New Directions in Classics Teaching at The University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Reflecting on the effects of the pandemic on tertiary education delivery throughout 2020-2021, the Ancient History teaching staff at The University of Newcastle presented their experiences in several venues during the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. The teaching staff consisted of Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics and Ancient History; a team of HDR students, Connie Skibinski, Tanika Koosmen, Madelaine Sacco, Thomas Sharples, and Timothy Worrad; and professional staff in the Teaching and Learning Design Unit, Paul McDonald and Adrian Merles.

The team presented at two conferences: (i) A roundtable, ‘Virtual Antiquity in the Classroom – Benefits and Pitfalls – A Mixed Presentation Roundtable’ at “What Has Antiquity Ever Done for Us?” – The Vitality of Ancient Reception Studies, Now: An international virtual conference presented by the society, Antiquity in Media Studies (AIMS); (ii) A joint presentation (Johnson and Skibinski), ‘AHIS@UON Collaborative Innovations in Online Delivery’ at ASCS 2022 panel, ‘New Directions in Classics Teaching Workshop.

Professor Marguerite Johnson and PhD Student Connie Skibinski were delighted to represent this academic team through the ASCS43 ‘New Directions in Classics Teaching Workshop’, by sharing the innovative teaching practices implemented in Semester 2, 2021. Owing to lockdown, the staff delivered two courses online at short notice: AHIS1000: Ancient Greece and AHIS2500 Greek Mythology. Due to the engaging use of online delivery and the innovative Ancient Reception pedagogy implemented in these two courses, the AHIS@UON team were proud recipients of the DVC(A) Educator Innovation and Impact Awards in 2021. You can access a snapshot of their deliver of the two online courses from 2021 here.

While the challenges were intense, they also resulted in new approaches to undergraduate teaching that have been maintained post-pandemic restrictions. In this blog post, Marguerite Johnson and Connie Skibinski address the key points they raised during the teaching workshop, and reflect on what was a successful semester of teaching in spite of unexpected adversities.

Extend your university network:

Some of the 2021 innovations that have been maintained include the extension of our university network to include experts in learning media and solutions development. As academics we are not usually trained in many of the skills required to produce learning modules characterised by effective use of technology to highlight key pedagogical material. By working as a team that includes academics and media production experts, including Ancient Reception segments to supplement specific historical or cultural course components, we have continued to introduce new facets of Ancient History in visually exciting and culturally relevant ways.

Take advantage of what Ancient Reception Studies offers:

This is very much about the vitality of current developments in pedagogy using Ancient Reception Studies in terms of both form and content. By ‘form’ we mean the delivery mode of technology per se – so much at the heart of Ancient Reception Studies – and the direct implementation of such in the vital role played by professional staff with the expertise to manage media, transform lecture content into video recordings, and combine various modes of technical enhancements. By ‘content’ we mean not only ancient history and mythological topics but also the expression of such content in relation to the currency of ‘antiquity’ in diverse media, from television, comics, video games, and film.

Examples from AHIS1000 – Ancient Greece:

In this introductory course, we incorporated video montage with an audio overlay by one of the teachers. Two of the films used were Troy and 300 to show the histories of the Iliad and the Battle of Thermopylae, respectively. These were montages of around five minutes each, and the audio commentary by the teacher pointed out highlights related to the teaching material on the topics that had already been delivered to students. Further on Thermopylae, another teacher used video game extracts to visually demonstrate the battle tactics employed. Keeping the Ancient Reception materials to a strict time limit, incorporating historical content during the videos, and focusing on promoting visualisation learning through popular media, this teaching strategy added a dynamic, relatable and informative component to the online classroom.

Examples from AHIS2500 – Myths of the Ancient Greek World:

Throughout AHIS2500 we opted to incorporate an embedded Ancient Reception approach, meaning that we utilised short case studies from contemporary media (video games, film, television, comic books) throughout the entire semester, when introducing students to ancient material they may be otherwise unfamiliar with. Examples include a case study on Wonder Woman when teaching about the Amazons, and an analysis of a scene from the television series, ‘The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ when teaching about Hecate. This approach was a deliberate divergence from previous iterations of the course, which left Ancient Reception to week 12 only. By incorporating Ancient Reception through practical case studies before introducing the students to Reception Theory in the final week, we found that students were very responsive and engaged with the premises of Reception Theory. The Course Experience Survey results also showed that students particularly enjoyed the references to contemporary media throughout the course, as it prompted them to consider and interrogate how their contemporary context shapes their interpretation of ancient material.

Ceramics and Swantaurs

Since giving this presentation I have stumbled upon another plate painted by Francesco Xanto Avelli which shows a man tranforming into a swan, likely a mute swan. It’s an interesting image that depicts Orpheus arriving at the boat of Charon. Xanto identifies the image as being from book 10 of the Metamorphoses but the identify of the swantaur is currently unknown. The depiction of Cerberus is similarly unique and I have not found any analogous depictions in either ancient or early modern art.

The Hermitage Museum holds another piece by Xanto that was painted in the same year and also depicts Cerberus, but that shows a dog with three heads, not a man with three dog heads (see here). So, there are at least two mysteries about this illustration. If you know who the swantaur is and/or why Cerberus has a human body, please let me know. You can comment here (I think) or chase me on twitter at @ouroboros81

Be on the lookout for more swantaurs!

– Lauren Murphy

Conference reflections: Preparing to present

Academic conferences are a huge part of research – they are where you share your research and get feedback from peers. A good conference leaves you feeling stimulated and psyched up to get back to your work, with new ideas and approaches and texts and people to email and things to read. And yet, there are horror stories of people’s conference experiences – particularly for post-graduates. You hear about the young researcher driven to tears by the zealous questioning of a single audience member who appears to know more and finds fault with the work. You hope that that is never you, and you prepare for your first conference with that image in mind – at least I know that I did.

I was incredibly lucky that my first conference was an AMPHORAE – an incredibly welcoming and relaxed post-graduate conference. Open minds, who were quick to point out that I did not need to apologise 20 times in my 20 minute presentation, as the research and reasoning were good. I’m not a natural presenter – the written word rather than the spoken is my forte – but I have come a long way from that first conference, and my last presentation contained no apologies at all!

So, here is my advice for those of you preparing for a conference – whether it is your 1st or 500th:

1. Start with the point you intend to make. Once you decide on the main message of your presentation, then the details you add will help you shape that message. If you don’t know what your message is, your presentation will be descriptive, not analytical, and the details won’t fit together for your audience.

2. Structure your presentation for a listener, not a reader. With a presentation, the audience do not have the option to flip back to the previous point and remind themselves of what you’ve said, so it is often necessary to remind them. It is usually expected that you will tell the audience what you are going to say at the beginning, give them the examples and evidence you told them you would in the middle, and then remind them of what you’ve said at the end.

3. Write more than you need. Although you have a limited time for presenting, and need to select your evidence clearly, most people talk faster when they get nervous and most people get nervous presenting. If you practice your paper and it comes out on time, write a bit more! Generally, 3,000 words will end up becoming a 20 minute presentation.

5. Be the expert. Your presentation is about your research – something you have been looking at in detail, and know better than you think. Even if your audience contains a scholar whose work is important to your research, they haven’t looked at the evidence the same way you have, to research the same conclusion as you. Be proud of the work you have done and take confidence in the fact that you know what you are talking about.

6. It’s okay to not know. I always get nervous about the questions at the end of my presentation, worrying that I won’t know the answer. This anxiety definitely lessened when I realised it’s okay if I don’t. If I know the answer, great. If not, I admit that as well – usually not as bluntly as saying I have no freaking idea! Instead, “I hadn’t thought about that. That’s a really interesting point and I’ll have to look into it” or “I wasn’t aware of that text. Can we talk about it more in the break/over lunch?” You may find that your audience respects you more when you acknowledge the gap in your knowledge, and you’ll walk away with more ideas than you started with.

7. Include your translation. When you are including the Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, or other language in your presentation, make sure that you include the translation on your slides or handout. This makes your presentation accessible to people who are interested but might not have the language skills needed to translate off the top of their head. You can also include any words you think you might mis-pronounce, so your audience knows what you intended to say!

Remember, conferences are made up of people who are just as passionate about your topic as you are. They want to hear what you have to say and share their knowledge with you.

– Aimee Turner

Making Ink

As part of my research into Renaissance collections of antiquities, I often find myself reading manuscripts and archival documents that have been written by hand. The distinctive sepia brown ink used in these texts can be recognised as iron gall ink, which was originally black but has faded over the intervening centuries. Ink enthusiasts refer to Pliny’s Natural History (34.26) as the earliest reference to it, although Pliny is speaking of the chemical reaction rather than making ink.

I am always up for a little bit of experimental archaeology, or just trying something new to apply to my own artwork, so I thought I would give making it a shot. First up was the difficulty in finding oak galls in Australia. Obviously, we are not a country resplendent with oak trees so I put out my feelers to my network. Fortunately for me, a few people I know are involved with the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and one of them pointed me to Kraft Kolour. I already knew about this seller, due to my love of tie-dye, but it had never occurred to me that they might sell galls. Apparently, people use them for natural dyeing too.

I ordered whole galls rather than the crushed variety because I was aiming for authenticity. I also purchased ferrous sulphate and gum arabic. Any of these ingredients would be accessible during the Renaissance – the galls come from wasps laying their eggs in the leaves of oak trees and the trees forming tannin-rich lumps in response. A rusty nail can be used in place of ferrous sulphate, but the powdered version was also available. Gum arabic is tree resin, usually acacia, but not species-specific.

Crushing the gall nuts with a mortar and pestle is hard work.

Really hard work.

But eventually I had it ground down finely enough.

Most recipes call for rainwater. Some suggest vinegar or wine, which were considered purer than water. Considering that rainwater is unlikely to be of high quality in my suburban backyard, I added demineralised water so that there aren’t any other minerals to interact with the iron when I add it later.

Some gauze and a hair-tie to hold it in place so the bugs stay out while I leave it to sit in the sun for a few days.

After three days I strained the liquid through the gauze to get this milky coffee looking fluid. Other examples I have seen online look a lot darker so I was a bit worried about it. If everything goes wrong I also bought some powdered tannic acid, and apparently tea bags can also be used to make this kind of ink.

I am a bad scientist, so I’ve averaged out the quantities used in different recipes so that I have mixed a teaspoon of ferrous sulphate in 25 ml of water. Then I added it to the gall liquid.

Look at the iron sulphate reacting with the tannic acid!

Oooh, nice and inky.

I made enough ink for two little bottles.

My weapon of choice. A Speedball crow quill. There are lots of different dip pens out there but this is my favourite to use for writing and drawing.

The ink looks dark purple when wet and darkens over a minute or so to charcoal black. Ideally, the black will be waterproof when dry but…

I poured water over my dried ink and there was some bleeding. It could have been worse. I retested with some writing that I allowed to dry for three hours, I think a few days would be even better but I am very impatient.

That looks better. As an ink to write with, it needed only a little of the gum arabic mixed in for thickening. In any case, four hundred years from now this writing would be a lovely sepia brown like the humanist manuscripts that have preserved so many of our ancient texts. It’s really tactile too- which I wouldn’t have known because I would never, ever touch the ink on an old manuscript – but I can touch this and feel the words.

Here’s a splash test a week later when the ink has cured more. I think this is a success. There was a little smudging when I rubbed it with a cloth, but not much, and I am sure that it would hold up well over time.

– Lauren Murphy

Athens in the Hellenistic World

By Ian Worthington

First published in the World History Encyclopedia 11 November 2020 (with different illustrations)

Athens After Empire: A History from Alexander the Great to the Emperor Hadrian (OUP 2021) By Ian Worthington

When we think about ancient Athens it is almost always about the Classical city. We think of such things as its numerous monuments (the Parthenon on the Acropolis for example), beautifying everywhere, the Agora swarming with people doing business, discussing current affairs, and chit-chatting, and its flourishing intellectual, artistic, and literary life, including great philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, orators like Pericles and Demosthenes, and festivals that both honored the gods and provided a focal point for people. Daily life was anchored in the ideals of freedom and democracy, and in the fifth century Athens was an imperial power second to none in the Mediterranean.

But in 338 that life forever changed for all mainland Greeks when Philip II of Macedonia (r. 359-336) defeated a Greek army at Chaeronea (in Boeotia) and imposed his hegemony over Greece. Apart from some futile attempts to recapture their freedom, for well over a century the Greeks remained under Macedonian rule until the new power of the Mediterranean world, Rome, absorbed Macedonia and Greece into its empire.

Philip II was assassinated in 336 and was succeeded by his son Alexander III (“the Great”). He died in Babylon in 323, having toppled the Persian Empire and marched as far east as India. The three centuries from Alexander’s death to the final conquest of the east by Rome with the capture of Egypt in 30 are commonly called the “Hellenistic” period. It was the era of the kingdoms of Seleucid Syria, Ptolemaic Egypt, Antigonid Greece, and Attalid Pergamum; the age when the opening of East to West by Alexander’s conquests came to fruition, with the Greeks realizing their world was far bigger than the Mediterranean; the time when Greek language and culture spread in the east; and Alexandria’s great Museum and Library made it the intellectual and scientific epicenter of the world.

What was Athens’ place in this Hellenistic world? How different was it militarily, politically, economically, and culturally from its Classical predecessor? What were the people like and how did they react to their Macedonian and Roman masters? These questions are what my book is about, and some refreshing new answers come to light.

Once Rome brought down Macedonia in the second century, Athens was subject to Rome’s will. In particular, Roman building activity in Athens, especially under Augustus and in the first century AD Hadrian, was steering Athens further away from what Pericles had proudly proclaimed “the school of Hellas” in his funeral oration of 430 (so Thucydides 2.41.1). The Athenians witnessed the Romans’ appropriation of much of their culture for their own needs and were victims to widespread looting of artworks throughout Greece, which were taken to Rome for public and private display.

Yet this dreary picture of decline and fall belies reality. It is the result of the hostility of ancient sources, and especially, as I show, the flawed tendency to compare Hellenistic to Classical Athens in every area. After Chaeronea Athens was still a force with which to be reckoned: its people were resilient; they fought their Macedonian masters when they could, and later, they sided with foreign rulers against Rome to regain their freedom.

If anything, given the city’s diminished land forces and lack of its once powerful navy, the people’s courageous defiance of oppression against terrible odds was a defining feature of their history. Thus in 268 the Athenians idealistically joined forces with Egypt and Sparta to defy Antigonus II of Macedonia, being totally defeated seven years later. In 229 they actually did regain independence, but warfare against Philip V of Macedonia after 200 led to an appeal to Rome for help. From then on, the Athenians’ future was linked to that city.

In 146 Rome annexed Greece, yet when the opportunity to regain freedom came in the 80s the Athenians sided with Mithridates VI of Pontus (Black Sea) against the Roman People. That decision would lead to their darkest hour, for in 86 the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla besieged and sacked the city, with a terrible loss of life and destruction to buildings.

Then a century later, under Hadrian, the city was catapulted again to prominence in the Greek world when that emperor chose it as the center of a newly created league of cities in the east called the Panhellenion. Athens thus enjoyed a renaissance.

Hellenistic Athens was far from being a postscript to its Classical self; its rich and varied history continued, and its status as a cultural and intellectual juggernaut, especially in philosophy and rhetoric, enticed Romans to the city in increasing numbers, some to visit (like Cicero), others to study there. Athens should no longer live unfairly in the shadow of its more famous forerunner.

My book does not end with the commonly accepted terminal date of the Hellenistic period in 30, but controversially in AD 132 with Hadrian. Periodization (dividing up a historical time frame into periods and giving a name to each one) is a double-edged sword: it’s convenient, but it does not follow that the beginning and end points reflect things starting and ending but merely continuing with changes. “Hellenistic” was coined in 1836 by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen because he believed those three centuries were defined by the spread of Hellenism (Greek language and culture), and the term stuck. But we should not forget that the Greeks did not have this concept of time, and when we look at what Actium and the Roman annexation of Egypt meant for Athens – and Greece – a different picture emerges.

Yes, 31 and 30 were significant years for Rome, but by 31 the Greeks had been part of the Roman Empire for over a century; Octavian was merely another in a line of Roman rulers, and nothing ended in Athens. Octavian had forgiven the people for their support of Antony and given them much needed grain, just as Caesar and Antony had forgiven them for supporting their rivals and had bestowed gifts on the city. It is hard to imagine, then, that the Athenians (or the Greeks) would have felt that Actium, and a year later Egypt’s fall to Rome, was the end of a period for them.

Professor Ian Worthington | MQ Research Profile

The Mind is its own Place

As a Melbournian, I am currently in the midst of Lockdown 6. We’ve been through more than two hundred days of lockdown and you’d think that we’re getting better at it. Haha, nope. The isolation, the cancellation of plans and the stress of trying to work without a study, desk, or even a quiet corner of the house, has taken its toll on me. I persist because what else am I going to do? I’ll keep plodding along for the time being.

So, what lessons have I learned from the last two years?

1. Don’t leave things in your office. Any time that I take my books in to uni to work there is a very good chance that it might be eight months before I see them again. The majority of my texts are currently trapped on the bookshelf next to my desk.

2. Stay connected. I am active on a couple of social networks and try to keep tabs on what others at my uni and others in the field are doing. I’ve haphazardly attended Shut Up and Write sessions and dropped in to social zoom sessions. One of the (very few) positives of the pandemic is the increased accessibility of conferences and I’ve gone to quite a few in different time zones around the world. 4am isn’t the best time to absorb information though.

3. Have a hobby. I knit, sew, draw, keep my hands busy where I can. Making your research your whole life can work for some people but most of us need something that we can do because it is fun and not because we are good at it. Make some gross-tasting bread if you want, you can let yourself fail at something low-stakes. I’m a big fan of gardening and have been growing heirloom veggies from the Diggers Club for years.

4. Embrace the wonderful resources of the Interlibrary Loan team at your uni. Mine have tracked me down some extra-obscure articles and have been a lifeline for my research while my books are trapped.

5. Help others. This is part two of the hobby suggestion. Proofread for others, discuss their research with them, support your research community. We’re all struggling to get work done and although you can’t expect the same in return, it might happen. You’ll maintain connections with your peers and get a nice buzz from being helpful too.

6. Know that your value as a person and as a researcher is not linked to your productivity. If I get one more email about ‘resilience’ I may scream. I am doing the best work that I can in a really shitty time and I am not going to waste time and energy feeling bad about that.

7. Finally, find out the provisions for Leave of Absence, Extensions, Sick Leave, etc. at your Uni. Use them. If you are unwell due to mental illness you might be eligible for paid sick leave. If you need a bit more time to meet that milestone because you can’t access a resource, then there is no shame in seeking extra time.

These are my tips, you may have some of your own. Here’s hoping that we won’t need tips and advice for enduring lockdowns in the near future.

– Lauren

Pedagogical Reflections: Tutoring For the First Time and/or Outside your Subject Area in Classics & Ancient History

The decreased availability of casual tutoring positions for Australian postgraduate students means that, more than ever, many of us are grasping at roles that we feel we are far from qualified to teach, no longer solely in terms of self-confidence as we straddle the liminal space between undergraduate and faculty, but also in terms of subject and content. On the one hand, we might feel overjoyed to have (somehow?) managed to latch onto a unit, any unit, maybe even an ancient unit, wouldn’t that be wild! On the other, we are faced with the inevitable feeling that we are woefully unequipped to teach, clears throat, *insert scarily broad or scarily niche unit title here*. Often, not only have we been thrown into a new area, but we’re learning exactly how to tutor, and what tutoring entails, at the same time.

For my part, this experience came early in my tutoring career and of the scarily broad variety: first year Introduction to Ancient Greece. To my very Roman, very Latin, very ‘historicising literature’ mind, which had escaped Honours with more teaching experience than many but, of course, not enough to prepare me for tutoring with a capital T, this was a frightening prospect, though I was painfully aware that for many people tutoring such a unit was, and is, a dream. Since, particularly over the past 18 months, I’ve seen friends teach units that make my own semester long dalliance as a student with Greek history look like veritable thesis. I like to think that what was, to my mind, a baptism by fire–albeit a controlled fire thanks to the care, precision, and attentive oversight with which the unit was run–kickstarted my confidence such that by the time I came to teaching, with a sigh of relief, ROMAN history and literature, I was raring to go. But at the time, in the moment, I felt daunted and, more than ever, like I’d somehow ended up in a very ill-fitting pair of shoes, which nobody could see but me. Or, worse, that everybody could see but was too embarrassed on my behalf to comment. 

With nearly five units under my belt, I’ve found my groove and my voice. I also know that I am lucky to have been exposed to the teaching that I have been, and that for many of us this sustained experience is either simply not available, or, impossible to balance with other responsibilities, not least writing a thesis. What I’d like to do, then, is take my experience to share what I wish I could have told my anxious former self (and, more importantly, made myself understand) before my first day on what felt a very alien job. My suggestions likely won’t be universally applicable, and are very much grounded in my own experiences, so please take what is useful and leave what is not. I hope that parts will allow you to walk into your classroom with a little more confidence than you would otherwise. My thanks to all those who lent their eyes and ears to this post, particularly Hon. Assoc. Prof. Lea Beness. Always ask your unit coordinator, individual results may vary. 

You know more than them. Yes, even that guy in the corner who knows every date to every war ever, or precisely what Hannibal’s cavalry did at the Battle of Cannae!  And no. You don’t need to read the textbook a second time just to make sure.

Even when you feel like you’re learning the unit content along with the students, your years of education have set you up in such a way that your contextual backdrop is already woven, even if it patchy. Compare what you knew about the ancient world in first year compared to third year, compared to honours. All those titbits of information come together to form a foundation which your students are only just learning to build. Your years of attending departmental talks, listening to indulgent podcasts, reading friend’s drafts, sitting in on conferences, reading historical fiction, procrastinating ‘productively’, catching up with classmates over coffee, even formatting bibliographies, are all valuable. You just don’t realise because you’re too busy thinking about what you don’t know. 

If you don’t feel like a Professor Emerita ready to give a cutting edge lecture on something very complicated  in your tute, that’s actually a good thing: you’re not a Professor Emerita, and you weren’t hired as such. A key part of being a tutor is facilitating conversation, not dominating it. So, not only do you know more than your students, and more than you think you do, your role isn’t to be a walking jukebox of unit content. I am fortunate to be paid to attend lectures, which helps me to shape my tutorials in relation to the unit content and reinforce connections between ideas for my students. It’s also reassuring to know that, as far as lecture content, we’re at least on the same page. But, as much as it should be, this often this isn’t covered in a casual contract. At any rate, remember that you’ve been hired exactly as you are, with full knowledge of your expertise and limitations. I felt a weight lift once I came to realise this for myself

Play to your strengths

While I was not, am not, a Greek historian, I was able to shine where Greek literature was concerned. Sure, not as much as Latin literature, but I’ll take what I can get. Homeric epithets became my thing, and I’m cool with that. So is owl-eyed Athena. A line I like to whip out is ‘this connects well with [the Roman value of fides], which you might learn more about in [HTC104] next semester.’ Obviously you don’t want to become a flashing advertisement for any unit but your own, however bringing in your own interests and tying in interconnected ideas opens up the ancient world for your students, both in terms of study options available at your university and in terms of relationships over time, geography, and culture. My first-year Ancient Greece students once learned a lot about Roman exile with a promise for a comparison with Greek exile in the following week. Which brings us to:

It’s ok not to know.

Modelling vulnerability is high up on my list of teaching values (which is something I highly recommend working out, by the way. I keep an index card by my computer.) You’re not going to know everything even if you’re tutoring in a unit that you were born to teach, let alone wherever you’ve ended up. ‘I don’t know, I’ll look it up and get back to you next class.’ ‘What an interesting question, I’m not sure, where could you go to find that out?’ ‘Does anybody know …?’ ‘Who’d like to have a google?’ ‘Fascinating, I bet there is some great research out there on that, have a search on JSTOR and let me know next week what you find.’ Or, my personal favourite, ‘Let’s see. Right. Full disclosure, I’m on Wikipedia. Supposedly …’ This extends to normalising extensions: explain the extension process to your students, tell them people need more time for all sorts of reasons, tell them that they’re not a big deal, and tell them that you’ve needed extensions before too. 

As soon as you become a tutor, you become a role model. Another element of the position that has nothing to do with unit content, if you’re keeping count. The tone you set engaging with students, the energy you bring to the room, the questions you ask, all shape the student’s learning experience. Often, this means being enthusiastic about elements of the ancient world you never thought you would be.  Making mistakes, and being honest when you don’t know something, not only builds trust, but builds an academia which I quite frankly want to be in, where we acknowledge our limits and bridge them, not with an inflated ego intended to cover up fault lines, but with the very curiosity which we hope to engender in classics graduates. 

Memorise the unit handbook/syllabus and where to find it.

65% of all questions are due date and word count related. I made up this statistic, but it’s probably close to accurate. Yes you get +/- 10%, yes quotes count, no I won’t tally every word but yes I can tell when essays are too long or too short, no your bibliography and footnotes don’t count towards your word limit (for which my honours thesis is quite thankful, by the way.) I can rattle this off now, but in my first semester these questions were anxiety inducing. 

Have a conversation with your unit coordinator about expectations and responsibilities. 

One of my favourite things about tutoring is becoming the Oprah of extensions. If you can be bothered to contact me in writing me to ask, then you get an extension, and you get an extension, and if you look under your seat you’ll find more extensions! Maybe, though, your unit coordinator wants all requests sent through to them. Maybe they will allow you to grant extensions that meet certain criteria. Just have the chat. I’ve recently come across somebody abusing this for the first time, and, after workshopping the problem with my course coordinator, granted the second extension with the proviso that evidence will need to be supplied for further extensions. 

You’ll also want to be clear on things like marking turnaround times, so that you’re not running around in the dark, and communicating this to your students will help stave off those pesky polite-but-not-polite ‘I was just wondering when’ emails. 

It’s also important to set boundaries for your students in turns of your availability, which is something I think everybody struggles with. You’re simply not employed to answer emails and message board posts as swiftly as Achilles. Setting this expectation early will give you breathing space later on. Bear with me here, but you could even turn off email notifications on your phone over the weekend. I know! If it’s important enough they will email somebody higher up the food chain. In saying this, I (low-key) make myself available in the early evening on the day of assignment submissions, when I know an anxious student or two will need me. It’s a hard balance to find, but you’ll get there over time. Taking care of your well-being benefits everybody – a good friend often reminds me that you can’t give off an empty plate.

 Just wear something that makes you feel like (a neat and respectable version of) yourself.

My first year tutoring I was determined to wear a different outfit each week. I didn’t own a different outfit for each week. I don’t even know where the idea came from, but it had something to do with an abstract and fantastical form of academic professional attire that I had conjured for myself. Now, I have a few outfits which make me feel comfortable and, more importantly, confident. If you’re not a person who obsesses over their clothing and accessories as a way to control some aspect of your life, move right along. 

Don’t over mark. 

Painfully aware of my deficiency of knowledge about Greek naval battles, I decided that I could remedy my failures by giving what often amounted to more words of feedback than the students submitted for assessment. It’s difficult enough to mark to time even when you’re not trying to make up for an imagined lack, so don’t add some heroic notion of redemption into the mix.

You might like to incorporate the student’s name into comments, particularly when it comes to praise. I was taught to (constructively criticise) the assessment, but to commend the student. So while ‘this assessment would benefit from more direct textual analysis’, when it comes to strengths, ‘you’ve done a remarkable job, Rebecca, at drawing on your knowledge of Roman values in support of your argument.’ Make sure to always include a positive comment. I like to end my feedback with a copy-pasted signoff which either congratulates the student on submitting or expresses enthusiasm for reading their next assessment, if applicable. Keep a running word document for each assessment with generic and content specific comments, which you can always adapt if need be: you’ll find that many students have similar areas for improvement across each assessment, and for your sanity there is no need to reinvent the wheel each time you suggest a student read their response out loud to aid in identifying awkward expressions. There’s only so many ways you can put that, believe me, I’ve used them all.

When marking multiple assessments in the same format (eg. 2+ short form reflections or analyses), I signpost from the beginning that the first assessment will have more sustained feedback than those which follow will. I frame this as setting students up to succeed and start the unit strong, but it also means that you aren’t setting a standard of feedback that you feel obliged to keep up every week, fortnight etc. If a student doesn’t listen to your suggestion to do x and y differently the first time around, repeating it each week won’t make a scrap of difference. Those students who want more feedback or further clarification will email, trust me on that one. 

As a student, I was obsessed with rubrics. Many of us, to get to where we are now, were likely in the top of our classes, so I imagine you too have spent some quality time with those perfectly formatted squares. What I didn’t realise as a tutor for a long while was:

1. most students have no idea where to find the rubric, what its significance is (it just looks like another useless bit of unit admin), not to mention how to read it, and;
2. it’s not just a tool to work out grades, but is actually a really valuable element of your feedback. 

Before the first assessment is due, take the time to explain to your students how the rubric works and differences between each grade. This puts all students, including those who don’t come from a background where rubrics are an element of education or assessment, on the same page. Encourage them to plot out their assessments for the semester for all their units. This type of organisation is a real difficulty for many first-year students, particularly traditional students straight out of high school where assessment tasks tend to be more coordinated across subjects. Time-management is an important skill and we can help develop this as tutors by passing on these kinds of hints. All of this hard won advice is also (you guessed it) more of that knowledge that has nothing to do with unit content but has everything to do with being an effective tutor. 

I like to tell my tutorial groups that it’s honestly harder to fail an assessment than it is to pass (think about how many fail grades you give compared to passes!) and I mould their expectations from the beginning by circling the credit section of the rubric and saying that many students end up here, which is a really fantastic place to be. This is important because devoted students coming straight from high school might see a 6/10 as a failure, when it is (as we know) anything but. It took a long time for me to be able to assign a Pass without guilt, because I’d empathise with the student and think of how I would feel had I been given that mark. Because we spend all of our time with other postgraduates who are also high-achievers, we might come into tutoring thinking a HD is the norm, a D is a bit of a failure, and a C will evoke an existential crisis. Once you spend some time marking, you come to realise this just isn’t the case. Trust the rubric. 

If you do have to fail an assessment, don’t give it a devastating mark, the fail is likely devastating enough! By the same flip of the coin, don’t give borderline marks (eg. 49% or 64%, depending on your grading system) because students are likely to challenge. Besides, if it really is borderline, particularly for a first-year unit, you might find warmth in your cold, cold heart to bump it up into the next grade. If not, then it probably can sit happily with a mid-range mark. Remember, also, that your course convenor is there to help for sticky assessments or simply for those times when you’re just unsure – there doesn’t need to be a reason, and there is no place for shame. Moderating is a normal part of marking, no matter how experienced a marker you may be. I recently had a student question a mark that I had moderated, and I was very glad that I had discussed it with my unit coordinator already.

Learn student’s names.

This one is something I struggle with, not because I don’t care about the students, but because as soon as someone tells me their name I panic about forgetting it, which means, I immediately forget it. Writing down the names of people in my tutorials, sly glances at notebooks, memorising their self-enforced and unwritten seating plan, and grouping together names by emerging friendships groups, can help. The thing is, a huge part of being a tutor is relationship building. You’re the gateway between the (possibly intimidating) lecturer or unit coordinator, and the student. You have answers to things that students might find difficult, like how to access the textbook and where to submit the assignment, questions which might be ‘too trivial’ to ask of the higher ups. Knowing your students by name helps to show that you care about them as an individual, and is a really small way to make a big difference in your accessibility. It also creates a more inclusive classroom where students know they are appreciated as individual people with individual needs. All of which is another part of being a tutor that has nothing to do with being able to regurgitate a textbook’s worth of encyclopaedic knowledge. 

Something I like to do is arrange students into different groups than they sat down in at the start of the class, and ask whether they’ve all had the chance to meet yet. Chances are at least one person isn’t acquainted with at least one other person. In which case, I start with an enthusiastically awkward ‘hi, I’m Tegan your tutor’, and before you know it you have not only had a refresher course of names but you’ve brought them closer together, making group work much more comfortable and showing a real concern with their interpersonal dynamics in the classroom. This also lets students introduce themselves with their preferred names, which won’t always match those of the university system. Another approach, particularly in large groups, is to use name tags – honestly, make everybody’s life easier, and put everyone on the same page! You can collect and redistribute them after and before every class, lest they vanish into the Mary Poppins-esque depths of a first-year’s bag …

Do a dry run with the technology. 

Boring dad suggestion, I know. But really, do it. Save the IT department’s number in your phone. And suss out the room if you can! In case of disaster, crowd source from you students. Surely somebody, anybody, can make the darn thing work … 

Forward student emails on to the people who are actually paid to reply to them. 

I am lucky in that I have a half hour built into each week to deal with unit admin, but I’m very much aware that this isn’t the norm (as much as it should be.) Even so, there’s only so much one can do in half an hour. Because you’re being such an engaging tutor, and because you’re super relatable, you might find you get lots of emails coming your way that are quite literally above your pay grade. Because you want to be the best and most helpful tutor ever, you might be tempted to reply, but it can set a difficult precedent. A mentor then revealed to me the beauty of forwarding emails. Lifechanging. What I like to do is reply all: ‘Dear Tim, thank you for your email, I’m passing this on to X who will get back to you over the next few days.’ Sometimes I say that I’ve forwarded their email to so-and-so because of their expertise in such-and-such. You’ve done exactly what you should as a tutor­–acted as a mediator between student and lecturer–and it’s taken a minute instead of ten. Which, as you know, adds up. That conversation establishing what falls under your domain will help here also. 

You are competent. You are meant to be here. You deserve to be a tutor. And, you’re surrounded by an entire community with a range of experiences who want to see you succeed. So just ask – one day, you’ll likely be asked in turn. 

T. 

Tegan Gleeson | PhD Candidate, UTAS | tegan.gleeson@utas.edu.au | @teganjoyy

Midway upon the journey of our life

Hello, I’m Lauren Murphy and I am a PhD candidate at La Trobe University. At the invitation of Aimee, I have come to blurt out my winding and hazard-prone path into studying a PhD in Classics and Ancient History. I’ve chosen the opening line from the Inferno because I was in the middle of my life when I found myself a bit lost. Unlike many of my peers, I did not have any particular interest in the ancient world when I was young. I did have an interest in becoming a palaeontologist but discovering that I would have to take biology classes and dissect animals put an end to that dream. Oddly though, I grew out of my squeamishness. I can thank horror movies for desensitising me, I suppose.

My family are working class and we did not have many books in the house. We did have an encyclopedia set that was already dated when I was a young child – my mum said that there had been an offer in the newsagent where you bought one volume a fortnight until you had the whole set. Anyway, I had little interest in history at home or at school besides what I needed to get very good grades. Most history subjects taught in the early years of high school are focused (rightly or wrongly) on Australia, and I did not take any history subjects during VCE. What I did take was art classes: Art, Studio Art, and Graphic Communication. I loved it. I loved it so much I threw all my energy and funding into studying art and spent my days, nights, and weekends drawing and painting. My nan gave me a small amount of money towards my first car or anything else I needed, and I bought myself a very cool long coat and then spent the rest on art supplies and life drawing classes. And then I wrangled myself a spot in art school and spent three years painting and having a wonderful time.

All good things end, seemingly, and after art school I had to find a job if I wanted to buy more art supplies and pay bills. Oh, how I loathe bills. I found an okay job in retail selling fabric and that is how I spent ten years. By that time, I had developed the soulless dead eyes of many other people who spend their lives working in customer service. I still made art and I read everything I could get my hands on. At one point I printed a list of the top 100 books of all time and carried that in my wallet so that I could look out for them in second-hand bookshops. You would think this would be my introduction to the classical world, but nope.

My reason for returning to university was two-fold: I was dying inside from my job, and I had a lovely friend who lived in Italy that I wanted to visit. I figured, why not go back to university to learn Italian, maybe learn a few other cool things and become a more interesting person. My worst-case scenario was that I would come out the end and end up right where I started, but having had a few more years of fun in the interim. There was nothing to lose.

+++

I will break in here and make it clear that my situation is very much unique to me. I suffer from mental illness and a consequence of that is the only pressure I have on me to succeed is my own. My family are very supportive of me doing my own thing, whatever that might be. I am glad for that, although I am sure they are disappointed that I am not curing cancer. Coming from the working class, our marker of success is that you are able to do, so you should be either working or studying, just doing something. I get a bit (lot) angry when people talk about the poor being lazy because it is just not true.

+++

Back to the story. I enrolled in university, picked Italian as my major and picked some electives in Archaeology to use up some spots on my study plan. My motivation was that they sounded interesting and that I had been watching Time Team in the afternoons with my mother not long before I enrolled. The thought of digging holes and finding things, whether that was a treasure or otherwise, was quite appealing. I have since decided that digging hurts my back and that I like climate-controlled libraries with comfy chairs. But back then, it seemed like a good idea. There was a subject about Ancient Greece that I thought would work well to prepare me for a future like Indiana Jones, so I chose that too. In the end, that subject was what hooked me on the ancient world. I struggled with the literature at first, I had never encountered the Iliad before, but I got back into the swing of studying and essay writing. It was the art that snared me though. A vase-handling session was my first time getting to touch the ancient stuff and I have found that my art background and my love of books and libraries have combined so that I can spend my time researching and writing about ancient art.

I’ll admit that my entry into this field is a bit different to most people. Others have family that were interested in history, or they had their own interest in mythology. Some people read one of the ancient texts in translation and that was it, they had been captured by Classics. For me, it was holding a little ancient lekythos with some very rough designs on it.

It is not a dream come true for me because I never dreamed about doing anything like this. I did not find my way into this field until I was in my mid-thirties, and it was entirely by accident. However, it is a very pleasant way to spend a few years and to contribute my insights and perspectives so that others can benefit from them. If I had better luck studying Italian (my Italian is still a work in progress), I would have wound up on a completely different path.

Anyway, that’s my journey into Classics and Ancient History.