Hello! Are you familiar with the work of the historian Bettany Hughes, and if so, do you have an opinion on the rigor/thoughtfulness of her work? I am reading a book of hers, and the prose seems *really* overwrought, but the citations in the endnotes seem reasonable, so maybe it's a style thing, or ....? I would be v. grateful for your assessment!
Hello! The answer is "only vaguely," but looking into her qualifications and activities gives me some sense of what might be going on. Primarily, she plays a historian on TV (do people say telly don anymore?) She writes history for popular audiences. She does really valuable work in public education, but she doesn't appear to be a practicing historian in a way that involves actually doing close work with sources/in archives. I say this not to minimize the public outreach she does do, the ways in which she advocates for the study of Greek and Latin, etc. This is all valuable public history! But if that's what she's doing with her time... that limits the amount of time she has to keep up with scholarly debates. Writing popular history for popular audiences, she makes much more sweeping claims than an academic would. And if I'm right, she only has an undergraduate degree. Mind you, she has an undergraduate degree from Oxford, which expects skills that I would weep with joy if my M.A. students had (they don't.) But that's still a very different kind of degree from an M.A. or Ph.D.
So... I hope that's helpful! Actual classicists, feel free to weigh in!
