Returning guest, Dr. David Schenker, a professor of classics at Mizzou, returns for a 6-year catch up! At the time of this recording, he had just taught his final formal class after 35 years at the University of Missouri. Luckily, he will continue working through delivering occasional lectures, committee work, and Greek reading. In today’s episode, he discusses shifting from “Classical Tradition” to “Classical Reception,” and updates us on his cross-listed course, “Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy in Africa and the African Diaspora.” The conversation also covers curriculum debates, Emily Wilson’s campus visit to Mizzou, reactions to Christopher Nolan’s new Odyssey trailer, AI in teaching, and department restructuring. Lastly, he provided insight into the “Schenkerthon” retirement event held in honour of his retirement and his hopes for his departmental legacy and other retirement plans.

Dr. Salima Ikram, a Distinguished Professor and the Amelia Peabody Chair in Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, joins Lexie to discuss her interests in preservation and mummification, revitalizing an Egyptian Museum animal mummy room, shifting her toward funerary and animal-mummy research while remaining “food obsessed,” and the practical logistics of temple offerings, disease and hygiene, beer and water, and teases a short introductory food book currently in progress.

Dr. Jenn Finn, an Associate Professor and Chair of the Classical Studies Department at Loyola University Chicago, joins Lexie to discuss how coursework in Achaemenid Persian art and a Pompeii dig led her to learn cuneiform and frame Alexander the Great in an ancient Near Eastern context, Alexander as a symbolic strategist, the barrier of source limits, and her experience consulting for the Netflix documentary Alexander: The Making of a God.