News from the Division of Languages and Literature

“A gap in vaccination rates between residents and staff means that long-term-care facilities remain particularly vulnerable to coronavirus outbreaks,” writes Gessen in the New Yorker. “As long as the virus is circulating in the community, an unvaccinated staff member can pick it up and bring it to the nursing home, where conditions may make the otherwise rare breakthrough infections more likely.”

Comprising 150 male couples, Thebes’s Sacred Band was undefeated until it was wiped out in 338 B.C. The warriors’ valor, the Greeks believed, was due to the fact that no man would ever exhibit cowardice in front of his beloved. In the 19th century, their mass grave was found. Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn pens this article in the New Yorker ahead of the publication of a new book by James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics James Romm, The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom (Simon and Schuster, June 2021). Read the Article
 
Bard faculty member and Princeton alum James Romm speaks with the Princeton Alumni Weekly about the new book and his work to bring the heroism of Ancient Thebes to light. Read the Interview
 

Public conversation about the pandemic has revolved around individual choice, autonomy, safety, and personal responsibility. Schools expose the shortcomings of this framing, writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Masha Gessen. “In late March, New York’s public high schools reopened for in-person instruction. Elementary schools have been offering some in-person instruction since December, middle schools since February. The country’s largest school district has managed to provide more in-school hours than many other districts that might have seemed better equipped for the task. But, nearly three months after vaccines became available to teachers, fewer than half—around sixty-five thousand, out of approximately a hundred and forty-seven thousand Department of Education employees—have received at least a first shot of the vaccine.”