'legegs'

It's one of those days when the only way forward is to buy the new Mountain Goats album

Wondering whether any metal bands have ever used a theorbo onstage for one of their slow numbers, and if not why not

Annual whiteboard sketch of invention, nature's child, fleeing stepdame study's blows

Current task: making the response to readers sound less grumpy

The deadline is still over a month away, but reminder about this @themhra.bsky.social funded conference @fairbanc.bsky.social and I are organising on the exciting subject of **early modern practical texts**! 📅 Abstracts due 24/11. Full details can be found here: sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...

Did a Triffid design this notebook?

Remembering when, in the wake of a conversation in which I questionably proposed ideological overlap between Aphra Behn and Jilly Cooper, I produced this mashup:

Rules of the new semester: No matter how easy to find a given item may be on your module's VLE, if you are trying to guide a student to it in real time it will mysteriously disappear

Because obviously 'Basket of deplorables' worked really well for Hillary

Delighted to share that my first book The Experience of Work in Early Modern England (co-written with the fantastic @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, and Hannah Robb) has been published and is available free and Open Access! doi.org/10.1017/9781... #earlymodern #economic #history

this poem is astonishing and I am so grateful to Eileen for bringing it to our attention last year & again this year.

Michael Mann and Peter Hotez are leading experts on climate change and vaccines, respectively, and in recent years, have both been targeted by those who seek to discredit them. That experience led the two to come together to write the new book "Science Under Siege." www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/w...

📢 Today the Academy launches a major new report urging action to tackle a growing crisis in our universities. Cuts to courses mean more regions than ever are ‘cold spots’ for access to many SHAPE subjects - with even more at risk. 🧵 📍Read the full report: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...

So pleased to see this special issue come to fruition.

@obscuredrama.bsky.social: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

BBC News seem suicidally bent on ignoring political parties with many more MPs, more rational policies and more supporters than Reform. Suicidal because one of the first things Reform would do should they ever get near real power is defund and throttle the BBC, founded to be impartial and unbiased.

Loudly tooting this CFP, please retweet: sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...

Great to see _Mason & Dixon_, which I love, getting its due here. Slightly disconcerting to see almost half of the novels/collections dismissed as thematically interesting but basically incoherent. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

we need to change direction and we need to be serious about it

Seriously considering a trip to London to see The Wise Woman of Hogsden on 22 Oct

Award-winning author and broadcaster Islam Issa hopes to show the “essential” worth of the humanities after taking on a new @mybcu.bsky.social role that aims to increase public understanding of the subjects #AcademicSky #highered

The new issue of The Journal of Marlowe Studies is now available. Over 200 pages of original Marlovian research, book reviews and performance reviews, all open access. journals.shu.ac.uk/index.php/Ma...

Please help me share the CFP for this Literature Compass Special Issue dedicated to the work of Simon J James and covering key Victorian and Edwardian writers like H. G. Wells, George Gissing, Dickens, Wilde, George Du Maurier, and Conan-Doyle on behalf of Hadas Elber-Aviram.

How it started: me trying to research a chapter on prosody How it's going: me watching videos of Matt Berry and wondering if 'Yes I can hear you Clem Fandango' is a catalectic blank verse line

Can we please stop using this image on books about Marlowe? Please? www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Renaiss...

Suddenly possessed with the possibility that hokey pokey, aka cinder toffee, may be etymologically derived from hocus pocus, a corruption of 'hoc est enim corpus meum'. So when you eat it you're participating in an antiCatholic parody of the Eucharist

Congratulations, Doug! I look forward to checking this out!

Publicising this game developed by my wonderful colleague Dr Maisha Wester: 'A narrative-driven social justice game exploring the suppressed histories of anti-Blackness in the US and UK.' codedblack.info It's getting a lot of attention at festivals etc.; reposts appreciated!

This is one of two essays about the Mountain Goats I have out this year hopefully - the second is in an anthology about early modern literature and music, looking at John Darnielle’s uses of the past in a wider sense - this one is more about the transformations of the personal past through art

My review of the Richmond Shakespeare Society’s production of Arden of Faversham is now live. I'm grateful to @oldfortunatus.bsky.social for bringing it to my attention. You can read it here if interested 😊 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Dowden on Shakespeare gets a bad press these days but this jab at Coleridge hits home

Over the next few weeks, we're highlighting the 8 articles and 8 books shortlisted for this year's RHS Early Career Article and First Book Prizes. Today we feature 'Female Servants in Early Modern England', bit.ly/43OeABX, by Charmian Mansell 1/2

Another thing to pressure my MP about: data centres don't have to report water use making it impossible to plan for future water needs; yet the government will monitor water use in homes using "smart meters". This is not just dumb. It's hypocritical, dehumanizing, and an ecocide-promoting policy.

Mountain Goats/Thomas Nashe overlap klaxon, a cheering start to the day

Acceptable coinages, Y/N?

A bit morbid but I could genuinely look forward to the prospect of being turned into a reef. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Little update on Facebook's decision to shut my account.

Keen to know how UK SHAPE (Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences) graduates deploy their skills? Launched today, this British Academy online resource provides a data-rich toolkit with an interactive dashboard. 2/2

Hey #earlymodern folks! Latest issue of *Shakespeare* just out, with a special section on 'Health and Wellbeing' guest-edited by Joan Fitzpatrick. www.tandfonline.com/toc/rshk20/2...

I'm curating a collection of good reads on the horrors of AI that I can assign to students. So far I've got Teen Vogue on the environment, and the @guinz.bsky.social Substack piece. Any other recs? Needs to be short so that students will actually read it.

I detest the chumminess that belies the deception here.

OUP published my first book and did a fine job of it. The involvement of professional human people at every stage did not strike me as a luxury or something that could be easily disposed of.

I must have this immediately

Couldn't resist bringing this up while discussing mithridate (and Mithridates of Pontus) in a tutorial www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

'You can now access electronic legal deposit ... just not with us'