And then by virtue of @triciamatthew.bsky.social 's Race and Regency Lab, we connected a recent acquisition of a plantation map--a plantation owned by Jane's father's cousin --to the work of archival recoveries. Read the post and the links and Tricia's scholarship! 5/ jcblibrary.org/news/race-an...

I wrote a birthday card to Jane Austen for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social. lareviewofbooks.org/article/happ...

Today is Austen’s birthday! I’ve been thinking (a lot) about my place in the Austen250 commemorations. The “how it started” vs. “how it’s going” of it all. 2017

Defy the icy weather, Torontonians, and come to the Toronto Reference Library to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th with me and some very smart & funny Austenians: Alex Hernandez, Tom Keymer, Karen Vallihora. This coming Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in Beeton Hall at the Reference Library.

Just heartsick about this latest spate of shootings. Heartsick.

Guess which Regency figure I’d have tea with? Hear me discuss sugar, archives, #quilts, #quilting and my next book project! #ShakeRace #RaceB4Race #booksky #history #artsky

www.raceandregency.org/podcast The Race and Regency Pod Episode No. 4 with Kim Hall!

Friends, if you want to learn a bit more abt The Sweet Taste of Empire, watch this INCREDIBLE conversation with @triciamatthew.bsky.social w.bsky.social, Debapriya Sarkar, Jennifer Morgan, @kwazana.bsky.social & Tapiwa Gambura! www.youtube.com/live/a-Npxq-... Then you can buy it at 40% discount.

www.raceandregency.org/podcast The Race and Regency Pod: New Episode featuring Mathelinda Nabugodi

Doesn't seem like its trickled down to classes yet, but bould you imagine being at admissions at another school and trying to interpret equivalent classes & degrees for transfer? No one will be able to figure out what people were studying in class.

The vast body of research that Ken Burns relied upon to make his new documentary on the American Revolution would be practically impossible to be produced today, what with the defunding of humanistic scholarship, the collapse of stable academic jobs, the attack on public history & academic freedom.🗃️

"[admin]...who regard the...students of their own universities with such contempt as to be undeserving of the education that in many cases those administrators themselves, or their parents, or their children received...are an enemy of the educational enterprise" 🎁 link www.wsj.com/opinion/mont...

A quote: "In the Trump era, we’re familiar with the idea that Stage IV capitalism has collapsed satire into reality."

15 depts in College of Humanities and Social Sciences will be completely eliminated and replaced by ~ School of Human Behavior & Well-Being ~ Center for Interdisciplinary Programs & Writing Studies ~ Institute for Y (e.g. Intelligence, Value, and Societal Structures) Wth? Sounds like BBC show W1A.

It feels like we’re well into this process at my institution.

More devastating "restructuring," this time at Montclair State.

www.wsj.com/opinion/mont... Another one of my colleagues weighs in on the “restructuring” of our home college. This time in the Wall Street Journal. It’s paywalled, so screenshots to follow.

This is a grotesque assault on faculty expertise and self-governance. I was fortunate enough to start my academic career as an assistant professor at Montclair State. Solidarity with MSU humanists being buzzworded into a new School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions none of them want.

Ghastly. I am not surprised to see the increasingly sinister term 'Well-Being' deployed in these plans.

Montclair State University has with no reasonable justification replaced all departments in the humanities and social sciences with four non-disciplinary units, seemingly randomly chosen by uni executive leadership with no regard for faculty input or governance. Terrible & portentous

Weapons in the dissolution of the humanities are "Born-old buzzwords": “synergy,” “multipliers,” “mindset,” “vision” (as a verb), “agility,” “impactfulness,” “clients,” “entrepreneurship,” “branding,” “future-proofing.” Adam Rzepka on the pursuit of “excellence.” academeblog.org/2025/11/13/t...

"This urgent order to clear away the entire, centuries-old idea of disciplinary governance in one fell swoop is both radical and without even a functional ideology—an especially pure plane of the empty-mind austerity satirized from Office Space to Severance." Adam Rzepka wp.me/p8xr4h-dil

This is definitely coming to many more public universities. Particularly the dissolution of departments and creation of large schools/institutes.

1. These changes aren’t about budgets or enrollments. 2. My colleague has been deeply involved in this :waves hands: all along the way. What he shares here isn’t performative handwringing wrapped in clever rhetoric.

academeblog.org/2025/11/13/t... My colleague has captured what is currently happening at my institution. I have found the chipper rhetoric announcing it particularly depressing.

If you have tenure at Texas A&M and aren't maliciously emailing the president a dozen times every day to ask if you can say this or you can say that, then what's the point in having tenure?

Completed full rotations today! 😀🥹

The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person. The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person. People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives. And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.

ICYMI, my piece in @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social on what Zohran Mamdani learned from his mother's films. I published a book on Mira Nair's films in 2018.. Here I focus on "Mississippi Masala" (-->immigration/ refugees) and "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" (-->Palestine). pghrev.com/what-mamdani...

More: I remember that my tweet had only noted I was reading and enjoying the article (no critique in the guise of friendly observation), that the women were senior to us both, that I wrote the scholar **immediately** to clarify that I thought the article was very smart. We shared amused emojis.

Just had a Twitter flashback: The time I tried to promote a junior scholar’s really good article and these aggressive white women academics came out of the woodwork to stop the bullying…THAT WASN’T actually happening. Like AT ALL. Anyway, I like it here better.

After 13 years, Mississippi Democrats have broken the Republican Party’s supermajority in the Mississippi Senate. Democrats flipped two GOP-held Senate seats and one House seat in the special elections. buff.ly/nTvLlFI

That speech. 👊🏽

A sneak peek at the cover of next week’s issue, which celebrates Zohran Mamdani’s historic win. #NewYorkerCovers https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/451hFM

Democrat Mikie Sherrill will succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, marking the first time since 1961 that one party has won three consecutive terms in the New Jersey governor’s mansion. https://to.pbs.org/47GNkpO

BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York City mayoral race, NBC News projects. nbcnews.to/4nIzNUC

MAMDANI!!!!!

The second episode of The Race and Regency podcast is up! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

Donated. Been here. Everyone is great.

The Andrew formerly known as prince.

Tomorrow!

Save the Date! 11/11 at 4PM: Join the Department of History for a conversation with @kawulf.bsky.social and Leslie M. Harris (Northwestern University) on Wulf’s latest publication, Lineage: Genealogy and the Politics of Connection in Early America. Free and open to the public! Learn more:

Literally shaking my head.

I’m in physical therapy to recover my mobility after breaking my femur. Each session I sit on a recumbent bike pushing the pedals a tiny bit forward and a tiny bit backward. I have great support. I still can’t complete a full rotation. This is a post about trying to get my manuscript to my editor.

Found one of the study guides my mom used for her citizenship test (1970s). She passed, but we encouraged her just to keep her Dutch citizenship.