R F Kennedy (not Jr.)
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kataplexis.bsky.social
R F Kennedy (not Jr.)
@kataplexis.bsky.social
2.3K followers 690 following 1K posts
Ancient Historian and Professor. First gen, public school, state college kid teaching at a SLAC. PhD OSU, BA UCSD. “Come on down here, third string. Let me show you how outclassed you are.” ~Full Metal Alchemist
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kataplexis.bsky.social
Published last month, after 5 years with editors and press… Volume looks amazing. I am ch 16.
Book. Black with white text and red trim. Title: Identities in Antiquity. Image in the center top is a Fayum (burial) portrait of a man. Brown skin, black short hair, shadow beard and mustache. picture of first page of book chapter 16. Title:Race and the Athenian Metic. Author: Rebecca Futo Kennedy
August 6, 2025 at 11:45 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Almost finished with this baby. Only took me 4 years to write. All that is left is a final round of clean up edits, some additional notes, and then some backmatter and the image permissions (I will make my maps when I am back in the US). So happy to be publishing this with @yalepress.bsky.social.
On top and center is a printed out manuscript with the title "Ancient Identities" on the first line. Second line says "Race and Ethnciity in the Greco-Roman World" Lower on the bottom of the page it says <logo> followed by "New Have and London". Beneath the manuscript sits the top portion of a book contract with Yale University Press. Name of press and author "Rebecca Futo Kennedy" and date are visible. Address is blocked out.
July 18, 2025 at 9:54 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Proofs. Chapter 5 of the forthcoming Cultural History of Poverty, edited by Claire Taylor.
Chapter 5 Gender and poverty Rebecca Futo Kennedy The Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020 has led to an unprecedented rise in poverty among women and children worldwide, according to recent reports released by the United Nations. Across the world, millions of women have been forced out of the workforce and, because of the decline in available support for childcare, are unable to return. As short-term economic supports put in place to help alleviate increased unemployment are not renewed poverty among those who were already at, or below, economic and social sustenance levels has only become more dire.1 Such stories are not new but have been around for millennia. Women and children seem always to bear the brunt of economic and social distress during times of crisis because poverty has an inherently gendered impact, whether it is defined through economic access or through social networks. This chapter explores the way poverty in antiquity affected women. Even though we know from almost every measure in the modern world that women disproportionately feel the effects of poverty, it is rare to see women appear as a topic in scholarship on ancient poverty, or, really, in ancient economic histories generally. Typically, this is a result of assuming that the male experience is the default and that this is neutral and generalizable, but it is not. Women were subject to very different economic, social, and political restrictions than men, which means that we can never assume that a male viewpoint or position applies to women. We know our sources come from and reflect the experiences and prejudices of mostly wealthy men; we tend to (wrongly) assume their position as scholars of, rather than participants in, their own societies, which perpetuates the erasure of women, especially non-wealthy women, from our field of vision. To discuss poverty without explicitly addressing its effects on women is to not speak of “poverty” at all, but only of (mostly wealthy) men’s views and ex…
May 24, 2025 at 1:52 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Help support students w/o the means participate in excavations, summer programs abroad or summer language programs? Help us build our s holarship endowment! We currently have no departmental endowed funds, but our students need financial support that the uni & external scholarships can’t provide.
Red and white square image with photograph of students at the Lion Gate at Mycenae on the right. Text reads “Make a Difference! Donate to the Garrett A. Jacobsen Scholarship Fund Today! We are building an endowed fund to help support student summer study—excavations, language programs, Denison Summer Seminars, ASCSA, and more! Below is QR code with text “Donate Today!”
March 23, 2025 at 5:40 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
It's Proofs Day! My chapter on immigration law and the system for registering, monitoring, and policing free non-citizen residents in ancient Athens. Wrote it in 2020. Forthcoming in early 2025 in In V. Manolopoulou, J. Skinner, and C. Tsouparopoulou, eds. Identities in Antiquity. (Routledge).
16 RACE AND THE ATHENIAN METIC Rebecca Futo Kennedy Introduction Although many scholars have assumed that the Athenian metic emerged as a category in ancient Athens simultaneously with the democratic citizen of Kleisthenes’ reforms, more recent scholarship has argued, based on our extant evidence, that ‘metic’ as a legal category was created sometime between the 470s and 460 BCE. Metoikia, the legal system for metic registration, taxation, and enforcement, evolved over the course of the fifth century.1 What sort of thinking led to the construction of the ‘metic’? How did the idea of the metic develop and why does its development matter? In order to answer these questions, I propose we understand the metic in Athens as an explicitly racialized type of foreignness, rather than as a neutral legal category, ‘quasi-ethnic identity’, or ‘ideological foil’ for the citizen.2 Few scholars have attempted to understand the nature of metoikia itself or the realities of metic life that their racialization implied, preferring instead to view it as one type of ‘Other’ against which the citizen was constructed or contemplated. Our quest here is to engage the legal, social, and political category of the metic in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. I argue that it functions as a type of ‘race’ in antiquity and that the idea of a biologically coherent and ‘natural’ Athenian citizen emerges as a result of the creation of metoikia. Athens was not alone in developing a system of metoikia. We know of other places, especially Rhodes, with large metic populations. Understanding how the system worked in Athens, where we have the most extensive evidence and which had the largest such population in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, may help us understand how it operated in other cities as well, even if it is uncertain whether the evidence from Athens is representative of metic life in other locations and time periods.
December 8, 2024 at 2:18 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
First holiday achievement unlocked.
Christmas tree decorated with colored lights and ornaments lit up in darkened room.
December 6, 2024 at 6:45 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Our department ordered some replica Attic vases from an artist in Athens, Greece. We thought they were going to be small. Instead, they gave us life-sized replicas! This weekend will be shopping at the Container Store for storage totes and foam.
Three large boxes with "Fragile" taped across them sitting on anoffice couch. A replica of an Attic sympotic vase, a red-figure krater with four men on the main face, with two playing lyres. Across the top are shown two partially clad symposiasts, including one woman, playing kottabos. Tag of authenticity from Lioulias Museum Replicas. Text reads "This item is a museum replica handcrafted with care in Greece. Each piece reflects the beauty and craftsmanship of a rich cultural heritage. Thank you for supporting authentic Greek art."
December 4, 2024 at 8:36 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Hope everyone who celebrates had a tasty day and have settled into an appropriate food coma after enjoying their chosen company.
Green background, 2 pumkins and a turkey along the top. “Happy Thanksgiving” in the center. A man and a woman dressed in Roman garb on couches with a table with wine and food.
November 29, 2024 at 4:11 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
I’m happy, at least.
Title text: The perk of working as and academic Image: red color indicates happiness blue indicates work-like balance yellow equals respect pie chart contains only green, orange, and pink.
November 10, 2024 at 8:34 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
My step-son’s biggest challah yet. Don’t know how he does it.
Round braided challah with raisins on top of baking sheet on top of oven. Challah is almost as large as the stove. Stove is shown for scale. Round braided challah with raisins on top of baking sheet on top of oven—overhead view. Challah is almost as large as the baking sheet.
October 31, 2024 at 11:34 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
I gave a talk at Dartmouth yesterday and they made a massive poster for it. Good news is that the article it was based on will be out in March 2025. Bad needs is that it has been with the editors since September of 2020.
Me dresses in a gray tshirt and black cardigan in front of a 3ft by 2ft poster for the Zarbin lecture at Dartmouth.
October 18, 2024 at 11:18 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Today I flew on a very small plane. I survived.
People disembarking from an 8 seat propeller plane.
October 18, 2024 at 2:30 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Lol. This is the semester with my 2-course* teaching load. Wonder what my 1-course semester will look like in the spring...

Note that all of these involve regular meetings, either multiple times per week or weekly.

*I get a course release for being department chair.
A list of 9 different courses, many either senior research or small group/individual directed studies, including an advising circle and courses on history of Rome, Ancient Athenian law and democracy, ancient Greek, and our senior symposium.
September 24, 2024 at 1:35 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Anyway, sailing like this, where you are searching for sheltered anchoring or harbor each night while managing provisions in those night when you are next to a goat island devoid of people, for weeks in end is an experience that is really helping me put travel in antiquity into perspective better. /
Anchorage in a small bay on an island inhabited only by goats. visible is the sea at about 5 meters deep and beach below hills covered in shrubs. Goats on rocks just above the water.
June 8, 2024 at 11:03 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Sailing downwind, on the other hand, with those same gusts needs only a sail headsail. Of course, the closest to ancient sailing would probably be downwind in light winds in between the miltemi days using a spinnaker. A square spinnaker would be more accurate, but we have a triangle. /3
Spinnaker deployed on our sailboat. Blue and yellow design. Full wind.
June 8, 2024 at 10:56 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
I have not been posting my sailing the Greek Med updates here, so I thought I’d say a few things about it. First, if you want to understand the ancient Greek world better, living on a sailboat without a home port for 2 months might help. I’ve accessed multiple ancient sites from the sea… /1
The temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounio as visible from the sea. This image shows the temple while sailing west to east. The temple of Athens at ancient Karthaia on the island of Kea as visible from the sea. To the left of the image are the underwater remains of the ancient jetty for arrival by ship. Land access requires an hour hike from inland. Photo taken at sunset.
June 8, 2024 at 10:45 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Richard Seaford (2021) on the politics of Euripides' Bacchae and tragedy; on the desire to read tragedy through a "preconception of irresolvable contradiction." Seems to me to say a lot about the state of our politics generally these days.
"The choice of whether to regard tragic contradiction as resolved or irresolvable is unconsciously determined largely by preconception derived from life experience. Political engagement is often premised precisely on the possibility of resolving contradiction, and the political engagement of Hegel embraced awareness that such resolution may depend on overcoming the one-sidedness of opposed positions. But any political views held by Nietzsche derived from a position of politically unengaged individualism. Such unengagement may, unconsciously, preserve and justify itself by privileging the irresolvability of contradiction. Scholars in the humanities of our era are, at least in the Anglophone universities known to me, closer to Nietzsche than to Hegel both in their political unengagement and in their privileging of irresolvable contradiction." From Seaford, R., 2021. “The politics of Euripides' Bacchae and the preconception of irresolvable contradictionLinks to an external site.”
February 21, 2024 at 3:02 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Happy Pumpkin Pie Day to those who celebrate.
2 pumpkin pies on a cooling rack. bird’s eye view.
November 23, 2023 at 3:09 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Helping.
my cat Dash, a brown tiger, getting really close to the camera.
November 15, 2023 at 2:32 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Yeah, the Lonely Planet guide to Athens not starting off so well…
Text in image: “ Founded in 508 BCE, Athens is one of the oldest cities in the world and it's regularly touted as one of the Mediterranean’s best capital cities to visit. From the iconic Parthenon and the unique street art rivaling that of Berlin to the city's glittering coastline, there’s so much to see and do in this ancient capital.”
November 12, 2023 at 1:11 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Image of the NYT calling the vote for an issue 1 in Ohio. It passes. Solidly.
November 8, 2023 at 2:10 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
He is really encouraging going back to sleep.
Mire tabby cat sleeping in a ball.
September 22, 2023 at 11:20 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
Hard to get out of bed with this guy next to me.
Sleeping tabby cat curled in ball.
September 22, 2023 at 10:57 AM
kataplexis.bsky.social
The inaugural baked goods. Only one left 5 minutes after they came out of the oven.
September 17, 2023 at 2:55 PM
kataplexis.bsky.social
My new baby.
Matte black 7 quart kitchen aid pro. Both images. Just from different angles.
September 17, 2023 at 12:00 AM