Monthly Muse

Spotlighted Professor: Professor Seth Holm

 

Professor Seth Holm is a visiting professor from Boston and this is his second year with us here at Colgate University. He got his PhD in Classics from Boston University in 2013, and his main focus in the De Rerem Natura by Latin poet and Epicurean Lucretius.

 

GET-TO-KNOW PROFESSOR HOLM:

 

What is your go-to line when people ask you about the applicability of Classical Studies?

What I tell my students when they ask me “what can I do with a major in Classics?” is you can do *anything*! It doesn’t put you on a career track for sure, like a degree in economics or engineering or something. You won’t be qualified for any one particular career when you’re done. But that’s also what’s great about it. Lots of people do lots different things with a classics degree, and lots of employers and graduate schools think highly of that degree, but the future is still wide open. It’s scary. But scary is better than oppressively predictable, for me at least.

 

What is your favorite Classical Poem?

Gah! So many things count as poems in classical lit, it’s hard to decide. De Rerum Natura is my jam, of course. But the Iliad … who could live without the Iliad? Let’s make it easier and think about lyric poetry—short form stuff that resembles poetry to most people--…probably Sappho 31. φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν (He appears to me, that one, equal to the gods). …yeah he does.

 

If you were a figure from classical Greece/Rome, who would you be and why?

Horace. That is, I wish I could be Horace. Just hanging out on my Sabine farm writing poetry all day. Yeah. But I’d probably more likely be some uneducated, malnourished utterly forgotten farmer hand, just given the odds.

 

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream at Maxwell’s?

The shame spiral. It’s *really* good. 

 

Would you have fought alongside the Greeks or the Trojans and why?

I’m really more of a lover than fighter. Trojans, I hope. Fighting for one’s homeland is so much more legit than slaughtering other nations for greed and pride. Except that then I would be killed and my wife raped … OK, Greeks.

 

Favorite thing about teaching at Colgate?

Without question, the students. They are dedicated, intelligent, sincere, fun, interesting and interested, unique, and kind people. I get so much love and appreciation every day from them for so little. I get to sit and nerd out about the literature that I love with other people who really listen and will nerd out with me and think I’m super smart to boot. That’s what makes this the best job in the world. I leave my classes smiling every day because of you guys.

 

What is something you didn’t expect when you first came to Hamilton?

I remember driving here from Cambridge, MA for my interview two years ago and passing farm after farm after farm and then pulling into the cute little Colgate Inn. It really is amazing how in the middle of nowhere we are, yet it’s become somewhere.

 

Satyrs or centaurs and why?

Both are a little too rape-y for my taste.

 

Which class at Colgate would you most like to attend?

Probably something in peace and conflict studies. I’ve never heard of such a program before I came here. I hope it’s working.

 

What profession other than teaching would you interested in trying?

I would love to be a writer. I like sitting and struggling to articulate subtleties with only words, and I’d love to try that in a non-research oriented format. But I would never want to give up working with students. I would get lonely after a while.

 

If you could have dinner with any classical figure would it be and why?

There so much I’d love to talk to Lucretius about. But if we’re talking about having fun, probably Ovid, just because he’s such a cad.