trading and commercial activity.
It was a question of frontier zones, rather than frontiers – governed partly by Rome, partly by a whole variety of non-Roman
powers. Hadrian’s Wall, whatever its function, was an exception.
President Bush and our other wall-crazy political leaders might learn from that.
Comments
Rome had all those soldiers up there in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do. Someone came up with the idea: Why not
build a wall? – just to keep them busy. After all, the Romans were always building something.
TONY FRANCIS
If the purpose of Hadrian’s Wall was at least as much symbolic as practical (and I think there’s a strong case for that),
then it is a precedent for Bush’s fence along the Mexican border, which is surely as much about being seen to be Doing Something
as actually having any practical effect.
TONY KEEN
I’d go for a phrase like ‘conspicuous demarcation’. Mary mentioned a lot of uses, and Tony adds the ‘devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands’
one, but of course the reason for all the soldiers being there in the first place is to demonstrate the presence of enormous
numbers of troops available just to garrison a god-forsaken corner of the world like this. Hinting at thousands more to be
mustered when needed.
XJY
Seminar power and willy-waving
5 June 2007
When I go to a lecture or seminar paper, I expect it to end on time. If it is billed for 30 minutes, and Professor X is still
talking at 45, I feel very itchy. Likewise if what Professor X says is plain wrong, then I expect to say so (politely enough)
in the discussion session that follows.
All this seems to me to be quite ‘natural’. But actually, I’ve learnt, these reactions are distinctively British. Although
at first glance academic seminars look much the same anywhere in the world (a group of people banging on about subjects that
would leave most of humanity quite cold), they are in fact governed by all kinds of culturally specific rules.
When I first went to such gatherings in Italy, for example, I couldn’t understand why the chair didn’t just shut a speaker
up when he (or occasionally she) was still in full flood 30 minutes after he should have stopped. And I couldn’t understand
why the rest of the audience tolerated rambling responses from the audience lasting almost as long as the paper, and often
on a quite different subject.
It took me years to see that in Italian terms this was the whole point of the occasion. For here academic power was calibrated
precisely according to how much of the audience’s time you could grab for yourself. If your junior colleague spoke for 8 minutes,
then you were losing out in status very publicly if you didn’t take at least 10 for yourself. And so on. Aggressive chairing
and timekeeping would not only be breaking the implicit rules of the seminar; it would be disrupting the very roots of the
academic power structure which the seminar supported.
In the UK (or at least in Cambridge, which may be a particularly extreme version of the British case), things are much briefer
and – to put it politely – more punchy. How often have I heard my colleagues coming out of a seminar, one saying to the other
‘I thought you made a good point’? What ‘good’ means in this context is ‘a comment that in two witty sentences completely
demolished the whole paper of the poor visiting speaker and showed how much cleverer you were than her’.
I confess that I am becoming increasingly ambivalent about this kind of display. On the one hand, I grew up with it and am
still half attached to its style. I remember as a young lecturer thrilling to the displays of wit and smartness which the
then Professor of Ancient History, Keith Hopkins, would put into his responses to dull papers given by speakers. ‘I have three
reactions to your talk and the first is boredom’ is a direct, memorable and (as I now think) memorably nasty quote.
It was a question of frontier zones, rather than frontiers – governed partly by Rome, partly by a whole variety of non-Roman
powers. Hadrian’s Wall, whatever its function, was an exception.
President Bush and our other wall-crazy political leaders might learn from that.
Comments
Rome had all those soldiers up there in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do. Someone came up with the idea: Why not
build a wall? – just to keep them busy. After all, the Romans were always building something.
TONY FRANCIS
If the purpose of Hadrian’s Wall was at least as much symbolic as practical (and I think there’s a strong case for that),
then it is a precedent for Bush’s fence along the Mexican border, which is surely as much about being seen to be Doing Something
as actually having any practical effect.
TONY KEEN
I’d go for a phrase like ‘conspicuous demarcation’. Mary mentioned a lot of uses, and Tony adds the ‘devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands’
one, but of course the reason for all the soldiers being there in the first place is to demonstrate the presence of enormous
numbers of troops available just to garrison a god-forsaken corner of the world like this. Hinting at thousands more to be
mustered when needed.
XJY
Seminar power and willy-waving
5 June 2007
When I go to a lecture or seminar paper, I expect it to end on time. If it is billed for 30 minutes, and Professor X is still
talking at 45, I feel very itchy. Likewise if what Professor X says is plain wrong, then I expect to say so (politely enough)
in the discussion session that follows.
All this seems to me to be quite ‘natural’. But actually, I’ve learnt, these reactions are distinctively British. Although
at first glance academic seminars look much the same anywhere in the world (a group of people banging on about subjects that
would leave most of humanity quite cold), they are in fact governed by all kinds of culturally specific rules.
When I first went to such gatherings in Italy, for example, I couldn’t understand why the chair didn’t just shut a speaker
up when he (or occasionally she) was still in full flood 30 minutes after he should have stopped. And I couldn’t understand
why the rest of the audience tolerated rambling responses from the audience lasting almost as long as the paper, and often
on a quite different subject.
It took me years to see that in Italian terms this was the whole point of the occasion. For here academic power was calibrated
precisely according to how much of the audience’s time you could grab for yourself. If your junior colleague spoke for 8 minutes,
then you were losing out in status very publicly if you didn’t take at least 10 for yourself. And so on. Aggressive chairing
and timekeeping would not only be breaking the implicit rules of the seminar; it would be disrupting the very roots of the
academic power structure which the seminar supported.
In the UK (or at least in Cambridge, which may be a particularly extreme version of the British case), things are much briefer
and – to put it politely – more punchy. How often have I heard my colleagues coming out of a seminar, one saying to the other
‘I thought you made a good point’? What ‘good’ means in this context is ‘a comment that in two witty sentences completely
demolished the whole paper of the poor visiting speaker and showed how much cleverer you were than her’.
I confess that I am becoming increasingly ambivalent about this kind of display. On the one hand, I grew up with it and am
still half attached to its style. I remember as a young lecturer thrilling to the displays of wit and smartness which the
then Professor of Ancient History, Keith Hopkins, would put into his responses to dull papers given by speakers. ‘I have three
reactions to your talk and the first is boredom’ is a direct, memorable and (as I now think) memorably nasty quote.
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