Fifteen years ago, inspired by the late Kathryn G. Bosher (1974–2013) and her Classicizing Chicago project, I founded Classicizing Philadelphia. With some modest funding from the Classical Association of the Atlantic States and Bryn Mawr College, that digital humanities project grew into a web site, a short-lived mobile app, and a blog. By 2016 it was clear that the project needed a permanent home and a younger director, and I handed it over to Haverford College--where it remains, entombed in the graveyard of "Past Initiatives." The blog, which had been used mostly to report on Classicizing Philadelphia and its progress, remained alive as classicizingphiladelphia.blogs.brynmawr.edu. Over time, the Classicizing Philadelphia blog had less and less to say about its original subject. I wrote about Cycladic art at the Metropolitan Museum, tyranny and Trump, Trump as a postmodern president, class and party realignments, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, the fate of books, artificial intelligence, summer reading, Bryn Mawr's cancelling of its founder, and pronouns—and those are just the ten most recent posts.
Also, as far as I could tell, no one read it.
It seems time for a fresh start. "Classicizing in Philadelphia" will talk about some of the things that I like to think about: classics and classical studies, education in general, art (both history and practice), and cultural and political movements. My models will be the academic blogs that I read and enjoy: Mary Beard's "A Don's Life" in the TLS, Edith Hall's "Edithorial," and especially John V. Fleming's "Gladly Lerne, Gladly Teche." I won't try to match Prof. Fleming's disciplined pace of one post a week, but I'll aim for about one a month, and I'll try to write sentences that people want to read. I may also from time to time repost essays from the old Classicizing Philadelphia blog.
We're off! Read and enjoy.
