User:Brian P. Long

I am an American student and a medievalist; my academic research is mainly the transmission of Ancient, Byzantine and Islamic knowledge into the Latin West, but I am also interested in Western intellectual and cultural history more generally.

My undergraduate degree is in Greek and Latin (B.A. Kenyon College, 2005). I worked on Hellenistic Greek poetry, and Theocritus in particular, but I also spent a number of years on Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature.

Brian P. Long Status    last updated Apr. 25    [edit plan here] Get your own infobox! • Group Status ~ Plans ~ Short term plans 1. Write up complete obscenity proposal 2. Add stuff to Ashram system 3. Help with early novel stuff 4. Rest on my laurels Longer-term plans 1. Work on Islamic History 2. Work on Byzantine History 3. Write page on Late Paganism 4. Write page on Hellenistic Kingdoms 5. Make plan of attack for Early Indian Religion ~ Roles and notes ~ Roles in the system Click edit above to start this list Notes to self Click edit above to start these notes Public notes : Citation stuff! Manifesto Having spent a large amount of time outside the academy, and coming from a non-academic family, I deeply believe that critical thinking, intelligence and creativity are not confined within the academy. At the same time, though, I feel that lay readers and independent scholars frequently have a difficult time obtaining credible information, and they sometimes lack the resources to make use of the materials they can lay hold of. The internet greatly improves this state of affairs, but there are still many things that could be done, online and off, to make things even better: Improved secondary education. Hand in hand with this should go More cross-pollination between academia and schools. Academics should do more to connect with the schools in their communities, and teachers should do more to welcome them. More alternative licensure. Many Ph.D. holders and ABD grad students in the US, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, are unable to find jobs in the academy. By sheer administrative pigheadedness, they are also unable to find jobs or hone their teaching skills at the secondary level. Improved access to academic libraries. All too frequently, independent scholars and lay readers are prevented from coming to their own conclusions because, unless they spend large amounts of money ordering monographs and reference works on Amazon, they don't have access to the resources academics do. Free, accessible resources like Citizendium. My hope is that such resources (and CZ in particular) might be clearinghouses for scholarly, up-to-date information, so that independent scholars might have the resources they need, secondary teachers might enrich their teaching, and academic scholars themselves might venture a little further beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.