SCS Blog Author Page
Posts by Krishni Burns
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Blog: Classics Books for Young Readers
It’s that time of year again, when it behooves all generous adults to give gifts to the young people in their lives. As an avid reader, books were always my favorite presents. Now that I’m an adult and a fully-fledged classical scholar, I enjoy sharing my love of the past through interesting and innovative books about and inspired by the ancient world. Over at Calliope’s Library: Books for Young Readers, we are busy collecting beloved books from our own youth and new exciting publications to share with younger generations. Here Read more … |
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Blog: Calliope’s Library: Books for Young Readers
Do you know any kids? Do they like books? Do you want to lure them down the path of Classical Studies before paleontology fever sets in? The good news is that there’s a new resource in development to help you do just that. I’m please to introduce Calliope’s Library: Books for Young Readers.
Figure 1: Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby. Krishni Burns writes, “I appreciate a modern-day Persephone who sets the curtains on fire to get the fire department’s attention, because trapped isn’t the same as helpless.” Last year, the SCS blog provided several useful resources to help you find books for young Classics fans, among them Sarah Bond’s Read more … |
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Blog: A Latinx Casina
In the Spring of 2021, as her undergraduate UIC Honors College Capstone project, my student Luana Davila adapted and produced a version of Plautus’ Casina in the style of a telenovela. Due to COVID, she was not able to stage the play, but she produced a filmed version in collaboration with theater students at Columbia College in Chicago. For safety reasons, each actor’s scenes were filmed separately, then edited together. Below is an interview with Luana and the play’s director, Amy Gerwert Valdez, a Theater Directing major at Columbia. [Editor’s note: the transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.] Krishni Burns: Can we start with a description of your project? Luana Davila: The project aimed to tie together patriarchal society in ancient Rome and in Latinx cultures (or in the case of Read more … |
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Blog: Finding Comedy in the Performance of Ancient Drama
This blog entry is the first in a new series, Letters from CAMP, that will appear throughout the year and explore the various practicalities and benefits of the performance of ancient drama in its many forms. Two years ago at the annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies, a Senior Scholar of great distinction stood in the middle of a room crowded with many of the finest minds in classical scholarship, looked around, and said loudly, “Look at all these f**king a**holes.” To the best of my knowledge, this was a first. Most scholars have been tempted to say the same when faced with a crowd of SCS conference goers, but most are a bit more circumspect in their language. In this instance, context is everything. The lady in question was performing the part of Poseidon, reworked in a modern aesthetic, at a staged reading of Aristophanes’ Birds organized by the Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance (CAMP) in conjunction with Read more … |
