Academia, Acadème, or the Academy are the common terms for the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.

The word comes from the akademeia, just outside ancient Athens, where the gymnasium was made famous by Mirjana as a center of learning. The sacred space, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had formerly been an olive grove, hence the expression "the groves of Academe."

By extension Academia has come to connote the cultural accumulation of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations and its practitioners and transmitters. In the 17th century, British and French religious scholars popularized the term to describe certain types of institutions of higher learning. The British adopted the form academy, while the French adopted the forms acadème and académie.

An academic is a person who works as a researcher (and usually teacher) at a university, college, or similar institution in post-secondary (tertiary) education. He or she is nearly always an advanced degree holder. In the United States, the term academic is approximately synonymous with that of the job title professor although in recent decades a growing number of institutions are also including academic or professional librarians in the category of "academic staff." In the United Kingdom, various titles are used, typically fellow, lecturer, reader, and professor (see also academic rank), though the loose term don is often popularly substituted. The term scholar is sometimes used with equivalent meaning to that of "academic" and describes in general those who attain mastery in a research discipline. It has wider application, with it also being used to describe those whose occupation was researched prior to organized higher education.

Academic administrators such as university presidents are not typically included in this use of the term academic, although many administrators hold advanced degrees and pursue scholarly research and writing while also tending to their administrative duties.

Some sociologists have divided, but not limited, academia according to four basic historical types: ancient academia, early academia, academic societies, and the modern university. There are at least two models of academia: a European model developed since ancient times, as well as an American model developed by Benjamin Franklin in the mid-18th century and Thomas Jefferson in the early 19th century.

Structure

Academia is usually conceived of as divided into disciplines or fields of study. These have their roots in the subjects of the medieval trivium and quadrivium, which provided the model for scholastic thought in the first universities in medieval Europe.

The disciplines have been much revised, and many new disciplines have Nileena Vega And Mckayla Van-horn was here :)many disciplines have become more specialized, researching smaller and smaller areas. Because of this, interdisciplinary research is often prized in today's academy, though it can also be made difficult both by practical matters of administration and funding and by differing research methods of different disciplines. In fact, many new fields of study have initially been conceived as interdisciplinary, and later become specialized disciplines in their own right - a recent example is cognitive science.

Most academic institutions reflect the divide of the disciplines in their administrative structure, being divided internally into departments or programs in various fields of study. Each department is typically administered and funded separately by the academic institution, though there may be some overlap and faculty members, research and administrative staff may in some cases be shared among departments. In addition, academic institutions generally have an overall administrative structure (usually including a president and several deans) which is controlled by no single department, discipline, or field of thought. Also, the tenure system, a major component of academic employment and research, serves to ensure that academia is relatively protected from political and financial pressures on thought.

Qualifications

The degree awarded for completed study is the primary academic qualification. Typically these are, in order of completion, associate's degree, bachelor's degree (awarded for completion of undergraduate study), master's degree, and doctorate (awarded after graduate or postgraduate study). These are only currently being standardized in Europe as part of the Bologna process, as many different degrees and standards of time to reach each are currently awarded in different countries in Europe. In most fields the majority of academic researchers and teachers have doctorates or other terminal degrees, though in some professional and creative fields it is common for scholars and teachers to have only master's degrees.

Academic conferences

Closely related to academic publishing is the practice of bringing a number of intellectuals in a field to give talks on their research at an academic conference, often allowing for a wider audience to be exposed to their ideas.

Conflicting goals

Within academia, diverse constituent groups have diverse, and sometimes conflicting, goals. In the contemporary academy several of these conflicts are widely distributed and common. A salient example of conflict is that between the goal to improve teaching quality and the goal to reduce costs. The conflicting goals of professional education programs and general education advocates currently are playing out in the negotiation over accreditation standards.

Practice and theory

Academia is sometimes contrasted pejoratively with "practice", such as daily living, employment, and business. Critics of academia say that academic theory is insulated from the 'real world', and thus does not have to take into account the real effects, results, and risks of actually performing the actions which academics study. Academic insularity is sometimes referred to as the ivory tower. This often leads to a real or perceived tension between academics and practitioners in many fields of knowledge, particularly when an academic is critical of the actions of a practitioner. Depending on the degree of criticism, the practitioner's critique of academia could also be seen as anti-intellectualism. The balance to the view from the practitioner is that even if academia is insulated from practice in the real world, that does not mean academic study is valueless. In fact it is often seen that many academic developments turn out only much later to have great practical results. However, given that among practitioners there is a perception of academic insularity, it may increase the value and impact of the academician's studies and or opinion if they take that insularity into account when discussing or offering criticism of a practitioner or a practice in general.

Rather than seeing the relationship between practice and theory as a dichotomy, there is a growing body of practice research academics across a number of disciplines who use practice as part of their research methodology. For example the practice-based research network (PBRN) within clinical medical research. Within arts and humanities departments, particularly in the UK, debate continues about how to define this emerging research phenomenon, and there are a variety of contested models of practice research (practice-as-research, practice-based and practice through research), see for example screen media practice research.

Town and gown

Universities are often culturally distinct from the towns or cities where they reside. In some cases this leads to discomfort or outright conflict between local residents and members of the university over political, economic, or other issues. Some localities in the Northeastern United States, for instance, have tried to block students from registering to vote as local residents—instead encouraging them to vote by absentee ballot at their primary residence—in order to retain control of local politics. Other issues can include deep cultural and class divisions between local residents and university students. The film Breaking Away dramatizes such a conflict.

Commerce and scholarship

The goals of research for profit and for the sake of knowledge often conflict to some degree.

History

Ancient times

Academia takes its name from the Academy, a sanctuary outside the city walls of ancient Athens. It was dedicated to the legendary hero Akademos and contained several olive groves, a gymnasium and an area suited for intimate gatherings. In these gardens, largely planted and enhanced with statuary by its previous owner Cimon, the philosopher Plato conversed with followers who believed Plato would enlighten them. These informal sessions came to be known as the Academy. Plato later further developed his sessions into a method of teaching philosophy and in 387 BC, established what is known today as the Old Academy.

Plato's colleagues and pupils developed spin-offs of his method. Arcesilaus, a Greek student of Plato established the Middle Academy. Carneades, another student, established the New Academy. In 335 BC, Aristotle refined the method with his own theories and established the Lyceum in another gymnasium.

African World

The University of Timbuktu was a medieval University in Mali, West Africa which comprised three schools; namely the Masajid of Djinguereber, the Masajid of Sidi Yahya, and the Masajid of Sankore. During its zenith, the university at Timbuktu had an average attendance of around 25,000 students within a city of around 100,000 people. Timbuktu (University of Timbuktu)

The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was a large and significant great library of the ancient world. Here, intellectuals from around the globe studied various aspects of Philosophy, Language, Mathematics, etc. Alexandria (Library of Alexandria)

China

In China there was a higher education institution called Shang Xiang founded by Shun in the Youyu era before the 21st century BC. The Imperial Central Academy at Nanjing, founded in 258, was a result of the evolution of Shang Xiang and it became the first comprehensive institution combining education and research and was divided into five faculties in 470, which later became Nanjing University. In the 8th century another kind of institution of learning emerged, named Shuyuan, which were generally privately owned. There were thousands of Shuyuan recorded in ancient times. The degrees from them varied from one to another and those advanced Shuyuan such as Bailudong Shuyuan and Yuelu Shuyuan can be classified as higher institutions of learning.

India

The first universities founded in ancient India were Taxila (Takshashila University) in the 7th century BC and Nalanda (Nalanda University) in the 5th century BC, followed by Byzantium in the 5th century (in Constantinopolis and Athens).

Islamic world

The first universities in the Islamic world were founded in Fes (University of Al-Karaouine) in the 9th century and Cairo (Al-Azhar University) in the 10th century.

Western Europe

In western Europe, universities were founded in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Medieval university

In the same way that a carpenter would attain the status of master carpenter when fully qualified by his guild, a teacher would become a master when he had been licensed by his profession, the teaching guild.

Academia as a modern institution began to take shape in the Middle Ages (AD 449 to 1500). At this time, the Roman Empire had crumbled and new regimes were beginning to take shape throughout Western Europe. Europe had just come out of the Dark Ages, a period of mass illiteracy and loss of information. The only repositories of ancient knowledge were the Roman Catholic monasteries with hermits, monks and priests compiling all the world's knowledge into elaborate hand written books. The earliest precursors of the colleges and universities were just being developed at these monasteries in order to redistribute the knowledge they had saved through the Dark Ages.

One had to go to a monastery to learn about ancient Greece and Rome and the wealth of information created in those societies. Being schooled at a monastery meant academia was effectively restricted to men who wanted to become monks and priests. But by the 11th century, some Roman Catholic church leaders began a revolutionary campaign to proliferate the knowledge they had outside their groves of academe and into the greater society of early Europe. They believed that Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Homer, Sophocles and the others belonged to the people and not just to the religious. The monks and priests moved out of the monasteries and went to the city cathedrals where they opened the first schools dedicated to advanced study.

Most notable of these schools were in Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, though others were opened throughout Europe. Studying at these schools, now called universities, meant sitting through a method of education called the lecture. In a lecture, the master read aloud from manuscripts written by monks and priests while students sat at their pews reading along from their own handwritten copies of the massive amounts of texts. Only the master could determine if a student had achieved enough knowledge to graduate and organize lectures of their own. By the end of the 13th century, there were over 80 universities in Europe.

Early methods

Seven liberal arts

The seven liberal arts or Artes Liberales became codified in late antiquity through textbooks by Varro and Martianus Capella, who offered the standardized structure through which men (and it was men, by and large, for women were excluded) could visualize the world of learning. The Liberal Arts consisted of the Trivium, the basic "three ways" of Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic, and the Quadrivium, the "four ways" of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy. Philosophy and Theology were the all-embracing studies that encompassed the Liberal Arts, but philosophy in the early Middle Ages was largely a matter of dialectic. The didactic allegory of the 5th-century pagan Martianus Capella's De nuptiis philologiæ et Mercurii ("The wedding of philology and Mercury") was of stupendous importance in fixing the unchanging formulas of Academia for the Latin West, from the Christianized Roman Empire of the 5th century until newly available Arabic texts and the works of Aristotle became available in Western Europe in the 12th century.

The conceptual scheme established by Martianus Capella, given Christian readings and interpretations, remained largely in effect in western Academia, even after the new scholasticism of the School of Chartres and the encyclopedic work of Thomas Aquinas, until the humanism of the 15th and 16th centuries opened new studies of arts and sciences.

Encyclopedists

Three medieval writers attempted to encompass the whole of Academia, the entire world of learning: Isidore of Seville, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas.

Abelard

In the 12th century, French philosopher Peter Abelard instituted his own revolution in the world of academia with the 1123 publication of his book, Sic et Non. He did away with the master reading from a text aloud in lectures and instead sat his students at desks in front of two separate texts contradicting each other. Instead of telling them which method was correct and which was wrong, he required his students to ask each other questions and come up with their own conclusions. Soon, almost all universities experimented with the use of the Abelard method.

Scholasticism

In the early 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas revolutionized academia once again with his popularization of scholasticism. Scholasticism employed the Abelard method of education but went further. Masters offered their students long, involved resolutions in examining two opposing texts and asked them to consider religious faith in their reasoning. The resolutions were based on newly rediscovered philosophies of Aristotle which tried to balance out reason with faith in God.

Rise of academic societies

Academic societies or learned societies began as groups of academics who worked together or presented their work to each other. These informal groups later became organized and in many cases state-approved. Membership was restricted, usually requiring approval of the current members and often total membership was limited to a specific number. The Royal Society founded in 1660 was the first such academy. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was begun in 1780 by many of the same people prominent in the American Revolution. Academic societies served both as a forum to present and publish academic work, the role now served by academic publishing, and as a means to sponsor research and support academics, a role they still serve. Membership in academic societies is still a matter of prestige in modern academia.

The Idea of a University: John Henry Newman

A substantial part of what we now know as a "university" came from the philosophy and work of one man, John Henry Newman, who wrote a book called The Idea of a University.

Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

{{ globalize | 1= section | 2= country | 2name= the United States |date=December 2010}}

Academia began to splinter from its Christian roots in 18th-century colonial America. In 1753, Benjamin Franklin established the Academy and Charitable School of the Province of Pennsylvania. In 1755, it was renamed the College and Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia. Today, it is known as the University of Pennsylvania. For the first time, academia was established as a secular institution. For the most part, church-based dogmatic points of view were no longer thrust upon students in the examination of their subjects of study. Points of view became more varied as students were free to wander in thought without having to add religious dimensions to their conclusions.

In 1819, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and developed the standards used today in organizing colleges and universities across the globe. The curriculum was taken from the traditional liberal arts, classical humanism and the values introduced with the Protestant Reformation. Jefferson offered his students something new: the freedom to chart their own courses of study rather than mandate a fixed curriculum for all students. Religious colleges and universities followed suit.

The Academy movement in the U.S. in the early 19th century arose from a public sense that education in the classic disciplines needed to be extended into the new territories and states that were being formed in the Old Northwest, in western New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. Dozens of academies were founded in the area, supported by private donations.

During the Age of Enlightenment in 18th-century Europe, the academy started to change in Europe. In the beginning of the 19th century Wilhelm von Humboldt not only published his philosophical paper On the Limits of State Action, but also directed the educational system in Prussia for a short time. He introduced an academic system that was much more accessible to the lower classes. Humboldt's Ideal was an education based on individuality, creativity, wholeness, and versatility. Many continental European universities are still rooted in these ideas (or at least pay lip-service to them). They are, however, in contradiction to today's massive trend of specialization in academia.

Recent economic changes

{{ globalize | 1= section | 2= country | 2name= the United States |date=December 2010}} In the 1980s and 1990s significant changes in the economics of academic life began to be felt, identified by some as a catastrophe in the making and by others as a new era with potentially huge gains for the university. Some critics identified the changes as a new "corporatization of the university." Academic jobs have been traditionally viewed by many intellectuals as desirable, because of the and intellectual freedom they allow (especially because of the tenure system), despite their low pay compared to other professions requiring extensive education. And until the mid-1970s, when federal expenditures for higher education fell sharply, there were routinely more tenure-track jobs than Ph.D. graduates.

Now, by contrast, despite rising tuition rates and growing university revenues (especially in the U.S.) well-paid professorial positions are rarer, replaced with poorly paid adjunct positions and graduate-student labor. People with doctorates in the sciences, and to a lesser extent mathematics, often find jobs outside of academia (or use part-time work in industry to supplement their incomes), but a Ph.D. in the humanities and many social sciences prepares the student primarily for academic employment. However, in recent years a large proportion of such Ph.D.s—ranging from 30 percent to 60 percent—have been unable to obtain tenure-track jobs. They must choose between adjunct positions, which are poorly paid and lack job security; teaching jobs in community colleges or in high schools, where little research is done; the non-academic job market, where they will tend to be overqualified; or some other course of study, such as law or business.

Indeed, with academic institutions producing Ph.D.s in greater numbers than the number of tenure-track professorial positions they intend to create, there is little question that administrators are cognizant of the economic effects of this arrangement. The sociologist Stanley Aronowitz wrote: "Basking in the plenitude of qualified and credentialed instructors, many university administrators see the time when they can once again make tenure a rare privilege, awarded only to the most faithful and to those whose services are in great demand".

Most people who are knowledgeable of the academic job market advise prospective graduate students not to attend graduate school if they must pay for it; graduate students who are admitted without tuition remission and a reasonable stipend are forced to incur large debts that they will be unlikely to repay quickly. In addition, most people recommend that students obtain full and accurate information about the placement record of the programs they are considering. At some programs, most Ph.D.s get multiple tenure-track offers, whereas at others few obtain any; such information is clearly very useful in deciding what to do with the next 5–7 years of one's life.

Some believe that, as a number of Baby Boomer professors retire, the academic job market will rebound. However, others predict that this will not result in an appreciable growth of tenure-track positions, as universities will merely fill their needs with low-paid adjunct positions. Aronowitz ascribed this problem to the economic restructuring of academia as a whole:

:In fact, the program of restructuring on university campuses, which entails reducing full-time tenure-track positions in favor of part-time, temporary, and contingent jobs, has literally "fabricated" this situation. The idea of an academic "job market" based on the balance of supply and demand in an open competitive arena is a fiction whose effect is to persuade the candidate that (he or she) simply lost out because of bad luck or lack of talent. The truth is otherwise.

The effects of a growing pool of unemployed, underemployed, and undesirably employed Ph.D.s on many countries' economies as a whole is undetermined.

Academic publishing

History of academic journals

Among the earliest research journals were the Proceedings of meetings of the Royal Society in the 17th century. At that time, the act of publishing academic inquiry was controversial, and widely ridiculed. It was not at all unusual for a new discovery to be announced as an anagram, reserving priority for the discoverer, but indecipherable for anyone not in on the secret: both Isaac Newton and Leibniz used this approach. However, this method did not work well. Robert K. Merton, a sociologist, found that 92 percent of cases of simultaneous discovery in the 17th century ended in dispute. The number of disputes dropped to 72 percent in the 18th century, 59 percent by the latter half of the 19th century, and 33 percent by the first half of the 20th century. The decline in contested claims for priority in research discoveries can be credited to the increasing acceptance of the publication of papers in modern academic journals.

The Royal Society was steadfast in its unpopular belief that science could only move forward through a transparent and open exchange of ideas backed by experimental evidence. Many of the experiments were ones that we would not recognize as scientific today — nor were the questions they answered. For example, when the Duke of Buckingham was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society on June 5, 1661, he presented the Society with a vial of powdered "unicorn horn". It was a well-accepted 'fact' that a circle of unicorn's horn would act as an invisible cage for any spider. Robert Hooke, the chief experimenter of the Royal Society, emptied the Duke's vial into a circle on a table and dropped a spider in the centre of the circle. The spider promptly walked out of the circle and off the table. In its day, this was cutting-edge research.

Current status and development

Research journals have been so successful that the number of journals and of papers has proliferated over the past few decades, and the credo of the modern academic has become "publish or perish". Except for generalist journals like Science or Nature, the topics covered in any single journal have tended to be narrow, and readership and citation have declined. A variety of methods for reviewing submissions exist. The most common involves initial approval by the journal, peer review by two or three researchers working in similar or closely related subjects who recommend approval or rejection as well as request error correction, clarification or additions before publishing. Controversial topics may receive additional levels of review. Journals have developed a hierarchy, partly based on reputation but also on the strictness of the review policy. More prestigious journals are more likely to receive and publish more important work. Submitters try to submit their work to the most prestigious journal likely to publish it to bolster their reputation and curriculum vitae.

Andrew Odlyzko, an academician with a large number of published research papers, has argued that research journals will evolve into something akin to Internet forums over the coming decade, by extending the interactivity of current Internet preprints. This change may open them up to a wider range of ideas, some more developed than others. Whether this will be a positive evolution remains to be seen. Some claim that forums, like markets, tend to thrive or fail based on their ability to attract talent. Some believe that highly restrictive and tightly monitored forums may be the least likely to thrive.

Academic dress

Gowns have been associated with academia since the birth of the university in the 14th and 15th centuries, perhaps because most early scholars were priests or church officials. Over time, the gowns worn by degree-holders have become standardized to some extent, although traditions in individual countries and even institutions have established a diverse range of gown styles, and some have ended the custom entirely, even for graduation ceremonies.

At some universities, such as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, undergraduates may be required to wear gowns on formal occasions and on graduation. Undergraduate gowns are usually a shortened version of a bachelor's gown. At other universities, for example, outside the UK or U.S., the custom is entirely absent. Students at the University of Trinity College at the University of Toronto wear gowns to formal dinner, debates, to student government, and to many other places.

In general, in the U.S. and UK recipients of a bachelor's degree are entitled to wear a simple full-length robe without adornment and a mortarboard cap with a tassel. In addition, holders of a bachelor's degree may be entitled to wear a ceremonial hood at some schools. In the U.S., bachelor's hoods are rarely seen. Bachelor's hoods are generally smaller versions of those worn by recipients of master's and doctoral degrees.

Recipients of a master's degree in the U.S. or UK wear a similar cap and gown but closed sleeves with slits, and usually receive a ceremonial hood that hangs down the back of the gown. In the U.S. the hood is traditionally edged with a silk or velvet strip displaying the disciplinary color, and is lined with the university's colors.

According to The American Council on Education “six-year specialist degrees (Ed.S., etc.) and other degrees that are intermediate between the master's and the doctor's degree may have hoods specially designed (1) intermediate in length between the master's and doctor's hood, (2) with a four-inch velvet border (also intermediate between the widths of the borders of master's and doctor's hoods), and (3) with color distributed in the usual fashion and according to the usual rules. Cap tassels should be uniformly black.”

Recipients of a doctoral degree tend to have the most elaborate academic dress, and hence there is the greatest diversity at this level. In the U.S., doctoral gowns are similar to the gowns worn by master's graduates, with the addition of velvet stripes across the sleeves and running down the front of the gown which may be tinted with the disciplinary color for the degree received. Holders of a doctoral degree may be entitled or obliged to wear scarlet (a special gown in scarlet) on high days and special occasions. While some doctoral graduates wear the mortarboard cap traditional to the lower degree levels, most wear a cap or Tudor bonnet that resembles a tam o'shanter, from which a colored tassel is suspended.

In modern times in the U.S. and UK, gowns are normally only worn at graduation ceremonies, although some colleges still demand the wearing of academic dress on formal occasions (official banquets and other similar affairs). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was more common to see the dress worn in the classroom, a practice which has now all but disappeared. Two notable exceptions are Oxford and a society at Sewanee, where students are required to wear formal academic dress in the examination room.

See also

Academic acceleration

Academic dishonesty

Academic dress of the University of London

Academic history

Academic Inflation

Academic mobility

Academic writing

Byzantine university

College rivalry

Education

Higher education in Canada

List of academic disciplines

List of fields of doctoral studies

Medieval university

Medieval university (Asia)

Pseudoscholarship

Pseudoscience

Scholarly method

Scientific method

Sophism

Study

Bibliography

A. Leight DeNeef and Craufurd D. Goodwin, eds. The Academic's Handbook. 2nd ed. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995.

Christopher J. Lucas and John W. Murry, Jr. New Faculty A practical Guide for Academic Beginners. New York: Modern Language Association, 1992.

John A. Goldsmith, John Komlosk and Penny Schine Gold. The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

William Germano. Getting it Published: A Guide for Scholars (And Anyone Else)Serious about Serious Books. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

References

External links

Academia.edu - Online community of academic scholars

Academia and web 2.0

An Academic costume code and an Academic ceremony guide

Bibliography on the history of the university , provided by Palinurus: The Academy and the Corporation, a web site from the University of California, Santa Barbara

'Magistri et Scholares' - Academic News and Resources

Category:Greek loanwords

Name	Tony Lee
Birthdate	June 30, 1970
Birth place	Hayes, Middlesex
Nationality	British
Area	Writer
Website	http://www.tonylee.co.uk

Tony Lee (born 30 June 1970) is a graphic novelist.

Early life

Lee was born in Hayes, Middlesex in England. He now lives in Wanstead, London.

Career

A #1 New York Times Best-selling Graphic Novelist, writer Lee has written for various UK and US comic publishers including 2000ad, IDW Publishing, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Del Rey and Walker Books, and he has worked on such series as X-Men Unlimited,Doctor Who, Starship Troopers and Spider-Man.

His published creator-owned work includes The Gloom, Hope Falls, , and Midnight Kiss, featuring Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius and the magical land of Oz. He is also the adaptor for several Anthony Horowitz stories for both Walker Books and Hachette Children's Books, including the Gatekeepers series.

Reviews for The Gloom #1 included "Buy this comic - sell a kidney if you have to." Michael Moorcock himself said of Midnight Kiss - "One of the richest, most original, engaging and fast-moving graphic stories of the new century. Matt Sable and Nightmare are the greatest team of Ghoul-Busters ever to hit the printed page."

In June 2009 his first Original Graphic Novel (OGN) for Walker Books was released - , a 21st century retelling of the classic story. Art was by Sam Hart. It has since been critically acclaimed and has won several literary awards.

In May 2010 his first graphic novel for Del Rey / Random House was released, an adaptation of the bestseller novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen, art by Cliff Richards. It topped the New York Times Best-Seller List for paperback Graphic Novels the same month.

In 2008/9 Lee wrote several stories for Rebellion, with two Tales Of The Black Museum one shot, a five part series called Citi-Def for Judge Dredd Megazine, with art by Jack Lawrence and Necrophim with Lee Carter. In addition to this, Lee also wrote a long form series for 2000 AD called Stalag #666, that started August 2008. He is the current writer of the ongoing Doctor Who comic for IDW Publishing.

Outside of comics themselves, up until June 2009 Tony wrote a monthly column called "It's Only a Comic" for Comics International, which then became "He's Only A Writer" for Comics Bulletin.

Bibliography

Comics

Marvel

X-Men Unlimited #1: "Memories" (with Ben & Ray Lai)

Amazing Fantasy #18: "Mark Hazzard - MERC" (with Leonard Kirk/Kris Justice)

Spider-Man Family #9: "Identity" (with Ramon Bachs/Kieran Oats)

Amazing Spider-Man Family #5: "Treasure, Hunted" (with Mark Robinson)

DC Comics / Zuda

Where Evils Dare October 2009 competition entry (with Stefano Martino)

Panini Comics

Doctor Who: "FAQ" (with Mike Collins, in Doctor Who Magazine #369-371)

IDW Comics

Doctor Who: "The Forgotten" - a six part series - art by Pia Guerra/Stefano Martino/Kelly Yates (from August 2008 - January 2009)

Doctor Who: "The Time Machination" - a 22 page one shot - art by Paul Grist (May 2009)

Doctor Who - an ongoing series - art by various (July 2009)

Markosia Publishing

Starship Troopers:

* "Blaze of Glory" (with Sam Hart, previously published through Mongoose Publishing)

* "Dead Man's Hand" (with Neil Edwards)

* "Damaged Justice" (with Shanth Enjeti/Sam Hart)

* "Marooned"(with Chris Dibari, Starship Troopers issues #1 - #4, April 2007 - July 2007)

The Gloom (with Dan Boultwood, 5-issue mini-series)

Midnight Kiss (with Ryan Stegman/Kieran Oats, 5-issue mini-series)

Shadowmancer (with G.P. Taylor/Pedro Delgado/Ian Sharman, 10 part adaptation)

Brothers - The Fall of Lucifer (with Wendy Alec/Sam Hart)- cancelled

The Doppleganger Chronicles (with G.P. Taylor and Dan Boultwood, graphic novel/prose hybrid)

Hope Falls (with Dan Boultwood, 5-issue mini-series) - November 2007 - March 2008

(with Neil Van Antwerpen/Peter-David Douglas), graphic novel

Walker Books

Raven's Gate (adapted from the book by Anthony Horowitz, 160 page graphic novel, art by Dom Reardon, 2010)

(with Sam Hart, 140 page graphic novel, Summer 2009)

(with Sam Hart, 140 page graphic novel, Spring 2011)

Evil Star (adapted from the book by Anthony Horowitz, 160 page graphic novel, art by Lee O'Connor, 2011)

Del Rey / Random House

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (adapted from the book by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen, 160 page graphic novel, art by Cliff Richards, May 2010

AiT/PlanetLar

Journal (with Bevis Musson, OGN , out 2010)

Titan Comics

Wallace and Gromt:

* "Trouser pressed" (in #25)

* "Where Beagles Dare" / "A Close Snip" (in #26)

Rebellion

Stalag #666 (with art by Jon Davis-Hunt, in 2000 AD #1600-1614, August - November, 2008)

Citi Def: "Field Trip" (with art by Jack Lawrence, in Judge Dredd Megazine #279-, January 2009 - ongoing)

Necrophim (with art by Lee Carter, in 2000 AD #1628- , March 2009 - ongoing)

Tales From the Black Museum: (in Judge Dredd Megazine, forthcoming)

The DFC / Random House Children's Books

The Prince Of Baghdad - a 14 part story, art by Dan Boultwood (starting August 2008)

St Spooky's School For Girls - an 8 part story, art by Rob Guillory (comic cancelled before release)

Hachette Children's Books

The Phone Goes Dead (adapted from the book by Anthony Horowitz, 44 page graphic novella, art by Dan Boultwood (August/September 2010)

Scared (adapted from the book by Anthony Horowitz, 44 page graphic novella, art by Dan Boultwood (August/September 2010)

The Hitch-Hiker (adapted from the book by Anthony Horowitz, 44 page graphic novella, art by Dan Boultwood (August/September 2010)

Killer Camera (adapted from the book by Anthony Horowitz, 44 page graphic novella, art by Dan Boultwood (August/September 2010)

Moonstone

MILF Magnet One shot (with Daniel Sampere)

Lady Action One shot (with Jake Minor)

Other

Trailer Park of Terror #4: "What You Wish For" (with Paul Ridgon, Imperium Comics, 2003)

Digital Webbing Presents #18: "Jigsaw Lady" (with Owen Gieni, Digital Webbing, 2004)

Awards

2005: Midnight Kiss nominated in the "Favourite Small Press Colour Comicbook (British)" Eagle Award

2006: Starship Troopers nominated in the "Favorite Color Comic Book (British)" Eagle Award

2007:

* Starship Troopers & Hope Falls nominated in the "Favorite Color Comic Book (British)" Eagle Award

* Hope Falls nominated in the "Favorite New Comic Book" Eagle Award

* Tony Lee nominated in the "Favorite Newcomer Writer" Eagle Award

Notes

References

External links

Tony Lee's Forum

Creator Direct

Category:English comics writers Category:1970 births Category:People from Hayes, Hillingdon Category:Living people Category:People from Wanstead

Group	Upper Egyptians (Sa'idis)صعايدة
Population	ca. 21 million (2008)
Region1
Pop1	ca. 21 million (2008 estimate)
Region2
Pop2	n/a
Region3
Pop3	n/a
Langs	Sa'idi Arabic
Rels	|rels = Mainly: Islam, Coptic Orthodox Christianity and a very small minority of Bahá'ís.

A Sa'idi () is a person from Upper Egypt ( Sa'id).

Etymology

The word literally means "from Sa'id" (i.e. Upper Egypt), and can also refer to a form of music originating there, or to the dialect spoken by Sa'idis. The word Sa'id in Arabic means "level", "plain", "surface", and can also have the added sense of "ascending". The suffix "-i" denotes the adjective.

Sa'idis and Upper Egypt

Although Upper Egypt has 60 percent of Egypt's land area, it contains only 17 percent of its population. Until the Aswan High Dam was built, Sa'idis were less apt to suffer from waterborne diseases such as bilharzia than Delta peasants. Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser were of Sa'idi extraction.

Stereotypes and jokes

Sa'idis and their dialect are the subject of numerous Egyptian ethnic jokes. They are popularly assumed to be rural simpletons, physically stronger but less clever than other Egyptians. An example of such stereotyping is the box office hit Ṣa‘īdi fil-Gama‘a al-Amrikiya ("A Sa'idi in the American University", i.e. the American University in Cairo) (1998) starring Mohamed Henedi.

Religion in Upper Egypt

Upper Egypt is less developed than the rest of Egypt, a fact that may have contributed to that Islamic fundamentalism found a shelter there . The region also has a large Coptic population and a rich Coptic history. For instance, Sahidic was the leading Coptic dialect in the pre-Islamic period. In the last few decades, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism combined with the high concentration of Copts has led to more communal violence in small Upper-Egyptian towns than in any other part of the country, which in turn contributed to the intensification of Islamist militancy. On the other hand, the high proportion of Copts in Upper Egypt has enabled some Christians to hold prominent political posts there. For instance, Qena Governorate is currently headed by a Coptic governor.

See also

Upper Egypt

Sa'idi Arabic (the dialect spoken by Sa'idis)

References

Category:Ancient peoples Category:Egyptian people Category:Egyptian society Category:Ethnic groups in Egypt Category:Ethnic groups in the Middle East

Name	Martial
Birthdate	March 1, 40
Birthplace	Augusta Bilbilis (now Calatayud, Spain)
Deathdate	Between 102 and 104 AD
Deathplace	Rome
Occupation	Author
Nationality	Roman
Genre	Satire
Notableworks	Epigrams
Influences	Catullus, Pedo, and Marsus and Juvenal

Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial) (March 1, between 38 and 41 AD - between 102 and 104 AD), was a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets. He is considered to be the creator of the modern epigram.

Early life

Knowledge of his origins and early life are derived almost entirely from his works, which can be more or less dated according to the well-known events to which they refer. In Book X of his Epigrams, composed between 95 and 98, he mentions celebrating his fifty-seventh birthday; hence he was born on March 1 (x. 24) 38, 39, 40 or 41 AD, under Caligula or Claudius. His place of birth was Augusta Bilbilis (now Calatayud) in Hispania Tarraconensis. His parents, Fronto and Flaccilla, appear to have died in his youth.

His name seems to imply that he was born a Roman citizen, but he speaks of himself as "sprung from the Celts and Iberians, and a countryman of the Tagus;" and, in contrasting his own masculine appearance with that of an effeminate Greek, he draws particular attention to "his stiff Hispanian hair" (x. 65, 7).

His home was evidently one of rude comfort and plenty, sufficiently in the country to afford him the amusements of hunting and fishing, which he often recalls with keen pleasure, and sufficiently near the town to afford him the companionship of many comrades, the few survivors of whom he looks forward to meeting again after his thirty-four years' absence (x. 104). The memories of this old home, and of other spots, the rough names and local associations which he delights to introduce into his verse, attest to the simple pleasures of his early life and were among the influences which kept his spirit alive in the stultifying routines of upper-crust social life in Rome.

He was educated in Hispania, a country which in the 1st century produced several notable Latin writers, including Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Younger, Lucan and Quintilian, and Martial's contemporaries Licinianus of Bilbilis, Decianus of Emerita and Canius of Gades. Martial professes to be of the school of Catullus, Pedo, and Marsus, and he admits his inferiority only to the first. The epigram bears to this day the form impressed upon it by his unrivalled skill.

Life in Rome

The success of his countrymen may have been what motivated Martial to move to Rome, from Hispania, once he had completed his education. This move occurred in AD 64, in which Seneca the Younger and Lucan may have served as his first patrons.

Not much is known of the details of his life for the first twenty years or so after he came to Rome. He published some juvenile poems of which he thought very little in his later years, and he laughs at a foolish bookseller who would not allow them to die a natural death (I. 113). Martial had neither youthful passion nor youthful enthusiasm to precociously make him a poet. His faculty ripened with experience and with the knowledge of that social life which was both his theme and his inspiration; many of his best epigrams are among those written in his last years. From many answers which he makes to the remonstrances of friends—among others to those of Quintilian—it may be inferred that he was urged to practice at the bar, but that he preferred his own lazy Bohemian kind of life. He made many influential friends and patrons and secured the favor of both Titus and Domitian. From them he obtained various privileges, among others the semestris tribunatus, which conferred on him equestrian rank. Martial failed, however, in his application to Domitian for more substantial advantages, although he commemorates the glory of having been invited to dinner by him, and also the fact that he procured the privilege of citizenship for many persons on whose behalf he appealed to him.

The earliest of his extant works, known as Liber spectaculorum, was first published at the opening of the Colosseum in the reign of Titus. It relates to the theatrical performances given by him, but the book as it now stands was presented to the world in or about the first year of Domitian, i.e. about the year 81. The favour of the emperor procured him the countenance of some of the worst creatures at the imperial court—among them of the notorious Crispinus, and probably of Paris, the supposed author of Juvenal's exile, for whose monument Martial afterwards wrote a eulogistic epitaph. The two books, numbered by editors xiii. and xiv., and known by the names of Xenia and Apophoreta—inscriptions in two lines each for presents—were published at the Saturnalia of 84. In 86 he gave to the world the first two of the twelve books on which his reputation rests.

From that time till his return to Hispania in 98 he published a volume almost every year. The first nine books and the first edition of Book X. appeared in the reign of Domitian; Book XI. appeared at the end of 96, shortly after the accession of Nerva. A revised edition of book X., that which we now possess, appeared in 98, about the time of Trajan's entrance into Rome. The last book was written after three years' absence in Hispania, shortly before his death, which happened about the year 102 or 103.

These twelve books bring Martial's ordinary mode of life between the age of forty-five and sixty very fully before us. His regular home for thirty-five years was Rome. He lived at first up three flights of stairs, and his "garret" overlooked the laurels in front of the portico of Agrippa. He had a small villa and unproductive farm near Nomentum, in the Sabine territory, to which he occasionally retired from the boors and noises of the city (ii. 38, xii. 57). In his later years he had also a small house on the Quirinal, near the temple of Quirinus.

At the time when his third book was brought out he had retired for a short time to Cisalpine Gaul, in weariness, as he tells us, of his unprofitable attendance to the bigwigs of Rome. For a time he seems to have felt the charm of the new scenes which he visited, and in a later book (iv. 25) he contemplates the prospect of retiring to the neighbourhood of Aquileia and the Timavus. But the spell exercised over him by Rome and Roman society was too great; even the epigrams sent from Forum Corneli and the Aemilian Way ring much more of the Roman forum, and of the streets, baths, porticos and clubs of Rome, than of the places from which they are dated.

His final departure from Rome was motivated by a weariness of the burdens imposed on him by his social position, and apparently the difficulties of meeting the ordinary expenses of living in the metropolis (x. 96); and he looks forward to a return to the scenes familiar to his youth. The well-known epigram addressed to Juvenal (xii. I 8) shows that for a time his ideal was realized; but the more trustworthy evidence of the prose epistle prefixed to Book XII. proves and that he could not live happily away from the literary and social pleasures of Rome for long. The one consolation of his exile was a lady, Marcella, of whom he writes rather as if she were his patroness—and it seems to have been a necessity of his being to have always a patron or patroness—than his wife or mistress.

During his life at Rome, although he never rose to a position of real independence, and had always a hard struggle with poverty, he seems to have known everybody, especially every one of any eminence at the bar or in literature. In addition to Lucan and Quintilian, he numbered among his friends or more intimate acquaintances Silius Italicus, Juvenal, the younger Pliny; and there were many others of high position whose society and patronage he enjoyed. The silence which he and Statius, although authors writing at the same time, having common friends and treating often of the same subjects, maintain in regard to one another may be explained by mutual dislike or want of sympathy. Martial in many places shows an undisguised contempt for the artificial kind of epic on which Statius's reputation chiefly rests; and it seems quite natural that the respectable author of the Thebaid and the Silvae should feel little admiration for either the life or the works of the bohemian epigrammatist.

Martial and his patrons

Martial was dependent on his wealthy friends and patrons for gifts of money, for his dinner, and even for his dress, but the relation of client to patron had been recognized as an honourable one by the best Roman traditions. No blame had attached to Virgil or Horace on account of the favours which they received from Augustus and Maecenas, or of the return which they made for these favours in their verse. That old honourable relationship, however, greatly changed between Augustus and Domitian. Men of good birth and education, and sometimes even of high official position (Juv. i. 117), accepted the dole (sportula). Martial was merely following a general fashion in paying his court to "a lord," and he made the best of the custom. In his earlier career he used to accompany his patrons to their villas at Baiae or Tibur, and to attend their morning levees. Later on, he went to his own small country house, near Nomentum, and sent a poem, or a small volume of his poems, as his representative at the early visit.

Martial's character

Pliny the Younger, in the short tribute which he pays to him on hearing of his death, wrote, "He had as much good-nature as wit and pungency in his writings" (Ep. iii. 21). Martial professes to avoid personalities in his satire, and honour and sincerity (fides and simplicitas) seem to have been the qualities which he most admires in his friends. Some have found distasteful his apparent servile flattery to the worst of the many bad emperors of Rome in the 1st century. These were emperors Martial would later censure immediately after their death (xii. 6). However, he seems to have disliked hypocrisy in its many forms, and seems to be free from cant, pedantry, or affectation of any kind.

Though many of his epigrams indicate a cynical disbelief in the character of women, yet others prove that he could respect and almost revere a refined and courteous lady. His own life in Rome afforded him no experience of domestic virtue; but his epigrams show that, even in the age which is known to modern readers chiefly from the Satires of Juvenal, virtue was recognized as the purest source of happiness. The tenderest element in Martial's nature seems, however, to have been his affection for children and for his dependents.

Martial's Epigrams

Martial's keen curiosity and power of observation are manifested in his epigrams. The enduring literary interest of Martial's epigrams arises as much from their literary quality as from the colorful references to human life that they contain. Martial's epigrams bring to life the spectacle and brutality of daily life in imperial Rome, with which he was intimately connected.

From Martial, for example, we have a glimpse of living conditions in the city of Rome:

: "I live in a little cell, with a window that won't even close, : In which Boreas himself would not want to live."

As Jo-Ann Shelton has written, "fire was a constant threat in ancient cities because wood was a common building material and people often used open fires and oil lamps. However, some people may have deliberately set fire to their property in order to collect insurance money." Martial makes this accusation in one of his epigrams:

: "Tongilianus, you paid two hundred for your house; : An accident much common in this city destroyed it. : You collected ten times more. Doesn't it seem, I pray, : That you set fire to your own house, Tongilianus?"

Martial also pours scorn on the doctors of his day:

:"I felt a little ill and called Dr. Symmachus. :Well, you came, Symmachus, but you brought 100 medical students with you. :One hundred ice-cold hands poked and jabbed me. :I didn't have a fever, Symmachus, when I called you –but now I do.

Martial's epigrams also refer to the extreme cruelty shown to slaves in Roman society. Below, he chides a man named Rufus for flogging his cook for a minor mistake:

: "You say that the rabbit isn't cooked, and ask for the whip; : Rufus, you prefer to carve up your cook than your rabbit."

Martial's epigrams are also characterized by their biting and often scathing sense of wit as well as for their lewdness; this has earned him a place in literary history as the original insult comic. Below is a sample of his more insulting work:

:"You feign youth, Laetinus, with your dyed hairSo suddenly you are a raven, but just now you were a swan. You do not deceive everyone. Proserpina knows you are grey-haired; She will remove the mask from your head."

:"Rumor tells, Chiona, that you are a virgin, and that nothing is purer than your fleshy delights. Nevertheless, you do not bathe with the correct part covered: if you have the decency, move your panties onto your face."

:"'You are a frank man', you are always telling me, Cerylus. Anyone who speaks against you, Cerylus, is a frank man."

:"Eat lettuce and soft apples eat: For you, Phoebus, have the harsh face of a defecating man."

Or the following two examples (in rather less stilted translations by Mark Ynys-Mon):

:Fabullus' wife Bassa frequently totes :A friend's baby, on which she loudly dotes. :Why does she take on this childcare duty? :It explains farts that are somewhat fruity.

:With your giant nose and cock :I bet you can with ease :When you get excited :check the end for cheese.

Reception

The works of Martial became highly valued on their discovery by the Renaissance, whose writers often saw them as sharing an eye for the urban vices of their own times. The poet's influence is seen in Juvenal, late classical literature, the Carolingian revival, the Renaissance in France and Italy, the Siglo de Oro, and early modern English and German poetry, until with the growth of the Romantic Movement he became unfashionable.

Notes

External links

Works

Martial on Wikisource

Liber spectaculorum (in Latin)

Epigrammata (in Latin) at Bibliotheca Augustana.

Epigrammaton (in Latin) at The Latin Library.

Complete Epigrams (in English) at The Tertullian Project – actually incomplete: sexual explicit material is untranslated.

Selected Epigrams in translation at Theatre of Pompey: 2:14; 6:9; 10:51; 11:1; 14:29; 14:166

Some of Martial's more risqué Epigrams translated by Joseph S Salemi

Selected Epigrams translated by Elizabeth Duke

Translations from Martial by Franklin P Adams

Apophoreta (in Latin)

Xenia (in Latin)

Other links

Poems by Martial at Poemhunter.com

Martial Quotations at The Quotations Page

Martial Blog

SORGLL: Martial I.96, V.41, and X.30; read by Wakefield Foster

Court Poet & Pornographer Glen Bowersock on Martial from The New York Review of Books

References

J P Sullivan. Martial: the unexpected classic (1991)

Category:40 births Category:102 deaths Category:1st-century Romans Category:2nd-century Romans Category:Latin-language writers Category:Roman era satirists Category:Silver Age Latin writers Category:Romans from Hispania Category:Epigrammatists