To Wake the Dead

Tag: Language

  • Tools of the Trade, 9: Meta-Tools: Networking in Undergrad (Without Faking It)

    One of the most frequent pieces of advice given to undergraduates is: “network.” But for students in the humanities—especially those who want to study ancient languages, inscriptions, or museum work—that advice often feels vague, awkward, or transactional. This is definitely a conceptual hurdle that I’ve had to overcome.

    This post is my attempt to reframe that word into something more grounded: building relationships, but not performatively. Rather, I strive to do so through shared questions, good conversations, and sustained curiosity. I’m not an expert on this at all, but I’ve built a small but meaningful network of scholars who know what I care about, who challenge and support me, and who have helped shape the work I do. This is how I’ve approached it, and what I’d tell someone starting out.

    Start Local, Then Reach Out

    The best place to start is with the people at your own institution. NYU, being so big, has been a wonderful place for this—with 60,000 students and some 6,000 instructors, it’s a goldmine for people who know what they’re talking about.

    But the following advice applies to any school. Go to office hours. Take professors’ classes—not just because the syllabus looks good, but because you’re genuinely interested in how they think. Even if the class isn’t squarely in your area, getting to know the professor might lead to mentorship, research opportunities, or simply perspective you didn’t know you needed. I talked about this in the last post, but it can’t be stressed enough.

    Before going to office hours, do your homework. I usually read at least two of a professor’s articles in advance—preferably recent, but not necessarily—and do a deep first pass early on, then a quick skim again right before the meeting to refresh my memory. I come with questions not just about the content, but about the field: how did this approach emerge? What debates is it part of? What’s happening at the edge of this subfield right now, and who’s leading it?

    If someone you’d like to connect with isn’t at your institution, email is a powerful tool—when used well. Keep it short, be deferential, have a clear purpose, and make it easy for them to see how they can help. Mention a mutual contact if you have one, such as if they were in the same PhD cohort as a professor at your school or have a student from your undergrad program in their graduate school. However, even a lighter connection—“I came across your work while reading X’s article on…”—can do a lot. You can also ask for an introduction from a professor, but I’ve even gently-warmed cold emails have worked just fine for me.

    Follow Up (without Hovering)

    It’s easy to get caught in the anxiety of “now what?” after a good meeting or email exchange. My best advice: space it out. A thank-you email goes a long way, especially if you reference something specific they shared. After that, I keep a simple handwritten list of who I’ve contacted, what we discussed, and whether they asked me to follow up.

    If you’re working on a long-term project—like my alphabet transmission project, APEX—then sending a short update every month or so when you hit a milestone is a great way to keep people in the loop without overwhelming them. Scholars are busy. Respect their time; this lets you build a slow, steady relationship.

    Bring Something to the Table

    This doesn’t mean showing off. It means coming into conversations with curiosity and initiative. If you’ve had an idea while reading someone’s work—an application, a parallel, a method they might not have used—bring it up gently and frame it as a question. “Have you ever tried applying X to your corpus?” can be a meaningful way to signal that you’re not just a reader, but a thinker too.

    One of the best questions I’ve learned to ask: “Are there any scholars or articles you’d recommend I look at to get a better sense of the field?” When you’re in multiple disciplines, the literature is bottomless. A suggestion from someone experienced can save you weeks of guesswork—and deepen the conversation at the same time.

    Use Clubs and Events to Build Connections

    One of the unexpected benefits of running the League of Linguistics is that it’s allowed me to reach out to scholars in a semi-official capacity. If you’re organizing an event, moderating a panel, or just planning a syllabus, you have an excuse to email someone you admire—not for yourself, but on behalf of a community. Sometimes they’ll help. Sometimes they’ll become contacts down the line.

    Just make sure you’re doing this in good faith. The event should serve your members first. But if it opens up a conversation with someone you’d like to work with, that’s a bonus worth nurturing.

    Know What You’re Asking For

    Always have a purpose when reaching out. Want to talk about their recent article? Ask for feedback on a related idea? Get advice about graduate programs? Whatever it is, make it clear in the first few lines. Don’t make them guess what you want. And don’t send them a novella. Long emails are a fast way to get ignored—not because professors are rude, but because they’re busy, and clarity is a form of respect.

    At the same time, everyone’s different. Some scholars love a detailed intro. Others would rather get three lines asking for a Zoom call and figure out the rest in conversation. When in doubt, start concise—and adjust based on the cues they give you.

    Etiquette

    Until you’re told otherwise, when you’re in undergrad, always address someone as Professor Lastname. If they sign off with initials, play it safe. Only switch to a first name if they clearly invite it—either in their signature, or later in the conversation. Respect for titles isn’t just about hierarchy—it’s about showing that you’ve taken care in reaching out.

    And if they don’t respond? It’s okay. Let it go. Especially if they’re at another institution, or heading multiple research projects, or simply overwhelmed, it’s not about you. If the connection’s meant to grow, you’ll have other chances. If not, trust that others will say yes. I’ve found academics on the whole to be extremely generous with their time, resources, and knowledge. You’ll find your people.

    Final Thoughts

    The best conversations I’ve had didn’t come from trying to impress someone; they came from being honest about what I care about, what I don’t know, and what I’m trying to figure out. Humility, curiosity, and gratitude are perhaps the most winning combination—especially when you’re early in your career. You don’t need to have all the answers, you just need to be a person worth talking to again.

    And one last thing: projects help. If you’re working on something—an independent research blog, a digital tool, a language revitalization game—it gives you a way to reach out that feels natural, not forced. “I’m building something, and I thought of you” is often a more compelling opener than a plain “Can we talk?”

    If you’re trying to build up these kinds of contacts, I hope this helps. If you’ve already started, I’d love to hear what’s worked for you. And if you’re not sure where to begin—reach out. I’m still learning too.

  • Tools of the Trade, 8: Meta-Tools: Courses for Aspiring Philologists and Archaeo-Linguist Hybrids

    I frequently get asked what classes to take if you want to work with ancient languages, inscriptions, museums, or language technology. This post is a reflection—not a blueprint—on how I’ve built a courseload that supports interdisciplinary work in epigraphy, historical linguistics, and digital tools, and what I’d recommend to others just starting out.

    Start with the Languages (But Be Strategic)

    If you’re reading this, chances are you already love ancient languages. So yes—take Latin. Take Greek. But if you have more than one on your list, resist the urge to take them all at once. Instead, start with one—preferably the one with the strongest institutional support—and stagger the rest. I did Latin in high school, Greek in my first year of college, and Akkadian in my second. That pacing gave me room to go deep into each one without burning out. Now, with that foundation, I’m able to handle several languages at the advanced level without losing clarity or joy.

    If it interests you, try to take—or propose an independent study in—a language that uses a non-alphabetic script early on. Whether it’s cuneiform, hieroglyphs, or Linear B, working with a writing system that doesn’t map neatly onto speech will sharpen your sense of what writing is, how it encodes meaning, and how it changes across time. It will also raise questions—paleographic, technological, cognitive—that you may find yourself returning to long after the class ends.

    Take Linguistics Early (You’ll Use It Constantly)

    I’m biased—I’m a linguist—but even if you don’t plan to major in it, an intro to linguistics course will radically shift how you read ancient languages. You’ll start spotting things like vowel gradation, phonological assimilation, and case alignment everywhere. Once you’ve got the basics, courses like historical linguistics, syntax, or phonology can help you engage more confidently with scholarship and identify patterns in inscriptions, dialect variation, or reconstructed forms. Even if you don’t go further in formal coursework, just knowing the lingo goes a long way—and will keep paying off, quietly and consistently, across everything else you study.

    Follow the Inscriptions and Those Who Teach Them

    If you want to work with writing systems or epigraphy, find the people who do that at your institution. In this field, people often matter more than courses. Research your professors. Read what they’ve written. Faculty bios will give you a general idea of their focus, but their CVs are often more revealing—long, yes (I’ve seen them run 50 pages), but worth scanning for article titles and projects that align with your own interests.

    Getting close to those key people might mean enrolling in something tangential—say, an intro to Greek art—just to build a relationship. Or asking if you can do an independent study reading inscriptions in translation. Some of my best classes weren’t labeled “epigraphy” at all—they were seminars where I was encouraged to bring paleographic questions into the final project. In one case, that was Data Science for Archaeology with Prof. Justin Pargeter, a course that shaped my thinking far beyond its original scope.

    Think Across Disciplines, but Choose a Home

    You’ll need a home base—a department that knows you, supports your work, and can write you letters. Having an intellectual anchor like that is not only strategic, it’s also deeply grounding. That said, your course list doesn’t have to stay confined to one department—and honestly, it probably shouldn’t. Academia is moving ever more toward interdisciplinary inquiry, and the best course of study often cuts across traditional boundaries.

    Some of my most formative classes have been outside my major—art history, computer science, even religious studies (Akkadian lives in Judaic Studies at NYU). Let your questions guide you. If you’re wondering why Phoenician letters look the way they do, or what it means to “revive” a dead language, go find the classes that give you tools to explore those questions, wherever they live.

    Just make sure you’re also building depth somewhere. Breadth can open doors—but it’s depth that gets you through them. Grad schools, mentors, and collaborators alike are looking for people who know how to ask big questions, but also how to sit with them for a long time.

    Study Abroad, If You Can

    There’s no substitute for learning ancient languages in place—or at least near the landscapes, museums, and excavation contexts where they come alive. Study abroad isn’t just about location; it’s about intensity, continuity, and community. My time in Greece, especially on digs and museum visits, made Greek less abstract and more human. It exposed me to a range of paths in classics and gave me access to resources—like fragmentary inscriptions in drawers—and rhythms, like reading in the field, that continue to shape how I think about epigraphy and transmission.

    If you’re aiming for grad school or museum work, study-abroad experience shows initiative. It signals that you’ve navigated other academic systems, worked across language barriers, and engaged directly with material culture. If your program includes language immersion—even better. Even if the modern language isn’t your focus, it sharpens your ear and re-situates ancient texts as living inheritances.

    If funding is a concern, don’t write it off. Many programs offer scholarships, and departments often quietly support students who ask early. At big schools like NYU, the key is often finding the right person—the one who knows how to unlock the support already available.

    Don’t Be Afraid of Skill-Based Classes

    If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to stay in the comfort zone of ancient texts and theoretical conversations. But some of the most valuable courses I’ve taken have been hands-on: digital humanities, data science, archaeological methods, computer science. These classes taught me how to manage a dataset, build a research tool, and think across evidence types. They’ve led directly to portfolio projects, study opportunities, and unexpected collaborations—and they’ve made my work in the ancient world more dynamic and durable.

    Leave Room to Be Surprised

    Some of my most formative classes were ones I hadn’t planned to take: a seminar on the topography and monuments of Athens (Prof. Robert Pitt), a deceptively simple primer in Greek archaeology that opened into real depth (Prof. Hüseyin Öztürk), and a course on the structure of the Russian language (Prof. Stephanie Harves). These were spaces where I tested my assumptions and rewired my thinking. Try to leave room in your schedule each year for one course that isn’t strictly “on track,” but that speaks to something curious or unsettled in you. That’s often where real questions begin.

    Last Word: Plan Backwards

    If you’re thinking about grad school or a research career, try working backwards. Look at the programs you might apply to—what do they expect? What languages, methods, or subfields appear in course requirements or faculty research? Then take classes that prepare you for those conversations. The goal isn’t to become someone else’s version of a scholar—it’s to become the version of yourself who belongs in the rooms you want to be in.

    Closing

    When in doubt, ask people. Older students, professors, internet strangers who study Linear B. This path isn’t something I mapped out alone—almost every turning point in my academic life has come from a conversation, an offhand recommendation, or a generous reply to a cold email. I’ve built my way forward through the advice of others, and I’m always happy to pay it forward.

    In a follow-up post, I’ll share how to structure independent study: designing personal projects, sustaining long-term reading, and building a research portfolio beyond the classroom. Done well, this kind of work lets you follow your own questions, test your interests, and create something distinctly your own. It’s also one of the clearest ways to show grad schools and mentors that you know how to learn without a syllabus.

    Stay tuned. And as always, if you’re not sure where to start, I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about.

  • Tools of the Trade, 5: Toolkit: Mycenaean Greek

    Some of my physical collection.

    Mycenaean Greek is the earliest recorded form of the Greek language, written in the Linear B syllabary and preserved primarily in administrative documents from palatial centers like Knossos and Pylos. This toolkit collects the core resources I use for studying the language, writing system, and historical context of Mycenaean. While it’s not a language most people “read” in the same way as Homeric or Classical Greek, it’s foundational for understanding the development of the Greek language and the Aegean Bronze Age.

    To Get Started

    Hooker – Linear B: An Introduction
    A concise and accessible introduction to the Linear B writing system, Mycenaean phonology, and key vocabulary. Useful for getting oriented before diving into transcriptions or corpora.
    Read online

    Chadwick – The Decipherment of Linear B
    An essential historical account of how Linear B was deciphered, written by one of its key figures. While dated in some linguistic details, it’s an engaging entry point into the script and its rediscovery.
    Read online

    Digital Tools

    Palaeolexicon: Mycenaean Greek Word List
    A searchable online lexicon of Mycenaean Greek, based on attested forms and reconstructions. Includes syllabic spellings and interpretations. Useful for quick lookups when reading inscriptions.
    Access online

    LiBER (Linear B Electronic Resources)
    An extensive online resource that includes a searchable corpus, transcriptions, sign lists, and links to digitized tablets. Maintained by the University of Cambridge.
    Access online

    Advanced Topics

    Ventris & Chadwick – Documents in Mycenaean Greek
    The foundational reference edition of Linear B tablets, with transcriptions, translations, and commentary. Volume I covers the grammar and lexicon; Volume II includes full texts.
    Read online

    Duhoux & Morpurgo Davies (eds.) – A Companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Greek Texts and Their World
    A more recent scholarly collection covering writing practices, administrative function, linguistics, and interpretive issues. Indispensable for research-level study.
    Read online [Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3]

    Aura Jorro – Diccionario Micénico
    A comprehensive lexicon of Mycenaean Greek, keyed to Linear B spellings. In Spanish but used internationally by specialists.
    Read online [Volume 1, Volume 2]

    Conclusion

    Mycenaean Greek is not a reading language in the traditional sense, but it offers unparalleled access to the earliest phase of Greek—its phonology, morphology, and vocabulary in situ. For linguists, epigraphers, and anyone curious about the Bronze Age Aegean, these tools provide a clear entry into the world of palace records and early writing.

    This list includes the materials I’ve found most dependable in my own work. If you’ve found other resources—especially for working with the tablets themselves—I’d love to hear what’s missing.

    View other toolkits.

  • Tools of the Trade, 4: Toolkit: Homeric Greek

    Some of my collection.

    This post collects the top resources I rely on when reading Homeric Greek, especially the Iliad and Odyssey. While much of the grammar overlaps with Classical Greek, Homeric Greek has distinct forms, vocabulary, and meter that call for specialized tools. The following resources—ranging from primers to advanced philological references—are what I return to again and again when working with epic.

    To Get Started

    Pharr – Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners
    An older but remarkably focused introduction built around Iliad 1. Includes grammar notes specific to Homeric forms, extensive vocabulary, and progressively annotated readings.
    Read online

    Benner – Selections from Homer’s Iliad
    An excellent annotated reader of Iliad Books I–VI, with extensive grammatical commentary keyed to each line. Ideal for intermediate readers.
    Read online

    Cunliffe – A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect
    Still the standard Homeric dictionary. Organized by root and form, with citations from epic texts and brief semantic notes.
    Read online

    Digital Tools

    Logeion
    Cunliffe’s Homeric Lexicon is fully searchable on Logeion alongside LSJ. You can easily compare definitions across lexica and check frequency data within the epics.
    Access online

    Perseus Word Study Tool
    Input any inflected form and receive morphological analysis with links to lexicon entries and usage examples across a wide corpus of Greek texts.
    Access online

    Top 500 Homeric Words Deck
    Compiled by Chicago, these are the most common vocabulary items in Homer’s epics, and knowing them makes for an efficient path to smooth reading.
    Access online

    Greek Particles Deck
    Compiled by a Quizlet user, this deck contains over 80 of the most common and important Greek particles to know.
    Access online

    Perseus Digital Library
    Includes the full texts of the Iliad and Odyssey with parsing tools, English translations, and links to grammatical and lexical resources.
    Access online

    Chicago Homer
    Tailored specifically for Homeric epic. Offers side-by-side Greek and English translations, word-by-word morphological data, and metrical annotation.
    Access online

    Advanced Topics

    Monro – A Grammar of the Homeric Dialect
    A classic reference that systematically treats the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Homeric Greek. A bit dense, but indispensable for serious linguistic inquiry.
    Read online

    Buck – The Greek Dialects: Grammar and Selected Readings
    A valuable reference for understanding the dialectal features present in Homeric Greek, which blends primarily Ionic forms with traces of Aeolic. While not focused solely on Homer, this book helps clarify unusual forms and offers broader context for the epic language tradition.
    Read online

    William S. Annis – An Introduction to Greek Meter
    Offers a clear and concise explanation of dactylic hexameter with scansion exercises and helpful mnemonics.
    Read online

    Hexameter.co
    An interactive site that gamifies learning dactylic hexameter. Offers scansion tools for Homer (and 3 Latin authors too). Helpful for developing aural sensitivity and fluency in poetic rhythm.
    Access online

    Conclusion

    This toolkit focuses on materials that prioritize Homeric Greek as a distinct linguistic system—neither a dialect nor a transitional phase, but a carefully stylized literary register. Whether you’re reading your first lines of the Iliad or preparing to write on Homeric formulae or meter, these tools offer a dependable path forward.

    This list isn’t exhaustive, but it covers the resources I’ve found most useful in my own studies. Are there others you swear by for Homeric Greek? I’d love to hear what’s missing.

    View other toolkits.

  • Tools of the Trade, 3: Toolkit: Classical Greek

    A small portion of my collection.

    This post collects the top resources I rely on in my own study of Classical Greek. For each category—grammar, vocabulary, reading tools, and advanced study—I’ve selected the best materials available, with a focus on clarity, depth, and long-term usefulness. Whether you’re just beginning or looking to sharpen your command of dialects, meter, or style, this toolkit offers a reliable foundation. These are the books and tools I return to again and again when reading Classical Greek, especially texts in the Attic-Ionic dialect continuum.

    To Get Started

    Hansen & Quinn – Greek: An Intensive Course
    A demanding but highly structured introduction to Classical Greek, often used in college-level intensive courses. Includes graded readings, grammar explanations, and exercises.
    Read online
    H&Q Vocabulary Decks: Quizlet class

    Smyth – Greek Grammar
    A comprehensive and authoritative reference grammar, covering all aspects of Classical Greek morphology and syntax. Best used alongside reading or for targeted review.
    Read online

    Digital Tools

    Logeion
    A lexical lookup tool developed by the University of Chicago. It aggregates major dictionaries, including Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ), “Middle Liddell,” and Autenrieth. Entries include frequency data, sample passages, morphological breakdowns, and cross-references.
    Access online

    Perseus Word Study Tool
    Input any inflected form and receive morphological analysis with links to lexicon entries and usage examples across a wide corpus of Greek texts.
    Access online

    Greek Particles Deck
    Compiled by a Quizlet user, this deck contains over 80 of the most common and important Greek particles to know.
    Access online

    Perseus Digital Library
    A major online collection of Greek texts, including works by Homer, Herodotus, Plato, and others. Offers on-hover parsing, English translations, and links to dictionaries and grammar tools.
    Access online

    Advanced Topics

    W. Sidney Allen – Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Classical Greek
    A foundational work on ancient Greek phonology and historical pronunciation. Includes reconstructions of Attic phonetics and prosody, with attention to evidence from meter, spelling, and comparative linguistics.
    Read online

    Buck – The Greek Dialects: Grammar and Selected Readings
    A readable introduction to the major dialect groups of Ancient Greek, with grammatical summaries and annotated sample texts. Useful for epigraphy, lyric poetry, and comparative philology.
    Read online

    William S. Annis – An Introduction to Greek Meter
    A concise and accessible guide to reading Greek poetry metrically. Covers major meters with clear examples and scanning advice.
    Read online

    Denniston – The Greek Particles
    An advanced and nuanced treatment of Greek particles. Indispensable for close reading and stylistic analysis, especially in prose authors like Thucydides and Plato.
    Read online

    Conclusion

    This list isn’t exhaustive, but it covers the materials I’ve found most reliable and rewarding. Are there tools or texts you swear by that aren’t here? I’d love to hear what you think is missing.

    View other toolkits.

  • Tools of the Trade, 2: Epigraphy: Perseus and Logeion

    Perseus’s result for ἱκνέομαι: a quick parser, giving form and summary of corpus occurrences.
    Partial Logeion result for the same word: collates detailed results from nine separate dictionaries with a 10th tab for corpus occurrences.

    For anyone studying Latin or Ancient Greek—whether casually, academically, or obsessively—two digital tools stand out as indispensable: Perseus and Logeion. I use both almost every day. While they serve overlapping purposes, each has its own strengths, and learning to navigate between them has made my reading smoother, faster, and more precise.

    Perseus, formally known as the Perseus Digital Library, is one of the earliest and most ambitious digital humanities projects in the field of Classics. It provides access to a massive collection of Greek and Latin texts with built-in parsing tools, dictionary links, and (often outdated but still helpful) English translations. Its strength lies in contextual reading—hovering over any word in a text will generate a parsing suggestion and a link to its dictionary entry, which makes it incredibly useful when working through a new author or a grammatically complex passage. The Word Study Tool allows you to input any inflected form and get a list of possible morphological analyses and dictionary headwords, with links to example passages. However, it’s important to note that these parsings are generated by algorithms and are not always reliable, especially for ambiguous forms. The interface can also feel a bit dated, and not all texts are equally well formatted, but for quick reading and parsing, Perseus is great.

    By contrast, Logeion is a sleek and powerful lexicon aggregator developed by the University of Chicago. Unlike Perseus, it doesn’t offer complete texts, but it excels at lexical depth. When you enter a word—either in Latin or Greek—Logeion pulls results from multiple dictionaries at once, including LSJ, Middle Liddell, Autenrieth, Lewis & Short, Elementary Lewis, Frieze-Dennison, and others. You also get frequency data, example passages, and, in some cases, idiomatic usages or English-to-Greek reverse entries. Logeion doesn’t parse for you, so you need to know or guess the dictionary form of the word. But once you do, the definitions it offers are more precise and informative than any single dictionary alone. I often use it to compare lexical nuance across genres or authors, and it’s especially helpful when I want to confirm the meaning of a word I already sort of “know.”

    The way I use these two tools in tandem is pretty straightforward. When I’m reading through a text, especially something new or poetic, I usually begin in Perseus. I use the on-hover parsing and the Word Study Tool to get oriented, especially with verbs and particles. Once I have the base form, I switch over to Logeion to dig deeper into meaning, idiom, or usage across contexts. Logeion becomes especially helpful when I’m writing, translating, or thinking more syntactically. In many ways, Perseus is like a field guide with helpful margin notes, while Logeion is the serious reference work you turn to when you want to be exact.

    If you’re just starting out, don’t feel pressured to master everything at once. But learning to toggle between Perseus and Logeion will give you a huge advantage—especially if you’re not always reading with a print dictionary on hand or don’t have institutional resources. I’ve used these tools for years—they’ve remained central across every stage of my study. They’re fast, free, and surprisingly deep once you know where to look.

    If you’ve found tricks for using them more efficiently, or if you have a favorite feature I didn’t mention, let me know what’s missing.

  • Linguistics for All, 3: How to Run a Linguistics (or Any Academic) Club

    NYU League of Linguistics logo

    This is a longer post, as I’m documenting my journey in running the NYU League of Linguistics. Herein I give some pretty extensive advice on how to do outreach and build an extracurricular community. When I first joined the club’s leadership team, it had gone quiet. There were myriad challenges involved that required tenacity, creativity, and a willingness to ask for help, and I want to pass on what I’ve learned. This post is aimed at undergrads who find themselves responsible for an academic club and want to deepen its impact.

    It was not a fresh start for us—it was a resurrection. The club had existed for at least 15 years, but by the time I got involved, it had gone relatively quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we were placed on probation for failing to meet the university’s minimum event requirement: three per semester. The bones were there—name, charter, social accounts—but the pulse was faint.

    What I wanted, at first, was simply a place to talk about language in the company of others who cared. So I asked around: friends in psych, econ, classics, CS. People said yes. So: we made flyers. Secured pizza. Helped to coordinate room logistics, the A/V, a slide deck. We opened with something light and collaborative, and the enthusiasm was immediate.

    This year’s schedule is the fullest in the club’s memory, and what’s emerged is more than a club. It’s a project in public linguistics: a way of gathering, questioning, and bringing language to the fore.

    A Year in Events

    Our calendar this year reflects the range we’re trying to cultivate. We’ve hosted discussion groups, lectures, mixers, and games—all with an eye toward accessibility and intellectual curiosity.

    Some of our events have been exploratory and collaborative, like our endangered language discussion series, which combined typology with revitalization ethics. I shaped the curriculum with input from several external linguists, including one whose fieldwork perspective framed the questions we asked. We’re still refining the discussion group format, but we’ve gotten strong feedback from attendees and are working to ensure each one invites curiosity and makes participants feel like they have something to contribute. We’re also developing a language revitalization simulation game, where players role-play as linguists trying to support an endangered language community—combining strategy, theory, and storytelling. We plan to launch that either this month or early next semester.

    Other events were more formal, like our public lecture with forensic linguist Robert Leonard, and our guest lecture + Q&A with Adam Aleksic (aka @EtymologyNerd) back in March. That last one was quite the logistical feat: over 300 people showed up, 130 of them from outside NYU. We got so much interest within 4 hours of announcing the event that we were forced to pivot fast—changing venues, coordinating multiple livestreams, and ensuring a high-quality recording. It worked. The room was packed, and people stuck around to talk with Adam and amongst themselves for more than an hour after the event ended.

    We’ve also leaned into social and community-building events—social hours, study sessions, and, upcoming on April 22nd, an IPA spelling bee. These are playful, but not throwaway: they keep people coming back.

    Across all of these, we’ve maintained steady turnout (10–20 people per event, usually), and have been lucky to host guest speakers who’ve generously agreed to visit—many over Zoom, some in person—just because we asked. Cold emails, it turns out, go a long way. Many have responded with striking generosity and curiosity.

    The Work Behind the Scenes

    Running a linguistics club isn’t just event planning. The role’s orchestration demands have taught me as much as the events themselves. It’s been a lot, but more than worth it to see the community grow.

    We’ve gathered feedback both informally and through structured surveys to shape our events around what people actually want: depth without gatekeeping, playfulness with genuine exploration. The results have been overwhelmingly positive. People have told us they’re enjoying the comeback we’re making. What was recently a dormant club is now, again, a hub.

    I don’t know exactly what the League will look like in five years. But I do know this: the appetite is there. For conversation, for community, for the kind of language work that feels alive.

    And if you’re thinking about starting—or reviving—an academic group at your own university, here’s what I’d offer: start small, but pitch a big tent.
    • Mix types of events throughout the term to maintain balance. Social events are more important than some club heads think. Don’t underestimate how much people crave intellectual community, especially at big schools and city campuses.

    Theo Avedisian hosting NYU League of Linguistics trivia night, September 2024.

    • Make your extracurricular extracurricular—broach topics that undergrads (and linguists generally) don’t get much exposure to in the ordinary course of their studies. This tends to attract more interest than, say, a rehash of the first lecture of Linguistics 101.
    • You can pick niche topics—but frame them with an inviting, curiosity-first question. For example, instead of “Historical Phonology in Armenian,” try “Why Do Some Languages Keep Letters No One Pronounces?”
    • Talk to clubs at other schools to get ideas and learn best practices, especially if they have similar contexts—e.g., same school size, size of program, campus type, region. We’ve gotten great ideas from looking at other clubs’ Instagrams and consulting their presidents, such as Adam Aleksic, a.k.a. etymologynerd. An amazing centralized resource is a list of clubs and their Instagrams by Josue Estrada-Cordoba. You can find that here.
    • Learn names and get contact info. This really helps people feel known and welcomed.
    • Be generous with food—undergrads love a pizza night, and seem unable to resist snacks.
    • Document reflections after every event. I use a spreadsheet, you can also use a text document—whatever you prefer. Record expenditure, turnout (projected and actual), and all feedback, positive and negative alike. I also recommend writing down what went unexpectedly well or what fell flat—things you’ll forget six months later but which are so helpful when planning the next iteration.

    My spreadsheet for the Spring 2025 semester documenting the status of various tasks and the outcome of events, as well as notes on what worked and what didn’t.

    • Another use for spreadsheets in running a club: track your tasks by event and keep your team in the loop. My template is available here—feel free to copy it and adapt to your events. I also recommend adding a column for who’s responsible, if you have formal delegation of tasks.

    Sample event workflow for our Arrival movie night, where linguist and consultant Jessica Coon Zoomed in to speak with us.

    • Part of the importance of documentation: the more you can demonstrate to your college’s club life board that you’re making an impact on campus, the more likely they are to increase your budget when you apply for the next year.
    • Learn your school’s bureaucracy. How do you book rooms, and which are you permitted to use? Who are your points of contact in the administration? What’s your budget? What are you allowed to expense? How often do you have to meet? How does the audio/visual tech work? Can non-affiliates attend, and what’s the process for them accessing your facilities?
    • A well-timed cold email holds great power. Aim for the least busy points in a term if you’re reaching out to an academic. This tends to be the first month, and then a few weeks before finals, once midterms are graded and final projects are in the works but not yet submitted. Consult their school’s academic calendar to find out when these points fall.
    • Similarly, time events with your own school’s pace, avoiding when turnout is likely to be lowest (midterms, finals, before spring break). The major exception would be hosting a catered study session ahead of an exam period.
    • Be sure to advertise: post on Instagram (and promote the account among your members to keep them in the loop), put up conspicuous flyers, and text your friends about upcoming events. You can also ask the department head to circulate events via their email list, and ask professors to tell their classes about upcoming events if it connects to the course they’re teaching.

    NYU’s resources helped us with a coherent visual identity.

    • For design, two tips: 1) Canva Pro ($15/month) has been a godsend for quickly making attractive and attention-getting promotional materials. If it’s in the budget, it’s worth it. 2) Your university may have a design package with a precise guide to logos, colors, proportions, and fonts. Here’s NYU’s. Brown University’s is here, as another example. As the one handling event promotion, I’ve found it invaluable, as it gives something to start from rather than requiring I do everything from scratch.
    • Consider making a website like we did, as it’s a great place to centralize your resources, calendar, and follow-up content such as reflections and recordings. However, always ask if all participants are comfortable with both the recording and the posting—transparency is essential. If possible, make events accessible afterward—through recordings, transcripts, or even just slide decks. It lets people engage on their own time, which really matters at large or commuter-heavy schools, or when you have significant alum or non-affiliate interest. I’d recommend WordPress for a clean and accessible template; we upgraded to the personal plan ($36/year, plus a free domain name for the first year) to unlock features such as advanced analytics.

    Our homepage.
    The analytics for our website.
    A sample of a resource-heavy discussion group.
    Our folder with pre-event resources.

    There are also some things we’re considering:
    • Making a central onboarding document to build a sort of institutional memory. This would help future board members understand the workings of the club and broader university. I had a protracted learning curve because I didn’t know the answers to the types of questions I listed above in the advice section. I hope to avoid that for next year’s board members, as half of our leadership is graduating.
    • Structuring roles clearly. This should prevent anyone from taking on too much responsibility and burning out. It also helps with the awkwardness of more junior members having to delegate tasks to other board members. Defined roles also help newer members know where they can plug in and feel like their contributions matter.
    • Having a cleaner system for tracking our budget. We currently don’t have a spreadsheet or any centralized document. Also, this will help with onboarding the event coordinator and treasurer the following year, as they’ll have a sense of what an event costs to put on, and can budget accordingly.

    But the most important thing, I think, is to keep asking broad questions that people can relate to—help them connect language to life. Language belongs to everyone, after all, so this is eminently possible. As such, our second discussion group asked: What makes a language worth saving? What languages has your family lost, and why?—questions that sparked conversation across majors, backgrounds, and personal stakes. Many, for example, had grandparents who refused to teach their children their native languages, so no one in the room spoke their ancestral tongue, and many felt a sense of loss for it. Building personal connection to language is a great avenue for exploration, reflection, and discovery. Best of all, everyone is capable of it, no matter who they are or where they come from.

    And from there, if the ground is good, your community grows.

  • Adventures in Materiality, 2: Carving the Flood: An Amateur Attempt

    Image of the Flood Tablet as stored in the British Museum: accession number K.3375.
    Lineart of the Flood Tablet as documented in the CDLI: accession number P273210..

    0. Prologue: Why Copy the Flood Tablet?

    Replication has become one of my favorite hobbies. I love artifacts, but as any archaeologist or collector will tell you, the barriers to actually owning them are steep—financial, legal, and ethical. How do you store them? protect them? justify having them at all? But when you make something yourself—when you replicate an ancient object by hand—you bypass all that. You get the closeness—a heightened closeness, I’d say—without the risk.

    That’s what drew me to recreate the Flood Tablet. Buying a cast would’ve set me back about a hundred dollars. But I wanted to see what I’d learn if I made one myself. Not just held it, but shaped it. Because creating a replica doesn’t just mimic an object—it stages a kind of encounter. You begin with a clean surface, unlike the fragmentary originals, or those replicas that emerge fully formed, and fully unformed, from the get. But when you make it yourself: every crack, every slip, every flaw is something you have to introduce yourself. You get to know the object from the inside out—not just what it looks like, but how it resists you.

    I picked this Flood Tablet precisely because it’s ambitious. It’s one of the most iconic inscriptions in the ancient world—a kind of cultural Rosetta Stone, linking Mesopotamian, biblical, and classical traditions. In fact, upon its discovery in the nineteenth century, its similarity to the later Abrahamic tradition sent shockwaves through the scholarly community—truly, its impact cannot be understated.

    What’s also beautiful and moving about it is its subject: survival, memory, and catastrophic loss. And it’s been copied, again and again, across centuries. To replicate it now is to take part in that long chain of transmission. It’s not just a story of a flood. It’s a story about what writing saves.

    1. The Original: Tablet XI and Its Aura

    A tablet subsequently discovered, containing the same story, approx. a millennium older than this tablet. Now in the Morgan Library: accession number 225906.

    Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh is arguably the most famous cuneiform text in the world. It tells the story of a great flood, a chosen survivor, a divine warning, and a boat filled with life—centuries before the Book of Genesis recorded a similar arc. In the narrative, Utnapishtim recounts to Gilgamesh how he escaped destruction, was granted immortality, and ultimately became the bearer of a knowledge that even kings could not command. It is one of the clearest points of contact between Mesopotamian myth and later Near Eastern and Mediterranean traditions. Read a translation here.

    Found in Nineveh (in the north of modern Iraq, on the Tigris River) on May 7, 1873 by archaeologist George Smith, the tablet is a large, convex slab of clay, its surface densely packed with tight, disciplined cuneiform lines. The edges are broken, some signs lost.

    But it’s not a draft or a throwaway. It was meant to endure. To try to recreate it is, in a small way, to step into that intention. The curvature, the spacing, the subtle tilt of each wedge: all these formal features speak not just to aesthetics, but to the technical mastery of the scribes who made them. This isn’t just a myth we inherited. It’s a craftwork that once held it.

    2. The Process

    I started with two pounds of grey air-dry clay and rolled it out to a thickness of about ¾ of an inch. I wanted enough depth to accommodate firm impressions without risking breakage—a balance between durability and responsiveness.

    Once I had a smooth surface, I printed a to-scale lineart of one side of the original tablet and laid it directly over the clay. Using a potter’s knife, I cut around the outline to form a proper slab.

    I then scored the signature cleft line that bisects the original tablet. That line helped me rule the text. After that, to mark where each line of writing would begin and end, I took a needle and, with the paper still on top, pricked small bounding dots at the start and stop of every line. This gave me a grid of sorts—not formal ruling, but a subtle framework for spacing. I used actual cuneiform signs from the standard text, fitting in as much as I could per line (which, as I’ll tell you shortly, turned out to be not very much at all).

    For the inscription itself, I used a homemade stylus made from a square wooden dowel. I had sanded down one corner to create a slightly beveled edge that let me grip it more naturally—pinching it between thumb and middle finger, with my index finger guiding from above. In the course of things, I ended up using two styli. The first began to dull mysteriously partway through, possibly due to the water I kept brushing onto the clay to keep it soft. The wood was porous, and the repeated wetting may have softened or blunted its edges. I hadn’t expected tool fatigue quite so early in the process.

    3. Difficulties: Scale, Fatigue, and the Limits of Enthusiasm

    What surprised me most was just how big my signs ended up being. Between the bluntness of my stylus and the limits of my own control, I found I could only produce cuneiform signs that were two to three times the height of the original inscriptions—and at least twice the width. The clay itself wasn’t the issue. If anything, it was a pleasure to work with: I kept smearing water across the surface with my fingertip, especially over unused areas, and that seemed to make the impressions cleaner and more precise. The medium was surprisingly forgiving, an example of an erasure using this technique is given above, in the green circle. My hands were not as pliant.

    I started at the top of the right-hand side of the tablet, and you can tell. My signs grew noticeably larger over time as fatigue set in. I spent around two hours just pressing wedges into the clay, and by the end I was feeling it. Not just in my hand, but in my attention span. I’d wildly underestimated how much text I could fit on the slab at the scale I was working—I probably would’ve needed to double the size to get anywhere close to the full line count of the original.

    By the end, I had learned what I came to learn—and felt ready to let it rest. I don’t plan to do the other side or fill in any missing fragments. This was enough to teach me what I wanted to know: how hard it is, how slow it is, how deliberate every single wedge has to be. The work left me with admiration, exhaustion, and just enough satisfaction to call it finished.

    4. Why It Was So Hard—And What That Tells Us

    This was the smallest scale of replica I’ve ever attempted, and still, my signs were roughly 2.5 times the size of the originals. And even at that inflated scale, I’m not confident I could accurately draw what I carved just by looking at the replica. That tells me a lot. It explains, viscerally, why there was an elite scribal class in Mesopotamian society, and why their training was so extensive. It wasn’t just about memorizing hundreds of signs—though that alone is a feat, especially for scribes working in multiple languages. It was about navigating a medium that added layers of challenge: spacing, shaping, texture, tool wear, and fatigue.

    I’ve long wanted to understand what made cuneiform so difficult—not just as a writing system, but as a practice. Even after studying the language on paper, I didn’t fully grasp the physical demands until I tried it myself.

    I wish we had spent even a single thirty-minute session in Akkadian I making tablets, especially at a small scale like this. The pedagogical value would’ve been enormous. You suddenly understand not just the abstract difficulty of the writing system, but the labor infrastructure around it—the apprenticeship, the specialization, the patience. This little experiment gave me a glimpse into that world, and for that, I’m genuinely grateful.

    5. Closing: A New Kind of Knowing

    I ended up with a lopsided, oversized, and incomplete tablet. But also: textured, hard-won, and deeply instructive. In the end, as it turns out, this wasn’t really about copying Tablet XI. It was about spending time inside its logic—its weight, its line spacing, its forgiving-but-not medium—and learning something I couldn’t have understood from a textbook.

    If you’re studying cuneiform, or even just curious about ancient writing, I can’t recommend this kind of tactile experiment enough. Make a stylus. Roll some clay from your local art-supply store. Try a single line. Your respect for those scribes will double. And you’ll probably come away, as I did, with something small and slightly ridiculous to keep on your shelf—a cracked echo of something monumental. Decidedly not a replica. Rather a kind of conversation.

    Here’s the “finished” product:

  • APEX Updates, 3: Encoding Decisions

    Process for entering the metadata of a given inscription in the GUI I’m designing.

    Before APEX can tell us anything about the shapes of letters, we have to tell it what those letters are—where they came from, when, how confidently we know that, and why we think so. Each traced form in the database is embedded in metadata, and each metadata field is a choice. Or, more accurately, a battleground between competing demands: standardization vs. specificity, precision vs. honesty, completeness vs. clarity.

    This post is about how those choices get made.

    Metadata is Never Neutral

    In paleographic projects, metadata is often treated as scaffolding: a tidy column of site names, dates, scripts, and references that supports the real work of analysis. But metadata is also where the most important theoretical decisions live. Is this letter from “Attica” or from “Athens”? Is it dated to “c. 750 BCE,” to “the mid-8th century,” or to “LG I”? Is the script “Euboean” or “Eubo-Cypriot” or just “Greek”? And what happens when those terms carry more ambiguity than certainty?

    Each of these choices folds a story into the dataset. A story about geography, chronology, authority, and classification. And once the data is encoded, those stories begin to function as fixed facts—however uncertain or contingent they might actually be.

    The Problem of Uncertainty

    Uncertainty is endemic to early alphabetic evidence. Sites are excavated unevenly. Inscriptions are fragmentary. Provenance can be speculative. Paleographic dating relies on a mix of typological comparison and stratigraphy, both of which are prone to revision.

    But digital systems, including APEX, are uncomfortable with uncertainty. The data model wants a number, not a range; a site name, not a narrative; a script label, not a conditional. This means encoding decisions often involve collapsing complexity into legibility. The trick is to do this transparently, and to leave enough of a trail that the uncertainties can still be seen.

    To that end, I’m building out APEX metadata with fields for:

    • Date (range + confidence + reason for): e.g., “750–725 BCE (medium confidence) (archaeological strata)”
    • Provenance (text + category): allowing freeform notes alongside structured site-region-place data
    • Script classification (source + variant): to distinguish between modern typologies and how scripts were likely conceived by ancient users
    • Notes: a catch-all for uncertainty flags, alternate readings, or disputed attributions

    This structure still imposes a frame, but it tries to make the cracks visible.

    Metadata as Narrative

    Every field in APEX is a decision, and every decision reflects a point of view—whether archaeological, linguistic, technological, or historiographic. That makes the metadata not just a scaffold but a narrative: a set of assumptions about what kind of thing the alphabet is, how it moves through space and time, and how we can know what we know. As the project scales, that narrative will shape what kinds of conclusions are possible. So I want to make it visible now, while it’s still under construction, as part of the work.

    In the next update, I’ll cover the baseline nature of the pipeline and what makes it so difficult—but also so precise.

  • Marginalia, 2: On Diaspora and Scholarship

    The Parthenon/Elgin Marbles as in the British Museum, London.

    Diaspora means a scattering—but not just away from. It’s also a scattering into: people of yours wherever you go. There’s dislocation in that, but also a strange kind of belonging. You’re never quite at home, but also never entirely foreign. We are at home wherever we are, as the Jewish Bundists say.

    I come from the Armenian diaspora. Much of the history I now hold came to me late, in fragments I had to gather myself. So much so that when my family went to Armenia for the 100th anniversary of the genocide, I misunderstood the purpose of our trip. I didn’t yet know what had been left unsaid. I learned the truth online months later. A strange inheritance: delayed, then all at once.

    That moment formed something in me—something about responsibility, memory, and the ethics of knowing. I now see myself as a banner-carrier of the diasporic experience—not just for Armenians, but in solidarity with all displaced and fragmented peoples. Diaspora isn’t a single story but a way of listening, noticing, and asking better questions.

    Ironically, none of the languages I study are mine. I never learned Armenian. I was meant to attend an immersion program in Yerevan in 2020, but it didn’t happen for the obvious reasons. The language now feels like an island—real, reachable, and still far away. It’s typologically unusual and hard to access. And emotionally, I’ve kept it at a distance—not for lack of interest, but for fear of doing it harm.

    Still, the connection shows up. It’s in the care I bring to other people’s histories, in my reverence for displaced traditions, in my work with Semitic languages—speech communities so often marked by rupture. I haven’t yet studied heritage material from my own background, but I carry the stakes of diasporic scholarship into every archive. Distance doesn’t cancel care, it clarifies it.

    My sense of scholarly ethics—especially around archaeology and epigraphy—grows directly from this. I believe in repatriation, in collective self-determination and the right of communities to steward their past. Yes, nations are imagined, but so are all our systems of meaning. So long as national identity structures the world, its claims must be taken seriously.

    Museums, of course, complicate things. Scattering brings both access and erasure. Greek artifacts in London, Mesopotamian seals in New York—these too live in diaspora. There’s value in broader visibility, especially for those who can’t travel. But there’s loss, too: of voice, of sovereignty, of situated knowledge. I think about this often. I haven’t resolved it.

    I don’t just want a life in the library. I want antiquity to be for everyone. I want the past to feel shared, common, alive. I want to show people that our inheritance—linguistic, cultural, intellectual—is truly ours. The more we realize that, the more fully we can meet the present. That’s the gift of diaspora: a way of being scattered that still insists on connection.

    The Parthenon Marbles as in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. Every time I’ve visited, it’s struck me as a monument to loss.