What Made You a Classic Scholar?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I got a lot of my sense of identity even when i was young by reading and writing. My parents would do thee spot checks at three a m where they'd find me under the covers with a flashlighht. There's all the travel, which made me interested in different cultures and different perspectives. Then there is a really maniacal work ethic, which, thank goodness, has calmed down a little bit as i get older. What else? I like writing. I just love, love writing. And i had a lot of fun doing the china book.

A self-professed nerd, the young Shadi Bartsch could be found awake late at night, reading Latin under the covers of her bed by flashlight. Now a professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, Dr. Bartsch is one of the best-known classicists in America and recently published her own translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Widely regarded for her writing on Seneca, Lucan, and Persius, her next book focuses on Chinese interpretations of classic literature and their influence on political thought in China.

Shadi joined Tyler to discuss reading the classics as someone who is half-Persian, the difference between Homer and Virgil’s underworlds, the reasons so many women are redefining Virgil’s Aeneid, the best way to learn Latin, why you must be in a room with a native speaker to learn Mandarin, the question of Seneca’s hypocrisy, what it means to “wave the wand of Hermes”, why Lucan begins his epic The Civil War with “fake news”, the line from Henry Purcell’s aria that moves her to tears, her biggest takeaway from being the daughter of an accomplished UN economist, the ancient text she’s most hopeful that new technology will help us discover, the appeal of Strauss to some contemporary Chinese intellectuals, the reasons some consider the history of Athens a better allegory for America than that of Rome, the Thucydides Trap, the magical “presentness” of ancient history she’s found in Italy and Jerusalem, her forthcoming book Plato Goes to China, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded March 16th, 2022 Other ways to connect

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Follow Shadi on Twitter
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.