An observation: I'm training a model to transcribe a 19th century ledger. Some of the people listed in the ledger are Black. Although the handwriting for each entry is the same, the model in its current state is much worse at correctly transcribing the names of Black people.

I was recently at The Mall at Short Hills, and in front of the Louboutin store (opposite the Dior store) a woman tried to sell me life insurance, and actually said, gesturing towards V and E in their stroller, "it would be a shame if anything were to happen to you..." Anyway, New Jersey.

Today I’m remembering the very last people in America to be freed from chattel slavery, who were not the Texans who learned of the Emancipation Proclamation on this day in 1865, but thousands of people in Delaware, Kentucky and New Jersey, who were freed by the 13th six months later.

and if I might be a *smidge* petty here, I'd respond to those critics that there are no humanities scholars better able to speak to this moment than than those coming from the DH crowd—experts in how language, computation, culture, and humanistic theory intersect

This, by Dwight A. McBride, is beautifully clear critique of the idea that new methods and new subjects are inherently non-rigorous.

I'm transcribing New York almshouse admissions records from 1818, and I'm having trouble parsing this line. It's a note that doesn't correspond to any of the admissions ledger columns, and is attached to an entry for a thirty-year old Black woman. Is it a name? An institution?

My trash folder in Zotero is a graveyard of the different ways I've tried to organize the historiography of this new project.

The whole thread is worthwhile, but this point is key. AI is, to the degree it engages with the potential sum of human knowledge, restricting what we might know, not expanding it. And to the degree that it is killing the skills required to read what it can't, it's killing knowledge.

Most Americans, who take part in a 250th event will not be doing so in Washington, DC or as part of the president's "Freedom 250" propaganda machine. They will join neighbors in the their own communities as part of an event organized locally. There are so many positive and meaningful events...

We're thrilled to announce the #ACIS 2025 book awards! Congratulations to all our winners and many thanks to everyone who served on the committees.

Congratulations to our 2025 Fellowship winners! We cannot wait to see the fantastic completed projects these scholars are working on.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston came to welcome #NationalACIS26 to town and to thank the conference organizing committee!

Absolutely fascinating paper by @emilymfg.bsky.social this morning at @acirishstudies.bsky.social on the relationship between photography, surveillance, and Irish anti-eviction aggression

Especially interesting in light of the #ACIS26 discussions about solidarities between Ireland and Mexico.

Hot off the press! Patrick Mahoney's @patrickjmahone1.bsky.social new book Fenian Empire, available now: lnkd.in/eW3FFERw "Teeming with individual Fenians, splits, spies, and swagger, it is a captivating read contending with ideas which are at once both historical and contemporary." Ú Ní Bhroiméil

An emerging theme of ACIS 2026 is the centrality of public engagement in Irish Studies - which I think is the answer to "why Irish Studies?"

There's a lot on this morning's Bluesky that speaks to issues we raised at the Irish American 250 panel yesterday.

An auspicious start to ACIS 2026, and a lovely paper-finishing view.

I'm writing a conference paper about inmates in Bellevue, and was just delighted to come across @lincolnmullen.com's gender package for R, with references to a co-written paper by @cblevins.bsky.social in the support docs. Also tickled by library(gender).

the thing about tenure line professors forming Pennsylvania’s largest public sector union in 50 years is unions are for everybody!! profs are public servants! and we're doing all the big publics! we're doing Urbana we're doing Michigan we're doing California! www.statecollege.com/articles/psu...

Historians warned against cherry-picking. But now others are making big historical claims at scale—and shaping public debate. We need a response. Critical search. Disciplined selection. computationalhistory.substack.com/p/beyond-che...

This is not my photo, but this was just a wild sign to see on the parkway this morning.

This reporting illustrates one of the core claims of my new project on Bellevue and immigration - that institutions and their logics have afterlives. Even when they're renamed and reimagined, they haunt what follows.

Peter's work deftly weaves together cultural and historical analysis, drawing together metaphor and archives to show us something new about technologies of the Famine.

The artist is named Liz Mitchell, and she just exhibited on Witness Trees (trees that were alive for historic events) and the American Revolution. It's beautiful and thought provoking, and anyone who can see it, should. www.lizmitchellfineart.com/new-page-1

my wonderful local, Watchung Booksellers, is Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year ! / cc @publisherswkly.bsky.social www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Postdoc in Digital Humanities at WashU in St. Louis. Deadline is May 1. Also, St. Louis is wonderful. apply.interfolio.com/185361

Two pieces of work advice that are really sticking with me these days: 1) "New York is a wonderful place to launch projects but a terrible place to finish them. Everything you do as you move around the city is part of the start of your new work."

Meet the new head of the City's municipal archives—Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, who's currently the dean of the Barnard College library, and also a writer and zine-maker. And other links to start your day! hellgatenyc.com/mayor-mamdan...

Spending time with the NYC almshouse records from the early 19th c also means spending time with the many children who were institutionalized while they "on trial" with a family for adoption.

I'm still reading Making the Forever War, and in concert with @timothyburke.bsky.social's newsletter today thinking about how much the fundamental inconsistencies in Cold War U.S. self-conceptions were like slow-leaking poison.

I left my copy of this in Maine and so went out and bought a second one to help me think about American politics right now. It's just as good as I remember from the first read

This is why I keep it out of my classrooms. This is why I teach my students to be careful/critical in their consumption of gAI. This is why universities shouldn't be so bloody ridiculously uncritical in forcing gAI on faculty, staff and students. We're inculcating dependence on a catastrophic scale

Two outstanding legal historians on why Congress wrote “birthright citizenship” (and exactly what they meant) into the 14th Amendment. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/o...

San José State (and the other Cal State campuses) are gems, and often unappreciated, or even worse, unnoticed in higher ed discourse.

Solidarity with our NYU CFU-UAW colleagues!

This entire thread sums up my professional life. We've convinced ourselves "this isn't going anywhere" when it's barely even here. Tressie McMillan Cottom mentioned a week or so ago in a video that we're acting as if it's already a certainty...all because those who profit from our compliance said so

I did an interview with WBHM about donations made by enslaved people to Irish famine relief, and talked about solidarity and humanitarianism on this St. Patrick's day: www.wbhm.org/local-news/2...

I agree with everything Hannah said here and also thing (especially if the student is an undergraduate) that dating a student should be a fireable offense.

A professor who pursues non-academic conversations with a student in one of his classes, who solicits a social relationship as soon as the semester ends, who brings her that kind of gift when they meet? THAT PROFESSOR BEGAN BEHAVING INAPPROPRIATELY BEFORE THE SEMESTER ENDED.

History at Bates is hiring a 2-year VAP who can teach the history of the Americas, including a one-semester survey of Latin America from 1491 to the present. I'm not involved in the search, but very happy to talk to anyone about working at Bates! apply.interfolio.com/183291

NJ is doing a great interpretation of Maine at the minute.

We are releasing this report FULL of ways workers can have a voice in workplace tech as Gallup releases polling: “employees who say they have a lot of influence over tech adopted in their workplace are more than twice as likely to report high job satisfaction” news.gallup.com/poll/692693/...

A few months ago I realized my rare and valuable skill—writing code as a historian—was still valuable but no longer rare. Now I'm thinking about what it means when the technical barriers to digital history drop away.

Briefly returning from my social media hiatus to share that my article for the Journal of the Early Republic, on Philadelphian freedom-seeking in the Haitian Revolutionary diaspora, is now live (thank you to @chelseastieber.bsky.social for alerting me!). muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/artic...

Saw a thoughtful thread about AI, don't want to QT or argue. But. The biggest rage factor with LLMs is the people who, because genAI is transformative for coding, think it's transformative for everything else, because they devalue every other form of work and labor and knowledge.

The AHA/Roy Rosenzweig Prize went to Envisioning Seneca Village this year. RRCHNM's founder also wrote about Seneca Village, and Alexandra Miller dug into the Rosenzweig papers to trace the connections.

We've committed to a family trip to Dublin for RSVP this July. Twins' first overseas flight, and first time in Ireland. Balancing excitement and terror.

Plot twist: In 1756, the Publick Whipper himself was a resident of the poorhouse, causing the city to increase "said whippers Sallary" to Twelve pounds per annum.

Someone asked me recently what the most surprising finds of my sabbatical research so far were, and this is the thing that continues to preoccupy me: