Joseph Howley
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illdottore.bsky.social
Joseph Howley
@illdottore.bsky.social
7.7K followers 1K following 2.8K posts
“imagine a classics professor” – The New Yorker
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illdottore.bsky.social
When I visited not long after the 2016 election, I found it hard to photograph the concentration camp at Dachau in a way that captured the intensity of the experience. But this historical placard that literally begins "After the factory shut down…" stayed with me.
After the gunpowder and munitions factory closed down in 1919, unemployment and poverty prevailed in Dachau for years. In the 1920s the population predominantly elected political parties of the workers movement or the catholic conservative Bavarian People's Party (BVP). Since 1933 though the National Socialists were able to score a major run. Quite a few of the residents welcomed the establishment of a concentration camp close to the city. They hoped that the economic situation would be improved, for example, through supplying the camp with provisions. Until the mid-1930s there was close economic contact between the city and the camp. The camp complex was incorporated into the city of Dachau in April 1939. The initiative for this was taken by the camp commandant, Hans Loritz. The city of Dachau went through with the plan for economic reasons. But the anticipated economic upturn never occurred.
February 4, 2026 at 1:13 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
Found a cover image for my book
handsome cloaked Roman points to ugly slave carrying scroll
February 2, 2026 at 1:12 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
Sincerely my favorite part of this special is David Macaulay, sitting in a Roman archaeological site, drawing diagrams with a sharpie on a big pad of paper. However, the animated story is its own delight and features some truly classic and far from unproblematic physiognomies
Manipulative Roman Matron and Roman Veteran Gaul and Roman Virtuous Veteran and Corpulent Overweening Freedman Comic Slave complains while Master relaxes. Also a Lararium
February 2, 2026 at 1:11 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
Cassian Andor tells the Sienar Systems technician that she'll never feel okay unless she's doing everything she can to stop the empire, like deleting Jira tickets
February 2, 2026 at 12:22 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
The first page of this book is a simple web search away. The image above is from amazon dot com! But the NY Times article links instead to what appears to be a free classroom activity that has adapted the book into a multi-part script for classroom use: www.thebestclass.org/uploads/5/6/... 2/
The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats Narrator 1, Narrator 2, Narrator 3, Narrator 4, Narrator 5, Peter, Friend, Mother Narrator 1: One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. Peter: It’s covered everything, as far as I can see! Narrator 2: said Peter.
January 27, 2026 at 10:15 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
It's hardly the most egregious failure of fact checking from the New York Times recently, but this outrageous assertion tells me that nobody who edited this story has actually read this book to a child. The entire book is narrated (beautifully) in the third person. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/s...
The first thing that the little boy in Ezra Jack Keats’s children’s book “The Snowy Day” says is a simple statement of wonder: “It’s covered everything, as far as I can see!” The book has been checked out of the New York Public Library 485,000 times, making it the most popular thing they’ve got. The first page of "The Snowy Day." It reads: One Winter morning Peter woke up and looks out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see."
January 27, 2026 at 10:15 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
Since I read it I have not stopped thinking about Kenney and Lincoln's description of this as "a case of mutual but unequal reputation laundering" osf.io/preprints/so...
Indeed, what these 'partnerships' entail is not a relationship of substantive mutual exchange, but a transactional relationship that is informed by the public-relations concerns of both parties. University administrators, motivated by an opportunity to distinguish their institutional brands from those of their competitors, seek the imprimatur of AI. For their part, AI companies covet the prestige and status associated with higher education, particularly the cachet of elite research universities such as Oxford and Columbia. From our perspective as CSU faculty, it seems that the status signifiers accompanying OpenAI’s brand are at least as important to CSU leadership as the technology’s capacities are—especially given the indifferent, minimally detailed rollout of the product to our university community over recent months.5 Thus, it appears that this is primarily a case of mutual but unequal reputation laundering, where the AI firms have nothing to lose, but the university 'partners' absolutely do.
December 5, 2025 at 8:23 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
It’s yassified Justinian doing the Jeb Bush pose in front of an electoral map of the Roman Empire I’m so sorry
December 2, 2025 at 9:06 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
"Fastest wins, your time starts now"
Keir Starmer saying "there's a famous slogan in the United Kingdom"
November 28, 2025 at 12:38 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
I Really Like Slop by Mo Willems
November 27, 2025 at 9:35 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
A hard thing about living away from New York City is missing these exciting exhibitions. Can someone please stop by City Hall and buy me a t-shirt or print of the Jabba-rat(-ghostbusters?) art, which I have to assume they are selling. Why would you make something like that and not sell merch of it
A twitter post from Josie Stratman. "A shrine-like exhibit has been set up for Mayor Adams in City Hall today, replacing the 9/11 photography that was there before." One of them shows Eric Adams in Field of Dreams the poster says "Rat sightings have declined for 9 straight months" and shows Jabba the Hutt, with rat features, in a ghostbusters style NO red circle with line, and it says RETURN of the TRASH REVOLUTION. in other words it's art
November 26, 2025 at 9:03 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
it's ray from achewood saying Daaamn! That answer rocks
November 25, 2025 at 1:53 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
A wonderful essay by McNeil Taylor on Hellenism, Zionism, and the legacies of c19 Western European colonialism. www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/71/ta...
Syros was not the only pilgrimage spot that seemed, to the Western eye, to have withered on the vine of ancient vitality. When Melville’s ship reached Palestine, his heart sank, just as it had on Syros: “No country will more quickly dissipate romantic expectations than Palestine—particularly Jerusalem,” he wrote in his journal.8 The Holy Sepulchre was “a sickening cheat,” and it is again the arid landscape, lacking the bloom of Western painting, that pains the traveler: “Judea is one accumulation of stones.”9 He also saw Christian Zionist missionaries, for whom he had little sympathy: they were in the grips of a “preposterous Jew mania” that was “half melancholy, half farcical.”10 These forces would, of course, soon accelerate during the 1880s, as Zionism expanded beyond its initial Christian purview to inspire Jewish settlers to colonize Palestine. Yet what is less well-known is that the Greek revolution played a crucial role in this process: before Zionists sought to “make the desert bloom,” Hellenism had to bring Watteau’s lush arcadia to life.
November 25, 2025 at 1:08 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
The title of this section of Karla's 2023 edition of the Life of Aesop (SBL) could also be the title of some really gripping DS9 fanfic
The MORN Recension and its Textual Tradition
November 24, 2025 at 3:28 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
I also am cursed to think about Ancient Rome every day (Seneca Epistle 27, Gummere's Loeb)
Within our own time there was a certain rich man named Calvisius Sabinus; he had the bank-account and the brains of a freedman.b I never saw a man whose good fortune was a greater offence against propriety. His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam,—names which we know as well as we know those of our own attendants. No major-domo in his dotage, who cannot give men their right names, but is compelled to invent names for them,—no such man, I say, calls off the namesc of his master’s tribesmen so atrociously as Sabinus used to call off the Trojan and Achaean heroes. But none the less did he desire to appear learned. So he devised this short cut to learning: he paid fabulous prices for slaves,—one to know Homer by heart and another to know Hesiod; he also delegated a special slave to each of the nine lyric poets. You need not wonder that he paid high prices for these slaves; if he did not find them ready to hand he had them made to order. After collecting this retinue, he began to make life miserable for his guests; he would keep these fellows at the foot of his couch, and ask them from time to time for verses which he might repeat, and then frequently break down in the middle of a word. Satellius Quadratus, a feeder, and consequently a fawner, upon addle-pated millionaires, and also (for this quality goes with the other two) a flouter of them, suggested to Sabinus that he should have philologists to gather up the bits.a Sabinus remarked that each slave cost him one hundred thousand sesterces; Satellius replied: “You might have bought as many book-cases for a smaller sum.” But Sabinus held to the opinion that what any member of his household knew, he himself knew also. This same Satellius began to advise Sabinus to take wrestling lessons,—sickly, pale, and thin as he was. Sabinus answered: “How can I? I can scarcely stay alive now.” “Don’t say that, I implore you,” replied the other, “consider how many perfectly healthy slaves you have!” No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind; in fact, as it seems to me, even though sound minds were for sale, they would not find buyers. Depraved minds, however, are bought and sold every day.
November 24, 2025 at 1:38 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
Thank you for this reminder that I want to frame and hang my copy of the soundtrack LP sleeve
November 21, 2025 at 9:37 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_Do...
November 14, 2025 at 9:05 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
maps.app.goo.gl/xhjWEUcXdLdM...
November 13, 2025 at 6:06 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
The Dude in the Big Lebowski with a speech bubble indicating that the quoted post is his reported speech
November 12, 2025 at 9:32 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
My colleague Helen Benedict writes this update on teaching at Columbia in the present political climate. tomdispatch.com/capitulation...
For now, however, we faculty are stuck with Columbia as it is. In my case, this means that I must teach social justice journalism not only under the cloud of the Kirk aftermath, with professors and employees being fired or chased out of the country for daring to criticize that purveyor of hate, but with the IHRA sword of Damocles dangling over my head. Social justice journalism is essentially about covering the ways in which the powerless are oppressed by the powerful — that is, a manifestation of Joseph Pulitzer’s mantra that journalism should “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” This means that just about every topic my students will cover flies in the face of all that the Trump government wants to suppress and might well come up against Columbia’s new rules, too. What if one of my students should want to cover the deportation hearings for Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, for instance? Or a speech by our former student, the once-imprisoned Mahmoud Khalil? Will even a mention of a Palestinian activist be deemed antisemitic now? Will quoting someone who criticizes Kirk or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be grounds for expulsion? Can we report on Planned Parenthood or transphobia, the ICE persecution of Brown and Black immigrants, the ongoing climate catastrophe, environmental racism, violence against women, or Islamophobia? Can we talk about social justice at all?
November 12, 2025 at 8:03 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
This might be my favorite line from my grandfather's FBI file: "has made 'strange remarks' in the past; for example, 'I want to live in England because it is a good place and I like their form of government.'"
A gnarly scan of a typewritten document: "[] stated that the employee has made 'strange remarks' in the past; for example, 'I want to live in England because it is a good place and I like their form of government.' However, [] stated it is his opinion that such remarks as the one quoted above were made in a 'pop-off' manner..."
October 7, 2025 at 9:07 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
I have real enthusiasm for the ML-powered search in my Photos app but it feels genuinely uncanny that it should work on Roman handwriting such that I could find this snap I took of this famous graffito from the imperial paedagogium on the Palatine – I entered "labora" and this appeared immediately
a fragment of Roman graffiti, where the letter A really doesn't look like our letter A, but the software has correctly identified and highlighted the search term
September 29, 2025 at 3:29 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
For Universities to not be ready for or responsive to this kind of predictable, documented, targeted harassment of faculty is a choice www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Early last semester, Droubi said, students began approaching Cheyfitz with complaints that a graduate student in the “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” class appeared to be recording them, possibly to “gather their names and comments” and intimidate them. “We believe that a student came to the course for the sole reason of surveilling and potentially harming students in the class,” Droubi said. “That ended up proving itself to be true because multiple students came forward and shared their concerns with Professor Cheyfitz.” Cheyfitz said one Palestinian student quit the class after telling him she felt upset and frightened.
September 29, 2025 at 12:29 PM
illdottore.bsky.social
A remarkable essay on, among other things, the personal toll of working at the consent factory. bidoun.org/articles/hou...
Around four months into the war on Gaza, scholars of genocide were reaching a consensus that what was happening in Palestine was a genocide, the crime of crimes, and I waited for the magazine to say so, too. I tried to talk to the editor-in-chief about using the word in our coverage, but he said he didn’t think it was a genocide. The word’s conspicuous absence led me to suspect that he had prohibited its usage among the editors. This was a notable exception to the accepted epistemology; a few months into the job, I overheard another checker cold call an addiction scholar to confirm that gambling was, in fact, addictive. But I did not have it in me to keep fighting.
September 18, 2025 at 10:40 AM
illdottore.bsky.social
Under the "Palestine exception" to free speech principles, some "hard questions" can and must be suppressed. Do institutional leaders now suddenly enamored of 'debate' want to end that exception, or create a new one in which other "hard questions" – such as these – must be elevated and entertained?
The point of this so-called mastery was as familiar as it was conspiratorial—“great replacement.” There was an “anti-white agenda,” Kirk howled. One that sought to “make the country more like the Third World.” The southern border was “the dumping ground of the planet,” he claimed, and a magnet for “the rapists, the thugs, the murderers, fighting-age males.” “They’re coming from across the world, from China, from Russia, from Middle Eastern countries,” he said, “and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in…” You can probably imagine where this line of thinking eventually went. “Jewish donors,” Kirk claimed, were “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.” Indeed, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
September 17, 2025 at 10:58 AM