Dr Kate Cook
@KatExe
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Academic working on Gender & Language in Greek tragedy, and Classical Reception in video games. Also a lot of women's cricket tweeting. Views all mine.
South East, England
Joined December 2009
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Pinned Tweet
Today's the day! Women in Classical Video Games is now out in hard copy!
@JLDraycott
@BloomsburyClass
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A few people have asked... and
@JLDraycott
and I are now thrilled to say that Women in Classical Video Games is available for preorder! You can find it on the
@BloomsburyClass
website here, including full table of contents:
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I can't seem to get a permanent or long-term job in academia, but also I can't see how to get out of academia (financially, especially - although I wouldn't want to, if only I could get a better job), so I seem to be very stuck in a very bad situation.
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Extremely excited to be able to reveal our amazing cover for Women in Classical Videogames, coming next year with
@BloomsburyClass
!
Thanks very much to
@CAGames
for the image - we hope you'll agree that Penthesilea looks ace!
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WHY can't I put comments in FOOTNOTES Word, what CENTURY is this?!
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For the first time in, like, 12 years, I am no longer working on Praise & Blame in Greek Tragedy - because it's just gone off to
@BloomsburyClass
! Weird but also exciting. Look out for it coming next year!
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I've signed the paperwork, so it seems official enough to share here: I'm delighted to be moving to
@Durham_Classics
for next year.
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Still cannot really get over being told to take care of my family by Medea.
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Among many annoying aspects of being temporary staff is having to listen to uni management talk about the great things they are doing to develop and support their "people", when none of these initiatives include you. You do not count as people. But go do excellent work anyway.
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I love the glimpses of 'ordinary life' in the past that one gets from reading letters. Or not so ordinary life, such as M. Caelius Rufus to Cicero: WHERE ARE MY PANTHERS?!?!?!?!
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I'm starting to get timetables and so on appearing in my emails, so now is probably a good time to share the update that I'm very pleased to be moving back to the South for the first time in my academic career, to become a Lecturer in Greek Culture at KCL from September.
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According to my emails, Women in Classical Video Games co edited by me and
@JLDraycott
is now available in Bloomsbury Collections
@BloomsburyClass
. So those of you whose libraries have access to the Collections, should be able to read it!
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One day I want to teach a course which is called "So you think you know Greek Tragedy?" and is just ALL THE WEIRDEST ONES. And nothing else. It will therefore have a fair amount of Euripides in, but I am okay with that.
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Well, that's it for St Andrews. As much as I'm looking forward to what's next, it's really hard and sad to be made to leave somewhere I think I've settled well and done really great work. I will miss my students, and the department, as well as the place itself.
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I feel v. lucky to have a job for next year already, and it's also good to see jobs I can apply for for longer than that. But still, I'm tired of applying for jobs, and I would much rather keep doing the one I'm already doing well, for more than another year!
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Publication day! 'Praise and blame in Greek tragedy' is out today! If you're interested in heroes, women's speech, or links to older poetry in Greek tragedy, you'll find those things here.
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Meanwhile, I'm very excited to be joining
@StA_Classics
this year, where there are exciting Reception plans afoot!
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When I wrote my PhD thesis, everything was 'notable'. "It is notable that x."
(I was banned from saying 'interesting', my supervisor was a dictator about almost nothing except language.)
These days, it is notable that everything I find is "striking".
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Good morning all - it's time for another fun thread of things I'd like people to remember/consider about precarity! Today: Research Leave & Research time.
It is probs widely recognised that teaching and scholarship/teaching only contracts don't leave much time for research.
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The upcoming strikes are really important. That's why I'm joining them. As you all know, I am (yes, still),
#academicprecariat
- I'm in a one year contract at the moment. I am relatively lucky, because I've been renewed twice in the same place.
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It's out! (In one format). Women in Classical Video Games has been released in ebook form today!
If you're waiting for the hard copy, that follows next month.
@JLDraycott
@BloomsburyClass
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Have been asked by the uni to provide information on everything I did to mitigate the impact of striking, which seems not really the point of striking...
Maybe they could let me know what they are doing to mitigate the impact of casualisation in return.
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I am supposed to be doing some research thinking today, but after a sleepless night stressing about precarity and job apps, I just tried to put toothpaste on my arm instead of sunscreen. Just imagine what better ideas you'd get out of us if you did not do this to us, academia.
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Mostly thrilled and excited about how much positive attention the Women in Classical Video Games book has been getting. But also, a bit stuck today on the part where in some ways it doesn't matter much: I'm still due to be unemployed just in time for its release.
Sigh.
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Capping off a good first week teaching at
@StA_Classics
with some extremely exciting post from
@BloomsburyClass
!
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Watched The Lost City at the weekend and I'm still thinking about the part where Sandra Bullock's character did her thesis but then instead of being an academic wrote archaeology-inspired romance novels and got rich enough for an amazing house. Plan B?
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Interesting (to me) fact: Achilles is more often 'greatly agitated/upset' in the Iliad than he is just 'great'.
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Taught my last hour for the year. Or last at Durham. Or last ever.
Sigh.
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Exciting news - Praise and Blame in Greek Tragedy is now out in ebook form! You can get started reading about the ways in which the chars of tragedy use and abuse poetic traditions of praise & blame to destroy one another now! Full release Feb.
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So excited about this - it is going to be a fantastic project, and we're really pleased to be able to bring together some of the brilliant work on historical games currently happening in different disciplines!
I'm delighted to announce that I'll be co-editing 'The Routledge Companion to Video Games and History' with
@KatExe
and
@ChrisKempshall
! We're under contract with
@RoutledgeHist
. Target publication in 2025.
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Perhaps I should add a line to my CV: promise not to smuggle or sell antiquities.
Or since that is not obviously a problem for one's career, perhaps the opposite.
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I am hitting that point in the term/year when I know my students well, they know me, and we're all working together well and it's productive and fun in class. Just in time to get ready to leave and, best case, go and start again in a new role. Precarity is bad for everyone.
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If I ever stop moving about I am going to have: nice plates, a cat, a Kenwood mixer (for lazier dough-kneading...), a TV. My cat can eat fresh bread off nice plates in front of the TV, it will be basically paradise.
Does everyone else keep 'If I'm ever permanent' lists...?
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When you're trying to get some research done but your tame wolf keeps walking through all the screenshots...
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Sometimes I think that, for variety, depts should offer a module of 'weird texts'. It could be team-taught, so everyone volunteers their own oddities. Things like Euripides' 'Children of Heracles' could go in there, or Lycophron, or whatever oddities you all have up your sleeves!
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Feel like the weather is really trying to make me regret confirming a contract extension for a full second year up here at St Andrews, but even piles of snow cannot daunt me! It's been a great first few months, and I am excited to work on all of next (and this) year's plans!
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Tonight's slightly surreal task: writing a 'career plan' for my portfolio. Probably it would not be in the spirit to write "My career plan is to get a job, and thus stave off unemployment for next year."
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I'm still waiting on a large chunk of money for interview expenses for an interview which took place in June. Why do institutions think it's okay to just leave precarious staff members out of pocket like this?
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Today I became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Hooray!
(Now that it's not called that, though, are we all Fellows of something else?)
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So, I'm very thrilled to say that I will be shortly moving over to join
@LeedsClassics
for the year! You can reach me by email there, should you like to.
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Another sign I need a different research interest: I apparently think that the best way to encourage school students to come study Classics is to talk to them (& sometimes their parents...) a lot about infanticide.
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One of the things I really love about Pentiment is that it's a game not only representing "history", but constantly engaging with what history is - what kinds of stories are told, by who, and where layers of knowledge and understanding develop or are cut off. It's lovely.
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@sentantiq
AJAX. FOR GOODNESS SAKE WHY IS EVERYONE VOTING SO BADLY IN THIS CONTEST?
(Presumably this is roughly what Teucer said about the later contest for the arms...)
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@MaddyPelling
This keeps coming on and off the market - I know it's a specialised kind of buyer who'd want it (i.e. rich), but the fact that it doesn't sell successfully is concerning. For people with 6 million pounds who could be concerned by such things I suppose!
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Sometimes I think that HR/recruitment teams at universities must plan ways of making their application formats more and more complicated. Can't we just move to a: CV, Cover Letter, References format? Why do we need the same information split into tiny boxes in different places?
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Btw, permanent staff, a note: when you're making temporary staff redundant don't describe it as "them leaving" - put the agency where it belongs. Even if it makes you uncomfortable.
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Odysseus will invite himself into your house and steal your cheese, and on the rare occasions you do invite him to dinner, will make such a self centered scene that you can't finish hearing the amazing new song you wanted, and instead have to listen to him going on about himself
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The ADMIN involved in being precarious and moving about all the time is just ridiculously time consuming and stressful. It is too much - combining starting a new job with trying to sort out incorrect utilities or, you know, not getting paid (major source of stress, not keen).
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The Athenians are born from the earth, the Arcadians are reared on acorns, Thebans come from dragons-teeth fratricides - are there any Greek peoples who are just normal?
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One thing that I am becoming more and more concerned about lately is the lack of awareness of the extreme differences in the long-term ramifications of the next year on different groups in academic - in particular, those without permanent contracts.
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Went on strike for a pension that probably won't even exist by the time I get there. Frankly disappointed to see not enough colleagues will go on strike for me to have a job in one place long enough to reach it. Casualisation is a blight. Don't support it.
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@sentantiq
I think this is a bit unfair on Hector, it's clearly affectionate laughing, and he takes the helmet off! Hector is willing to divest himself of his self (depending on how important you think epithets are...) in order to comfort his son, even if it's sadly only temporary.
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Finished the academic year (and maybe my academic career?) with a fantastic discussion with our MLitts about whether or not 'misappropriation' is a useful term for doing classical reception, and if so how we'd define it. A nice ending on a complex topic.
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Everyone says that if you're alone in the holiday period you should just do what you want but couldn't do with company - apparently for me that = die of scurvy, since I am mostly now living off of breaded cheese.
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Reasons not to vote Odysseus: Odysseus will go on a secret mission with you then betray you. Odysseus will conspire to have you executed as a traitor just because you are smarter than him, and set off a chain of events that means your wife will move in a new husband.
#NANAIHB
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I think there should be a letting agency just for precarious academics. They find you nice places near universities, and you only have to go once to do viewings, and it doesn't cost a fortune and tenancies match the academic year. So an unrealistic version of a lettings agency.
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Temporary staff should get extra credit for getting anything done (ever) while also experiencing the many tiny, demoralising (or enraging) cuts of precarity.
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I am writing a lecture on translating Sappho & translating fragments, and I am oddly tempted to present the lecture in some sort of fragmented form.
But I suspect that's not actually going to be very useful for anyone else, fun as it might be for me.
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Excited to see that you can go and visit mine &
@JLDraycott
's volume: Women in Classical Video Games - what more could you want from an afternoon?!
#CA2023
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@greg_jenner
This is obviously far outside your original suggested period, but Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian war finishes before the war ends (presumably because he died before finishing it?)
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Gone on holiday - for the next few weeks I'm taking the first break longer than two days since last September (things kept interrupting earlier leave plans...). Feels sorely needed!
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I'm really proud that
#WCCWiki
has been at two such major conferences this week -
#IMC2019
and
#FIECCA2019
. We're expanding all the time, and it's fantastic to see!
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I am not actually on strike today - I am striking half the days, because I cannot afford the whole thing. Because a) I have not been paid properly recently and...
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Every time I see 'chez' used in contexts like 'chez Euripides' I find it very hard not to first read it as 'At Euripides' house', like he and his tragic characters are just hanging out after school. (Apparently when, according to school French lessons, such things happen).
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"No, I cannot have a meeting with you in July about this student. I will not be being employed in July."
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Hooray! Complete with chapter on Euripides' Heraclidae and the role of tragedy as commemoration from me!
This new
#TrendsInClassics
volume, edited by Katharine Mawford and Eleni Ntanou
@eleni_ntanou
, builds on the background of
#memory
studies and theorizes the role of memory in Graeco-Roman thought and literature:
📘
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Have had such a brilliant time at
#ASCS44
. Interesting papers, great conversations, and a chance to meet great games ppl like
@peregrinekiwi
and
@Alex_Vandewalle
in person! And it's been really wonderful to have so much interest in my own topic of women in classical video games!
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I am spending my afternoon in sessions about the University's ten-year strategy and research plans. Not sure I'm the right audience for these talks, given my anticipated 8 month future at the institution.
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So tonight I stopped where I was, under the full moon, listening to the breeze rattling the leaves, and reading a new poem by Alice Oswald. And it was brilliant.
#PostalPoetryPerformance
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You have to wonder whether an Athenian audience ever felt a bit 'Oh not AGAIN, Aeschines' at the Demosthenes/Aeschines feud, or whether it was like: TAYLOR SWIFT VS. KATY PERRY except with elaborate oratory. Were they all hanging out at home talking about whose side they were on?
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Still one of my least favourite emails: dear student, this sounds like an absolutely fascinating dissertation project. I'd love to supervise it. Unfortunately I may or may not be working here, so you'll need a good second choice.
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@acaprecariat
I really don't see how this is useful advice. Are you supposed to just hang about being unemployed while you work on these masterpieces? Or are we to be expected to accomplish masterworks while actually managing a full-time teaching/admin load with no paid research time?
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I really believe that this strike is important (which is why I'm sacrificing pay I probs can't afford to do four days) - but I can't do more. So thank you to those who are doing the whole thing. It matters, personally as well as for the wider political change we all hope for.
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Recently I was asked to talk about what I'd be doing in five years, and the concept was so foreign that it felt really weird. I genuinely can't plan beyond August in any year (so that's a few months, by this stage in the year) as I have no idea where I'll be living or if I'll...
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So my birthday has started off pretty well. If I can manage to spend the day playing with these rather than obsessively checking my email for news, it may go on so!
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When I see ppl post about leaving academia, their replies are full of people saying "keep the faith" (as if that will help!) or, "you can/should keep doing your research in another job". You could, but we shouldn't expect ppl to do extra work because the industry is so terrible.
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I'm now officially unemployed, which is weird and difficult. I've spent the last month getting here, which was also difficult. But at the same time, I spent a lot of June doing fun things with a lot of amazing friends, most of whom I know through academia - 1/2
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Ten month contracts, now very common for TFs, end this month. Are those colleagues still going to have to pay this levy
@ucu
, during their new unemployment? At best, this is very poor timing - makes it look like you do not know your members' situations at all.
@ucuatdurham
A question
@ucu
- what about members who may be out of employment in Aug & Sep and won't be heading back to academia because of what's happening in universities atm? If membership isn't cancelled now, will they contribute to a fund for a cause they might not fight in the future?
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I've said this before, but it's really hard that even if things are going nominally well, you are having to rip up all your roots all the time as an ecr.
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