All But Dissertation No dissertation--none of the time!
Thursday, April 24, 2003
An interesting article about Iraqi and other antiquities in the OpinionJournal. One point that the author hints at but doesn't push much is that of why certain things from antiquity are and were valued and thus preserved, and why others weren't. For instance, in antiquity and up to about the second half of this century, anything having to do with the lives of ordinary women (as opposed to queens or courtesans) was not valued. Thus very little survived to be dug up, and when it did, it was for the most part plowed over in the search for more dramatic finds. But what we value as a culture has changed, and what we wouldn't now give for more insight into the daily life of an ordinary woman, say, in first century Israel!
Who is the Lady of Shalott?Click here and find out. Why do I call myself the Lady of Shalott?
In addition to being a blogger, I'm a wife, mother, and Ph.D. student specializing in scripture and the Graeco-Roman world, and I'm just a little bit pregnant with a dissertation (but we're not going to talk about the dissertation, are we? No!). In hopes of receiving tenure someday at a university as wonderful as the one I now attend, this blogger will remain resolutely anonymous. Nothing like yards of politically incorrect off-the-cuff statements to derail the tenure track. But we'll have lots of fun anyway.