Blogs of the Year 2021

Are blogs still dying? Doing my best to separate this question from my feelings about this blog, which is definitely somewhat sickly – further discussion of this when I do my own review of the year – I tend to conclude: answer hazy, try again later. There have been some really excellent posts this year, and sone exciting new voices and ideas, and I honestly haven’t a clue whether they are getting the readership they deserve. It was a little disconcerting, for example, when someone I know on Facebook mentioned that yesterday their blog – albeit a time-limited project where the last post appeared in the first half of the year – got no visitors at all (suddenly my statistics look better than I thought…). I had a vague idea that in current circumstances we would all be looking more to this sort of short-form, informal, immediate commentary, both as readers and writers. But then I did think that, even if I couldn’t manage sustained writing at the moment, I would at least be able to keep up the blog posts, and look where that ended up. Indeed, looking back through this list, I’m struck by how much my reading clearly fell off at various points, and how much I fall back on certain writers time and again…

Anyway, the point of this post is not to moan, but to celebrate, and to remind myself – and whatever readers I have left – of some brilliant stuff they may have forgotten or missed.

January

Sententiae Antiquae on Eric Adler’s new book on the humanities: https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2021/01/11/save-the-humanities-with-this-one-simple-trick/amp/#click=https://t.co/9nJgPcLKzV

Josephine Grahl’s new year’s garden resolutions: https://belledelondres.wordpress.com/2021/01/12/new-years-gardening-resolutions-2020/ (and subsequent posts, especially

“Who are the marks in this grift?” Max Planudes on the college (university) crisis: https://planudes.medium.com/a-college-crisis-858df8798fc7

Caught up with this a month late – when the author died; Ed Rooksby on Long COVID: https://edrooksby.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/nine-months-in-the-long-limbo-of-long-covid/

February

Deborah Cameron on the Handforth Parish Council meeting and men talking over women: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/you-have-no-authority-here/?fbclid=IwAR0f6vqVfgjokfHsdaXAIQ_bDVVC6yHkWg7qEbtnEC1zUKXhJgw4Q_mLp7Y

Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber on the first year of the pandemic: https://crookedtimber.org/2021/02/18/the-last-time-i/#more-48477

March

Deborah Cameron (again), predictably brilliant on the linguistic aspects of Sarah Everard’s murder and its aftermath: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2021/03/14/when-words-fail-us/?fbclid=IwAR39qfa7v7N11CdeZN58yct_ipFs4NyMRWTTlWNwR1mgTKbdb9N83fuPTQo

Brett Scott deconstructs a BitCoin advert: https://t.co/rwEvnfmxlm?amp=1

April

John Holbo at Crooked Timber on Seuss and Nietzsche – and of course his ongoing project of On Beyond Zarathustra (https://www.onbeyondzarathustra.com): https://crookedtimber.org/2021/04/14/zarathustra-columnar-emersonian-or-divine-hanswurst/

Jonathan W. Wilson on Cornel West’s odd and potentially counterproductive defence of the Classics Department at Howard University: https://bluebook.life/2021/04/21/testing-the-west-at-howard-university-thoughts-on-a-very-strange-op-ed/

Liz Gloyn’s reflections on pandemic teaching: https://lizgloyn.wordpress.com/2021/04/24/reflections-on-a-year-of-pandemic-teaching/

May

Foluke Ifejola on racial (in)justice in higher education: https://folukeafrica.com/racial-injustice-in-higher-education-a-tri-temporal-failure/

Katherine Harloe on education and her mother: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/gender-history-cluster/2021/05/13/on-education/

Katherine Blouin on academic annual reports from the plague year: https://isisnaucratis.medium.com/stay-alive-what-academic-annual-reports-don-t-say-7ef9b31bbc3

June

Max Planudes on institutional affiliation: https://planudes.medium.com/the-prestige-economy-of-university-affiliation-4ac366c96c55

Nadhira Hill, Notes from the Apotheke on sacrifices in classical studies: http://notesfromtheapotheke.com/5-things-to-sacrifice-in-classics/

July

Dan Nexon at The Duck of Minerva of the development of politics blogging: https://www.duckofminerva.com/2021/07/the-vision-thing-more-on-the-new-duck.html

Deborah Cameron on names, initials and citation practices: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2021/07/13/women-of-letters/

Liz Gloyn’s Office Mental Health first aid kit for personal tutors: https://lizgloyn.wordpress.com/2021/07/22/some-suggestions-for-an-office-mental-health-first-aid-kit/

August

L.D.Burnett on the endorphin rush of throwing things away: https://loradawnburnett.medium.com/into-the-dumpster-it-goes-6f1452498a74

Spencer McDaniel on the ‘discovery’ of remains of the Trojan Horse: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2021/08/11/no-archaeologists-have-not-found-the-trojan-horse/

September

Will Pooley gets an AI to write his blog post: https://williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2021/09/13/i-aint-worried-about-human-redundancy-just-yet/

Robert Ziomkowski on the new Latin translation of The Hobbit: https://medium.com/in-medias-res/would-tolkien-approve-of-the-hobbit-in-latin-1b51089ee301

Deborah Cameron (having a particularly outstanding year) on the naming of dogs: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2021/09/23/the-naming-of-dogs/?fbclid=IwAR0rvDtXWblbuP15024W6D4JJeXuF3hfHjXTsea0z6OA-J6zoRqj0temANo

Rebecca Futo Kennedy on why she is not a humanist: https://rfkclassics.blogspot.com/2021/09/i-am-not-humanist.html?fbclid=IwAR3NicAUnXXPiWJJpia1CMQFMs2RQIx3ADyZUoM9PBN_BlShbHoLVgM6dsw

October

Eric Schliesser’s latest report on his Long COVID (with helpful links to earlier posts): “I suddenly realized that I was disassociating from the ambitions that had characterized my professional identity.” https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2021/10/covid-diaries-stagnation.html

Dimitri Nakassis on drawing a line around Greece and Rome: https://englianos.wordpress.com/2021/10/12/double-tap/

November

Alexandra Sills (@BelovedOfOizys) on studying under pandemic conditions: https://ancientalexandra.wixsite.com/domus/post/silver-platters-and-students-in-pandemics

Henry Farrell on science fiction and social science: https://crookedtimber.org/2021/11/15/the-future-finds-its-own-use-for-things/

Chris Bertram on the deaths of refugees in the English Channel: https://crookedtimber.org/2021/11/25/people-drown-in-the-channel-fake-tears-and-fingers-in-ears/

December

Vanessa Stovall (@theoctopiehole) on Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding’s Iphigenia, which I desperately need to see but in the meantime this will do: https://medium.com/corona-borealis/iphigenia-extended-the-revolutionary-indigestion-of-wayne-shorter-esperanza-spaldings-ed2d839f4534

Isabel Ruffell (@iaruffell) on offensiveness in ancient and modern comedy: http://artemisia.scot/blog/2021/12/21/the-death-of-comedy-again/