Jamie Kenneth Banks

I’m a PhD candidate in Classics at the CUNY Graduate Center who loves literary translation (as scholarship!), any crossover at all of poetry x science, and looking at all 2000+ years of literature written in Latin (and a milennium less in German). So of course translating neglected Neo-Latin didactic poetry is my core research thing. I have an MA in German from the Middlebury Language Schools, an MSEd. in Special Education from Hunter College, and bachelor’s and masters degrees in math from Harvard.

In all my teaching, tutoring and coaching I support the whole human, use research-backed methods (where the research exists), and design approaches to fit each student’s unique brain–getting into the weeds, not stopping at “learning styles.”

I am most excited about teaching Latin language through immersion and stories, the long view on 2000+ years of Latin texts and literary history and working with neurodivergent and/or non-traditional students of all ages, settings, and goals.

ADHD, hyper-curious autodidact me works across STEM and the humanities and I’ve taught–eagerly!–and tutored subjects ranging from graduate-level mathematics (sometimes to HS students) and high school creative writing to German and Spanish across all levels and ages.

I am currently most focused on teaching languages (including literature) and coaching neurodivergent scholars through long academic writing projects, from undergraduate theses and course papers to dissertations.

And behind and beyond all that, I am also…

• A Brooklynite with family roots and my heart in Atlantic Canada
• A non-binary queer active in mentoring & advocacy
• A creative writer and poet trained in mathematics and physics
• An amateur choir member, photographer, actor, and long-form improvisor
• Alive and speaking in ancient languages: so far Latin, Greek and Old English
• A chronic patient with trauma who creates and shares to heal
• A research-head in any field I encounter

• Knowledge-making and scholarly communities outside the academy: writing workshops, craftspeople, studios, the public library, personal correspondence and the Beit Midrash
• An academia steeped in joy, pleasure, creativity, generosity and wonder
• Play, healing and care in teaching and learning
• Academics as therapy for neurodivergent people
• Open process, connection and an iterative mindset as antidotes to perfectionism, shame, loneliness and fear
• Identity formation, especially of patients, writers, scientists and polyglots
• All that I do not capture with words and analysis