How Do We Look by Mary Beard
When the more recent Civilization was shown on PBS, they edited it a bit from the British version because we can’t have nice things in America since we elected an orange. But they edited out much Mary Beard which is so not right. Really not right. So if you are wondering why Mary Beard wrote a book that functions as a companion to the series that’s why. The book is a look at how the viewer interacts with art. She focuses on ancient and religious […]
I follow a ton of art historians, museums and academics on Twitter, and Mary Beard is one of my favourites. I genuinely love her tweets and have been surprised to see how many people are willing to troll her, and ignore her academic bona fides because she dares discuss sexism and diversity in the ancient world, not to mention being an older woman in an academic field (Classics) where almost all well-known presenters are male. Beard, a Cambridge University Don, was most recently involved in a tempest about the distinct […]
This would be a fan favorite here I feel. Mary Beard’s book is slim by its very nature because it’s a transcription of two speeches given before and after Brexit/Trump. And you can feel that difference when you read them. Mary Beard is apparently a public intellectual and fixture in British television. Being American, I didn’t know this, but I did know her as a prominent historian. I read SPQR and I maybe reviewed it here (I forget what year I read it), and thought it […]
This short (115 page) treatise comprises two lectures which noted Cambridge academic and classicist Mary Beard delivered in 2014 and 2017. In these lectures, “The Public Voice of Women” and “Women in Power,” Beard examines the classical roots of the silencing of women’s voices and its effect on women in the modern Western world. Ultimately, in considering how women might truly become “voices of authority,” Beard suggests a reconsideration of “power” itself. In the first essay, Beard takes the reader back 3,000 years to demonstrate […]
Ultimately I have to take this book at its word(s) because I have such an otherwise facile understanding of Roman history that I am a stuck/kept audience member. I found the sweep and scope of this book both manageable and readable. The research seemed quite sound, and the theorizing that does happen (which is relatively little) is mostly sidebar commentary and joking more than interpreting. This is a history of the beginnings of Rome. There’s a debate that was and maybe still is happening in […]
