Behold: an article! Lauren MacDonald, "Conquest’s Mouth: Bartolomé de Olmedo, the Mercedarian Order, and the Spanish Invasion of Mexico," The Sixteenth Century Journal 57:1 (2026): 99-119. www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/EYUZQ...

On January 1, 1804, revolutionaries established the independent country of Haiti, the first nation to permanently ban slavery. As we begin a year engulfed by the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, it’s worth reading the Haitian Declaration of Independence in full. 🇭🇹

For the first and likely last time, my department let me make my own course posters.

Arrhythmia turns 10 years old today! It has evolved to the next tier of webcomic: Respectable Publication (Online). Thank you for reading. If you're not a reader, fix that! fix it!!!: arrhythmiacomic.com

FREAC! October 11! Scenic Pocatello!

Our August issue, 29.4, is now available online! This issue opens with an open-access article by Yonatan Glazer-Eytan and Giuseppe Marcocci, "Material Culture and Early Modern Archivality: A Dialogue." brill.com/view/journal...

Engaged in the most important part of writing a syllabus: figuring out which little image gets to be on the first page. (The word conquest in the title is in invisible scare-quotes.)

"The chance that this individual was preserved through the ages in a burial tomb below the permafrost in Siberia, and scientists were able to find this tattoo and make it known to the world that it exists, it is really just remarkable."

Henry Wagner speaks for all of us. (from: Henry R. Wagner, "Peter Martyr and His Works" (1946))

Delighted to share I will be delivering the AHA-PCB’s WAWH sponsored luncheon lecture this year wawh.org/wawh-in-the-...

I'm teaching "World History to 1500" this summer, and my students had an early assignment to find something cool (and man-made) from before the year 0 held in the online catalog of a museum. They've brought back some really cool objects to the class this year!

I've opened up #commissions on VGen! I'm hoping this can serve as a more organized shop front for people who are interested in getting something made by me: vgen.co/tetraluck

Map scholars do have fun. (From: Christian Jacobs, THE SOVEREIGN MAP: THEORETICAL APPROACHES IN CARTOGRAPHY THROUGHOUT HISTORY, trans. Tom Conley (The University of Chicago Press, 2006))

Academic obituaries are an amazing genre. (From: Helen Wallis, “Raleigh Ashlin Skelton.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, no. 58 (1973): 139–48. www.jstor.org/stable/621592)

If you happen to be in London and are interested come visit 🤗 www.museumofthehome.org.uk/whats-on/eve...

I've reached the "global Catholic missions" portion of my History of Christianity course, and I'll be talking about Matteo Ricci in class tomorrow. I'm charmed by Gu Qiyuan's 1598 description of him: "He has a pale face, a curly beard, and deep-seated eyes the color of bright yellow like a cat."

Last week, I had my History in Film students watch THE MISSION. Next week, for some real tonal whiplash, we're watching WALKER.

This week, students in my Witchcraft and Magic class read THE NIGHT BATTLES by Carlo Ginzburg, aka "Sorghum v. Fennel: Fight Fight Fight."

Gearing up to teach the 16th century in my History of Christianity class and thankful we've finally reached the era of cheap print and sharp woodcuts. Pamphilus Gegenbach's 1514 pamphlet, The Bundschuh: This booklet Tells of the Evil Undertaking...: www.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb0002...

Thomas Cohen's "Masculinity as Competence" (in Premodern Masculinities in Transition, eds. J. Murray and K. Eisenbichler) makes some really great points about gender roles IMO. Model masculinity is not, & has never been, based on a singular standard, & it mobilizes criteria women are also judged by.

Time to review all the serious little notes I made last summer when I was reading about maps. Good to be reminded that attempting to create a rigid and linear timeline of cartographic progression is a fool's errand! From: Alida C. Metcalf, MAPPING AN ATLANTIC WORLD, CIRCA 1500 (2020), 140.

"Researchers have come to recognize that the murals uncovered in Asicona’s house, as well as in a number of other residences in Chajul, are the product of a complex cultural amalgamation that took place in the city after the Spaniards arrived."

“No one does this,” says Amy Rosebrough, Wisconsin state archaeologist, referring to the relatively new approach of treating small, urban waterways as potential archaeological sites. “The only thing even comparable that I can think of is the mudskippers in London who walk up and down the Thames.”

"Over the past five decades, Exponent II has carved out a community where people can explore the ways in which Mormonism and feminism collide, and the friction created by those dueling identities."

"In this clearing on Smith’s Island, in Bermuda, [Michael] Jarvis—'Chainsaw Mike' to his students—is unearthing one of the first New World towns built by English colonizers."

My review of ISLA ATLÁNTICA PUERTO RICO by Jennifer Wolff (2022) was just published in the latest volume of the New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. brill.com/view/journal...

I'm teaching a graduate seminar on Atlantic History this semester, and we had our first class meeting this afternoon, and the students were great, and I'm feeling VERY excited about upcoming months of readings and discussions.