Katherine Harloe is director of the Institute of Classical Studies in London.
In an essay on scholarly ‘necrophilia’, published in 2021, the historian of science Lorraine Daston noted that writing histories of their own disciplines is often an excuse for scholars to commune with ghosts. Not just any ghosts, either, but their academic forebears. Daston connects this longing to the intense bonds forged by traditional institutions of humanistic education....
In July 1914, a cartoon called ‘Fool’s Paradise!’ appeared in Plebs Magazine. It features two pairs of contrasting male figures. In the foreground a top-hatted, round-bellied ‘Capitalist’ shakes his fist at a rugged, flat-capped worker representing the ‘Central Labour College’. The worker, his arms folded firmly against his chest, returns his...
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