What's New at SeumasU December 2022
Well, our classes are all wrapped up, we are on vacation and looking forward to the holiday season here in sunny Australia (and presumably sunny New Zealand).
2022 Retrospect
It's been a big year at SeumasU, I would say. This was the third year I've run SeumasU as a full-time operation, and I think I am finally getting into the swing of things. We've read all sorts of texts together: Egeria, Plutarch, Gospel of John, Cicero's Letters, Pausanias, Aquinas, Erasmus, Dhuoda, CS Lewis, Proba, Ignatius, 1 Samuel, and a lot of Plato; oh, and Harry Potter (thanks, Isaac!). It was also great to run RPG classes again, Greek composition, and the horror/terror/joy that is the Optative.
We also took on our first extra instructor, Isaac, who is brilliant and doing brilliantly. And we ran, with the extraordinary co-labouring of Gregory Stringer, and the help of many others, our first ever conference, Ad Aspera Per Cameras, bringing together Irene Regini, Carla Hurt, Andrew and Ilse Morehouse, Michael Saridakis, and Isaac Bennett-Smith, for an online conference on teaching classical languages online. It was a great success, with over 30 people in attendance online, another 30 or so registered interest in the videos, and the videos themselves have received hundreds of views.
New for 2023
Courses for Term 1 are already up. We have quite a lot of Athenaze/Intro courses running thanks to good, healthy cohorts. The more 'speciality' courses include:
Plato: I plan to read the Timaeus over the course of the whole of next year.
Chambers' Greek War of Independence: An ideal early-intermediate / late-beginner text
Eudocia: Homer remixed in a Christian key; the Greek Proba, if you will.
Greek Patristics: a more traditional read/translate group, at a discount price.
Augustine on Prayer: Augustine writing to the other Proba (the first Proba's niece), about prayer.
Things not quite listed:
I'm in negotiations for someone to teach a Biblical Greek reading course in Term 1, and it looks like we will offer a Scottish Gaelic course as well. Stay tuned for either of those, and email me if you're interested.
Other Projects:
I spent a large amount of my non-teaching time this year working on a kind-of book - it's an in-house course book for a seminary on church history. It's almost done too, but it's not likely to be for general public purchase. Anyway, that is soon to be finished, and next year I plan to spend my non-teaching-time working on more reading and writing things. Specifically, I will bring LGPSI finally to 30 released chapters, and I'll finish off Galiliathen, my Athenaze-keyed New Testament reader. It's got 11 chapters done, and you can read them already on my patreon.
Thanks to you all, especially my lovely students for making 2022 a great year at SeumasU. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and see you in 2023.
Seumas