The histories of public health institutions are inexorably intertwined with incarceration. The Bellevue Almshouse, which eventually became Bellevue Hospital, made money in its early years by charging New Yorkers to outsource the punishment of servants and enslaved people.

I wonder if there doesn't need to be something about reputation in the discourse around AI, black box algorithms and scholarship. I wouldn't trust any of the LLMs to summarize the extant research on my current project because I can't check the work.

🗃️ The US attracted more foreign-born people from more places than any other nation in history. We need language to acknowledge that central fact of American history. But we also need language that goes beyond the idea that the United States is, or ever was, simply a “nation of immigrants.” 🧵1/10

The nicest little religious society archive, open from 11 to 1 on Tuesdays, staffed by volunteers who let me stay late (!), brought me tea and cake (!!) and then their dog (!!!) in to help support my research.

In particular, I'm interested in his view that unlike the sciences, replication is not possible in the humanities. In my review, I give some reasons in favor of thinking it is possible. (I've screenshotted the relevant bits).

Are you an environmental humanist? Do you like hanging out with other smart environmental humanists? Would you like to do so for a week this summer in Maine? Then I highly recommend Colby's Summer Institute in the Environmental Humanities! (app due 2/6/26) cah.colby.edu/initiatives/...

Coming soon (June 2026) as the next book in the Glucksman Irish Diaspora Series @nyupress.bsky.social @gihnyu.bsky.social A powerful reinterpretation of global Irish nationalism by @patrickjmahone1.bsky.social nyupress.org/search-resul...

This is a fascinating list and I’m very honored to find THE TROUBLE OF COLOR here among the 2025 books recognized by thé African American Intellectual History Society! www.aaihs.org/the-best-bla...

Added more resources to the Anti-GenAI bibliography! If you have links you think I may have missed while I was in Ireland (November 23 to today), please do drop them! I'll be so glad to add them (and self-promotion is welcome). catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...

Do you write research software for the humanities? Consider writing a software paper to share your work! Reach out to me, @nolauren.bsky.social , or any of the other editors at the CHR journal with your questions or ideas.

Speaking of great books on Irish America, my @irishhiststudies.bsky.social book review on @anelisehshrout.bsky.social's excellent 'Aiding Ireland: the Great Famine and the rise of transnational philanthropy' has just come out www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This is definitely exciting, *and* for the time being I am sticking with Transkribus because it gives me a level of granular control that's necessary for my project. Gemini gives me some good results, but enough hallucinations/probabilistic and wrong gap filling to make it impractical.

AI is ruining everything, Exhibit #45392

I am pleases to report that I am replacing my AI-coded em-dashes with semicolons.

Fantastic new work on the impact of (reported) faculty sexual misconduct. Lurking in the findings of this paper is the reality that reporting hurts survivors (and the broader community) more than it helps.

If you are looking for joy, I highly recommend showing Labyrinth to toddlers (especially ones who like to dance).

I'm working on the history of a local home, and becoming a bit obsessed with the second owner - Adam Leroy Jones. He was the inaugural dean of admissions at Columbia & tasked with keeping the college "Anglo-Saxon," a member of the American Eugenics Society, part of the group who developed the SATs.

I take no pleasure at all in reporting that past me did not adequately document her code, and that future me is now wasting a lot of time re-doing work. I will take some pleasure in using past me as an example for students.

Whatever strategy you’re about to suggest, we’ve thought about it. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

#DH folks with macOS development experience - the lovely folks at Figure53 are looking for a new colleague!

I will never stop being tired of Digital Humanities professors who never approach archivists as peers deeming fit to tell archivists how and why to do their jobs differently. It happens time and time again, rarely with a spirit of collaboration and often with an uncomfortable tech-disruptor energy

As the History Representative for ACIS, I have the distinct privilege to chair the Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book. If you, or someone you know, has a book copyrighted in 2025 in Irish Studies please do consider submitting! Details here. 🗃️ #speirgorm

We went to the zoo this weekend, and the teenager taking tickets for the carousel was casually reading Claudio Saunt's West of the Revolution.

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

I am in a meeting about whether the cemetery board should hire some goats - and one sheep - to mow. This is the best meeting I have ever been in.

Video of our launch of Rituals of Migration @gihnyu.bsky.social @nyupress.bsky.social is now up on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qh1... @irpinaingiro.bsky.social @hidehirota.bsky.social @grainnemcevoy.bsky.social @ciantmcmahon.bsky.social @josephsciorra.bsky.social @appalachianphilly.bsky.social

NPR reports that "The Science on Tylenol and autism isn't clear." The blessing and curse of the scientific method is that it reflects a commitment to skepticism and constant re-evaluation of knowledge. There is ALWAYS room for doubt. 🧪 1/x

Now DATA EMPIRE is US official!

NJ PBS shutting down next summer. “15yrs ago Gov. Christie ended 4 decades of state funding for public TV, forcing them to find a new funder. The state cut $750k in funding this yr, but that was hardly the fatal blow; that came from the end of federal funds.” newjerseyglobe.com/media/new-je...

1. Modeling data does not a historical argument make. 2. Lefebvre might have written an early classic, but his sources are not the complete 'archive' of Great Fear rumors. 1/n

Today I learned that John Gillis - author of Islands of the Mind, a text formative of my approach to Atlantic history - also wrote books about early modern marriage, which I'm now reading to help a friend craft their wedding ceremony.

welcome home, we here press ❤️‍🔥 we're honored that our inaugural project will be to publish @dorothyjberry.bsky.social's ***the house archives built & other thoughts on black archival possibilities*** coming october 2025 www.weherepress.org

I've been critical of the U(C) as an institution, but I am also incredibly grateful for the education I received there in the early 2000s. The current institutional approach is a betrayal of the life of the mind ethos that drew me to UChicago in the first place. www.compactmag.com/article/the-...

Starting this new project by pretending like I'm doing comps again - making lists, taking notes in a template, reading in all kinds of weird poses.

continue to collect best e.g.s of assignable articles, especially shorter than these great ones! will compile, along with assignment prompts, this week

“The AI in the study probably prompted doctors to become over-reliant on its recommendations, ‘leading to clinicians becoming less motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance,’ the scientists said in the paper.”

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

We've packed up our Maine house and relocated to a small apartment in NJ for my year of sabbatical. Any #skystorians advice about starting a whole new project with a year of unstructured time? Alternately, any academic writing groups in the NY/NJ area open to a new member?

Tenure-track African American history job (19th c.) at Bates College in Maine, for those on the market. Go get it, and good luck! #bskystorians apply.interfolio.com/170148

Many of the places that loom largest in queer history—NYC’s Stonewall Inn, San Francisco’s Castro district—tend to focus on gay men & urban spaces. A fuller history is told by Cameron Blevins and Annelise Heinz. @pcb-aha.bsky.social‬ www.ucpress.edu/blog-posts/m...

I've been finding @timothyburke.bsky.social's essays about AI and higher ed incredibly useful. Today's helped make concrete a vague idea I've been kicking around for awhile.

As many of you know, I'm no longer with the NEH. But I'm happy to say that I will be able to continue my work doing DH funding! I have recently started as an advisor to Schmidt Sciences, helping them with their HAVI program that funds DH projects. www.schmidtsciences.org/humanities-a...

For the @puddingviz.bsky.social, I explored which animals we gender, and why. Come for the extremely cute interactive viz of animals, stay for the extremely nerdy etymology of the ladybug. Story: pudding.cool/2025/07/kids...

There has been a great thread of humanitarian policy qua foreign policy at #SHAFR2025, and quite a few papers on the problems of apparently temporary crises creating permanent aid structures.

I laid it out as clearly as I could. Sorry it’s so long.

Wow no one could have predicted this. I’m sure AI will fix all this up. futurism.com/computer-sci...

Trinity College Dublin board votes to cut ties with Israeli universities and companies