Coocoo bananas that by the end of this year I will have taught on 12 plays by Shakespeare (and a couple by some Other Guys). That’s like pretty much all the good ones.

The Winter's Tale

Finished my first round of lectures for semester 1 (all on A Midsummer Night’s Dream)! Tried to psychically project into students’ hearts my deep well of affection for the mechanicals. Love u guys

Gen AI ys coole yf you reallye fuckinge hate water

LOOOOVE being an AI hater. Greatly enjoy being a ~dissenting voice in institutional debates. Adore being the only person from the school of humanities in any room where AI is being discussed and watching everyone’s eyes dart towards me like I’m a dog on a chain

Some updates: This week I graduated with my PhD and go to wear a very very silly hat!! (See pictured with my inimitable supervisor Kate Flaherty) Then I flew straight back to NZ where a couple of weeks ago I started my Lectureship at the University of Auckland. Lots going on!! All a bit mad!!

Exhibits at the state library of Victoria are absolutely incredible. Very very exciting to see a copy of topsell’s four footed beasts IN THE FLESH!! Love these freaky guys.

This week i am at the @anzamems.bsky.social conference in Melbourne! On Tuesday, i attended the wonderful PG/ECR palaeography workshop (decided I love Bâtard). Yesterday I presented my paper on prophecy in Shakespearean romance (it went well thanks!) and the brilliant keynote by Leah DeVun.

I do love going to see independent theatre but what I REALLY love is debriefing with friends afterwards about everything we hated

Amongst all the horrors I am happy to announce that I submitted my PhD thesis yesterday evening at approximately 5:30pm. She weighed in at about 200 pages and 80,000 words xxxxxxx

There is currently a trend of folks designing themselves a “personal curriculum” of books to read and think about, usually culminating in a reflective/analytical piece. This tells me that the kids yearn for the humanities seminar.

It’s officially spring!!! 🌺 🌸🌷 so I have to submit my thesis before I’m incapacitated by my yearly debilitating hay fever

I have just submitted my short video presentation for this awesome symposium! Join me to chat predators, and check out the awesome program of presenters. 🐻🐺

Not to complain about things that don’t matter but I’m already on the brim and I just paid $7.60 for a large black coffee that is the size of a medium anywhere else

There are a full 40 pages of poems and musings and complimentary epistles in honour of Beaumont and Fletcher in their first Folio of 1647 before we even get to the catalogue page and I think blurb culture has really gone too far

Have you registered yet for this year's #Globe4Globe? Join us for 24 hours of Shakespeare and environmental justice, with a brilliant line-up of speakers! Free and online. events.humanitix.com/globe4globe

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

Chapter is actually good I was just having a feeling after 10pm which is never wise!!!

Love slaving late into the night on the most mid 30 pages of academic prose anybody has ever had the misfortune to read or write

I’m reviewing the Chicago style guide which has changed since I started my PhD and can I just say thank u to whoever decided to remove chapter page ranges. I owe you my life

Great solidarity from #ANU staff, students, and broader community today in the face of mass ANU job cuts. It was also fantastic to be joined by Senator @davidpocock.bsky.social and @lauranutallgreens.bsky.social. ✊ Join the @nteunion.bsky.social today at www.nteu.au/join.

Hi I’m in Brisbane at #ANZSA this week (is there a hashtag??? No??) and today I presented on the “turmoil and trouble” panel about anthropophagous animals, hellmouths, and shax’s late romances. I promise I am alive and doing things

Elderly relatives talking about you at family functions:

I feel like I'm losing my mind. Here is the transcript of what Zohran Mamdani actually said about the phrase "globalize the intifada." This is his "refusal to disavow it." This is what has people terrified. Just fucking read it. Source: podscripts.co/podcasts/the...

Don’t make me tap the sign but the sign is all the studies about how AI makes people actually worse at stuff and atrophies your brain while also inducing religious psychosis for some reason

This is of course from Coleridge, “a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on; and so did I.” -Rime of the Ancient Mariner

unfortunately my Fun Thesis about Magic seems to accidentally be about climate disaster, capitalism, and biopolitics. :( :( hate critical theory

Back in Australia after a Long Month and have mere months to finish and submit my dissertation!!! Thoughts and prayers welcome

Every time I’m in new York I say (jokingly) “greatest city in the world because where else could you get a sandwhich” but I actually genuinely mean it

My croaky conference voice has progressed into full blown laryngitis (thank god not before my panel presentation or that would have been very tough). Anyway who wants to see me check out of this hotel entirely through interpretive dance

Seminar at #shax2025 and #rensa2025 panel both done and dusted, with lots of coffee and plenty to think about!! Special shoutout to the vegan breakfast burritos at Trident Bookstore Cafe and to the bagels from Pavement, I would be dead without u xxx

Fantastic set of papers at #RenSA25 on 'Reading Bodies' by an all-star crew from ANU English! Kate Flaherty, Lucy Boon, @ohwowbee.bsky.social & Hannah Upton, chaired by @claireghansen.bsky.social. Great representation by the Aussie crew so far from home! 🦘📚🤓

It’s #shax2025 and #rensa2025 next week in Boston! I will be in a seminar about Reweirding and/as Rewilding on Thursday if you want to hear me chat about man-eating wild animals and in a panel called Reading Bodies on Saturday if you want to hear about ~prophetic feelings~

I’ve been in the US for a couple of weeks & every day my dad watches the news for consecutive hours. all I hear is the most clownish buffoonery as the malicious destruction of the entire government and public service sector is carefully documented step by step. How do u guys deal w this honestly

Report back from the magic castle: I still LOVE whimsy!!!!

Important developments in my life as a nepo baby: short notice invite to the Magic Castle because “my daughter bee loves magicians”

This should be mandatory reading for scholars across the board arxiv.org/abs/2502.19190

Yesterday I presented my PhD exit seminar to a room full of my panel and colleagues and friends, and despite my days of preceding terror, it went very well! Folks from across the college (and other colleges!) came to listen and asked great questions. Sometimes things work out well!!

Perhaps framing humanities degrees as primarily a vehicle for “transferable skills” and teaching a vaguely defined notion of “critical thinking” was bad for the humanities

Update from this past weekend

I do need to write my PhD exit seminar presentation in the next couple of weeks but have you considered that instead I am making a presentation about megalodon for my friend’s birthday?? Have you even thought of that?

Insane that I can just….. subscribe to Slavoj Zizek’s Substack newsletter. Like he’s just out here

It is *very* important to understand that Jews were never the only target of the 1930s Nazis and they are not the only targets of today’s Nazis. A Nazi salute is not only antisemitic. It is also racist, ableist, and queerphobic.

begging pleading wishing for a journal to reject me so I can just move on with my life

I think I belong in a cabin in the Pacific Northwest making jam or other concoctions, not in this office at 7pm on a Monday night

Brief moment of flow today where between like 2:30 and 5 I genuinely lost track of time while writing. Turns out all I needed was a solid 4 hours of panicked self-flagellation and a bowl of pho to kickstart the process

Pleased to announce I received my first postdoc rejection this weekend!! Looking forward to many more months of rejection ahead of me 💕

thankfully things have since only gotten finer

every time I receive notes on a draft I just chant “I love criticism I love criticism I love criticism” under my breath like some sort of sick masochistic mantra while I open the tracked changes