This piece is part of a series by participants in the Summer 2025 Open Knowledge Fellowship, coordinated by the Mina Rees Library. Fellows will share insight into the process of converting a syllabus to openly-licensed and/or zero-cost resources, as well as their experiences teaching undergraduate courses at CUNY.
Jamie Banks is a PhD candidate in Classics. Their research interests lie in literary translation, scientific poetry, and Latin-vernacular bilingual identities in Early Modern Europe. They teach Latin as a “living” language whenever they can. Before returning to academia they taught in K-12 settings for gifted neurodivergent students.
In my field of Classics—in less judgment-laden terms, the study of Greek and Roman antiquity—I am constantly confronted with both the racism and classicism baked into my discipline’s history and the wonderful richness of material from the fascinating worlds I get to study when I can get close to the ancient reality instead of our presentist conceptions of it. Teaching a general education introduction to “Classical Mythology” at Hunter College, I get to and have to grapple with all of these complexities to best serve my students at this public college that is not a PWI (Predominantly White Institution).
I have tried to address the field’s issues with my students frankly and dethrone any insidious ideas of us
reading the ”classics of Western Civilization [sic]” that are somehow more worthy of attention than other mythological traditions. We talk about what makes people call something a “classic” and I try to be clear that Greek myth is a valuable and relatively well-documented study, not a more valuable one. Most students come into the class interested in filling a requirement with a fun study of stories they assume will be relatively easy and I like introducing them to the specific culture’s tradition that I am most competent to teach while making cross-cultural comparisons and inviting students to do the same using the stories they grew up with. In the process, I make sure to give them analytical and theoretical tools that will serve them in later study of whatever traditions they want to learn. I get wonderful creative projects and acts of classical reception from my students and the feedback comes in that they feel respected. Despite all this, I usually come away from a semester’s run with a vague sense of unease that I have probably failed at my one task in important ways.
“Opening Pandora’s Box,” a 19th century engraving by Frederick Stuart Church, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
I signed up for the Open Knowledge Fellowship excited to revamp my course to finally live out my commitment to making the course accessible to students both financially (zero-textbook cost) and politically (not giving the good-not-perfect textbook so much authority in my students’ takeaways about the ancient world). I was also intimidated by the amount of work I felt it would be to ditch the textbook I’ve sighed and used for several semesters and, instead, trust both myself and my students more to make a meaningful story out of scattered sources.
My search for open access resources for the course yielded largely what I’d feared: translations of primary sources in inaccessible English (the out-of-copyright options) and secondary sources with simplified narratives that mostly did not suit a college intro level. Still, I realized that I really just needed two good sources as a foundation and I was pleased to find them: serviceable modern translations at Poetry in Translation and a rich open textbook in Mythoi Koinoi. I was grateful to be able to set out fro the familiar, comfortable harbor of a main textbook and focus my energies on tweaks and enrichment of it, rather than having to cobble a full narrative together solo.
My semi-forced focus on primary texts for out-of-class readings ended up energizing me when I saw the affordances of giving the needed context and orientation mostly myself. If students are coming to class having immersed in the original texts more than some outsourced authority’s take on them, I get to spend our in-person time placing these sources in the social, political and religious context that I see as the value I can add in a college course over simply reading these tales in popular collections for a general audience. And I can share with students what I, in my best, ethical professional judgment, want them to come away knowing.
Having gotten lower attendance and engagement in my myth classes this past school year and let that push me into a dutiful lecture-heavy mode, I am also excited to organize this fall’s run around students’ understanding—what they learn, not what I teach—and deeper, communal, repeat engagement with the stories in versions that are both provoking and artfully composed. I’ll keep my lectures on context short and focus on facilitating small-group discussion and close reading of prepared texts. I love that setting out simply to redo my reading list got me to these bigger course shifts that I have secretly wanted, a revitalized pedagogy that is more authentic to the teacher I am at my best.
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