It’s the service role that ✅ leaves a giant hole in your CV ✅ invites resentment and hostility from your institution ✅ even in best case scenario won’t improve your material conditions as much as leaving academia would. There‘s literally no other reason to do it than belief in the mission.

oh i get it now. its soccers answer to the world baseball classic

My book is now available for pre-order! edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-revelat... Publisher flier and discount code:

Looks like it’s time to bring back the #chroniclepitchbot again. “Is this decontextualized, historically inept, and badly substantiated report by tenured professors at high profile institutions stupid and violent? We asked the writers.” www.chronicle.com/article/insi...

🔥

I made this and put it on Insta and apparently it’s making the rounds, lol this city. Knicks in Five!!

My 2021 _Studies in Late Antiquity_ article on Porphyry, Eusebius, and shared scriptural practices at the beginning of the fourth century is now #OpenAccess! online.ucpress.edu/SLA/article/...

oh look it's another thing! this is my paper for Westar published in their house journal FORUM. again happy to share a copy (although it will also be up on my Knowledge Commons page when I get a chance!)

My first crack at editing a volume of any sort, and so lucky to do it with these brilliant and adventuresome colleagues. An honor to be trusted with their scholarship! What's the vol. about? To perhaps strain bsky's patience for digesting big chunks of text, an excerpt from our introductory essay:

Excellent position at the University of Lausanne. Apply if you can (highest possible salary and quality of life).

Thank goodness for Trismegistos. #evergreenpost

now up on my knowledge commons page! works.hcommons.org/records/5bkw...

So much of humanities education is teaching students to listen in carefully on people from the past talking candidly among themselves. The AI chatbot is the opposite of that: all of history marshaled towards you and you alone, the most important person in the world with the most important questions.

"How does a bee make honey without visiting the flowers?"

My first crack at editing a volume of any sort, and so lucky to do it with these brilliant and adventuresome colleagues. An honor to be trusted with their scholarship! What's the vol. about? To perhaps strain bsky's patience for digesting big chunks of text, an excerpt from our introductory essay:

new Element in Religion in Late Antiquity coming your way in August from the one and only Virginia Burrus! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Trying to move up the ladder, or even get on the ladder at this point, probably requires either immense personal wealth/privilege or the willingness and ability to deeply sacrifice for years with no promise of future success. Its unsustainable and depressing

I’ve got a piece in here! First installment in a series of studies on the history of “Talmudic Philology.” Was a total pleasure working with Daniel and Greg, and it’s an honor to be part of this lineup!

let me know if you want a copy!

It’s heeeeeeeere!

"Pronoun police"? Please. The proper term is the gendermes.

the perfect Bluesky translation of the “Charlie Brown had hoes” tweet

I was in the process of drafting precisely this post in the third person. It’s open access, people! Ch. 4. Tolle lege. www.ucpress.edu/books/things...

(A) incredible and (B) an excuse to post this

Grad students and early career scholars, nominate your work for the NASSCAL Sisters of Sinai prize for outstanding scholarship in Christian apocrypha. Nominations close Sept. 1. Details here: www.nasscal.com/the-sisters-...

i'm moving forward with a new departmental home. but i want y'all to know that our college closed my former department -- a nationally-known one -- to save an operating budget of $121,825. don't ever let them tell you it's about the money, friends. it's not. receipts at p. 698:

“That is the temporal wound: the adjunct helps students build futures inside an institution that grants their future one term at a time. Continuity exists for others first.”

If you live in Boston's North End, please help me find my #LostDog Maggie! She has a collar with my contact information.

jesus christ book of enoch spoilers on my tl

“faculty sabbatical fellowships for course improvement“ 👀

I hope that people are aware that one of the primary political objectives of this ascending right-wing effort to remake higher education through things like the Vanderbilt Report, the Chicago Principles, and the AEI Future of the American University project is to crush the academic labor movement.

One of the authors of the humanities report sat across a table and said, through a smile, that me & my writing instructor colleagues are not teachers. Still, he is welcome in my seminars on evidence, reasoning & warrant since he seems to not understand those basic aspects of academic argument.

On Bluesky? All of us

A great way to start the day: the new JECS at breakfast. We’re fortunate to have @emuehlbe.bsky.social as the editor!

Oh BY THE WAY: United Faculty-UAW, the union of us non-tenure-track faculty at USC, WON our election last night in a landslide. More details to come, but USC admin is crying to Trump asking his labor board to overturn democracy. It's a scandal. You should be pissed, especially if you're a teacher.

"AI is operating at a PhD level" oh, so it's replying 'sorry for the late response' to every email and complaining about its labor conditions?

New job: Postdoc in Coptic Studies in Vienna. Join me and my colleagues in the ERC-CoG CLAIM project!

Come join us in Leuven for our Summer School on translations!

have I mentioned that I teach first year writing here and that I am being laid off

Just out in newest HTR!! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... (As always, happy to send a PDF to anyone w/o institutional access)

Absolutely outrageous. No depths to which university admins won’t stoop to union bust.

Come work with us in Switzerland!

Since BlueSky is the sports app, and the lawyers aren't here yet, enjoy 90 immaculate seconds of "Country Roads" after West Virginia walked off Kentucky to reach the Super Regionals.

Announcing the release of the online, open-access edition of _Critical Infrastructure Studies & Digital Humanities_ (in Debates in DH series): dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/cri.... Editors: Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, James Smihties @jamessmithies.bsky.social). Print ed. appeared January 2026

My article (open access) on the apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans, canonicity, paratexts, and Latin manuscripts!

If any journalists who follow me want to write about the multi-year fight for the biggest private-university faculty union in US history, well, let me know I guess. Oh and our employer ran the nastiest corporate-style union-busting campaign a university has seen in a long time

walking is low key my favorite activity

It is "unionize or die" time in American higher ed. Yes, that means you and your special work. I don't care if you're "not political," because our enemies are very political.

I’m so sorry, why does this read like a very literal translation of a 3rd c. CE Greek rhetorician?