, and the particular circumstances apply only in my own case. Also I have no idea how different the situation is in other countries. I should finally point out that only rarely have I explicitly been made to feel inadequate because of my educational and cultural background. But implicitly, I feel it almost all the time. My postgraduate work on reception has finally persuaded me that the competency I have in popular culture is far from redundant in the study of Classics. But neither is it superior to the traditional competencies as Schein seems to be implying - indeed I still believe that an early introduction to ancient languages and history forms the most effective basis for the study of Classics, and I wish I'd had one. Pragmatically though, there are now two generations of students in this country without that advantage who cannot turn the clock back. If ways can be found to value the cultural competencies they do have, classical scholarship will continue to be vital in the future: if not, its participants will have to be drawn from an ever shrinking pool of students with the same closed cultural background. Classics as a subject will be perceived as even less relevant to the contemporary world, and any chance of reviving the teaching of ancient languages and history in schools will be lost. BTW, until last week I was congratulating myself on how much more fun it was to be a lurker on the list and observe the action than to become perilously involved in it. Once more onto the tightrope... Kim Shahabudin --------------------------------------------------------- Kim Shahabudin Dept of Classics University of Reading amazonia@nevertheless.fsnet.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------- .