A look at history and popular culture
This week (and next) I want to build a bit off of our discussion of Victoria II and talk a bit about World War I and in particular the trench stalemate on the Western Front. That trench stalemate is, in many countries, synonymous with the war itself. Of course the war was much larger than … Continue reading Collections: No Man’s Land, Part I: The Trench Stalemate
Note from the Editor: This week, Michael Taylor joins us to present A Defense of Classics. The last decade or so has seen Classics (the study of Mediterranean antiquity or more narrowly the study of Greece and Rome) in a hard sort of quandary. On the one hand, the field faces pressure from the outside … Continue reading Meet a Historian: Michael Taylor on Why We Need Classics
This is the third and final part of a three part series (I, II) examining the historical assumptions of Paradox Interactive's 19th and early 20th century grand strategy game, Victoria II. Last time, we looked at how the game's models for the industrial revolution and warfare interacted: by simulating (even in a fairly limited and … Continue reading Collections: Teaching Paradox, Victoria II Part III: World’s Fair
Fireside this week! This week was the first full week of class, so the chaos that implies has delayed the last part of our look at Victoria II, hopefully just until next week. I also wanted to note that if you have sent me a guest-post pitch, I have not forgotten it but haven't had … Continue reading Fireside Friday: August 27, 2021
This is the second part of a three part series (I) examining the historical assumptions of Paradox Interactive's 19th and early 20th century grand strategy game, Victoria II. Last week, we looked at how Victoria II handles its central, defining theme, the industrial revolution, and the mechanics it employed. We also discussed how Victoria II … Continue reading Collections: Teaching Paradox, Victoria II, Part II: The Ruin of War
This is the first post in a three-part series that will be examining the historical assumption of Paradox Interactive's grand strategy computer game set in the 19th and early 20th century, Victoria II. Readers will find a number of references here to our previous discussion of one of Paradox's other games, Europa Universalis IV, but … Continue reading Collections: Teaching Paradox, Victoria II, Part I: Mechanics and Gears
Welcome! This is going to be the first of a new sort of post we'll do from time to time where I answer a number of shorter questions posed by my patrons over at Patreon who are at the Patres et Matres Conscripti tier, which entitles them to a seat in the ACOUP Senate (which … Continue reading Referenda ad Senatum: August 6, 2021: Feelings at the Fall of the Republic, Ancient and Medieval Living Standards, and Zombies!
This is the fifth and final part (I, II, III, IV) of our series asking the question 'Who were the Romans?' How did they understand themselves as a people and the idea of ‘Roman’ as an identity? Was this a homogeneous, ethnically defined group, as some versions of pop folk history would have it, or … Continue reading Collections: The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans, Part V: Saving And Losing an Empire
This is the fourth part (I, II, III, IV, V) of our series asking the question "Who were the Romans?" and contrasting the answer we get from the historical evidence with the pop-cultural image of the Romans as a culturally and ethnically homogeneous society typically represented with homogeneously white British actors speaking the 'Queen's Latin' … Continue reading Collections: The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part IV: The Color of Purple
This is the third part (I, II, III, IV, V) of a series asking the question "Who were the Romans?' How did they understand themselves as a people and the idea of 'Roman' as an identity? Was this a homogeneous, ethnically defined group, as some versions of pop folk history would have it, or was … Continue reading Collections: The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part III: Bigotry and Diversity at Rome