I’m having intro chats with dissertation students this fortnight, and one of them asked which historians I’d recommend for beautiful writing they could absorb to further develop their own writing style. So, gang, which are your favourite *writers* among historians, any time, any topic, any place. 🗃️

📢Book Event📢 📗Invoking Empire with Darren Reid 📅Sep 18 Join us to hear more about Darren Reid’s latest book, Invoking Empire: Imperial citizenship and Indigenous rights across the British World, 1860-1900. @alanlester.bsky.social will moderate the event RSVP here: www.nacbs.org/event-detail...

In the current climate, we have gone back to basic science is good and science is objective kind of public discourses. How do we continue to write critical histories of science and medicine in this situation? How do we keep developing the sophistication of our critique over the last 50 years?

A new reason for not being a member of the AHA, which I long have felt does not represent historians at small, public, primarily teaching colleges in the slightest. This strikes me as lazy committee think from an organization that has failed to anticipate any of our problems as a profession.

1/3 It’s a strange thing to say that anyone is a prisoner of geography. People are imprisoned by other people. Prisons are not natural, geographical features. We have to ask who created them and why. www.thetimes.com/world/middle...

DuckDuckGo has added a feature to filter out AI images from search results.

Anyway I came on here to BEG academics to stop using AI in their journal submissions. Yes, that includes for proofing, arranging reference lists etc. I am currently staring at a perfectly decent article, written by a human being, with a useless AI-generated bibliography full of errors.

"...adopting a critical approach to settler family histories helps challenge the myth of Canadian benevolence, solidifies our understanding of the foundational violence of settler colonialism, and exemplifies the truth–telling that needs to come with settler reconciliation to Indigenous Peoples..."

I do firmly believe that refusing to outsource your basic cognitive functions to LLMs right now - as so many are stumbling over themselves to do right now, like hogs trotting to a pile of slop that’s been set up inside of a butcher’s delivery truck - will very much pay off in a few years.

This is why I bang on, whenever I can, about the value of having a browseable archive catalogue, and, you know, browsing through it: rather than thinking you can just zap into a specific target.

Darlings, the first time I'm seeing it in print. Thank you to @dr-di.bsky.social for the photo. Have so many feels. Still awaiting mine. Please share pics when you receive yours. And, request your libraries to order it. All royalties donated to Gaza. Onwards comrades. us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/th...

Prepping for my trip to London & Brussels in a couple of days! 🇬🇧 🇧🇪 To be back in the archives! And to escape this Tennessean heat! 😆

Today @nichecanada.bsky.social I introduce *A Cold Colonialism* — its origin story, its main characters and arguments, and its potential to shift how we think about exploration, the North, and colonialism’s relationships with both. Enjoy! #cdnhist #envhist #Arctic niche-canada.org/2025/06/03/n...

I wrote a book -- during lockdown and maternity leave -- about imperial culture in contemporary Britain, exploring how the empire shaped British society, politics and ordinary people's lives -- from the stuttering run up to the Second World War, to the televised end of the second Elizabethan age.

question for humanities academics (would appreciate retweets). Has anyone made a large index of humanities talk series that are on Zoom or have Zoom components? It seems like something that might be useful.....

this obsession with a handful of high status universities is also low key an indication of elite disdain for the institutions that educate most americans who attend colleges and universities

Jesus fucking Christ. Having been in the Humanities for the last 20 years what the fuck? The ONLY ONLY ONLY path forward is solidarity I sure as shit didn’t feel it from a lot of colleagues during the last generational assault on my disciplines but I fucking am going to demonstrate it

Join us for a free public lecture by @metmuseum.org conservator Mindell Dubansky, on “A Parallel History of Books and Blooks” at 5:30 p.m. ET on 2 June in UVA’s Edgar Shannon Library, Room 330 or via Zoom livestream. Details at rarebookschool.org/programs/lectures/. @uvalibrary.bsky.social

BREAKING: Texas lawmakers passed S.B. 37, which dramatically increases state control of public universities. Allowing politically appointed bureaucrats to police curricula and override faculty expertise is a direct threat to academic freedom in Texas.

It's #DigitalFriday ! This is my routine appeal to #skystorians & all academics prepping for teaching to share any software, hardware, online resources (primary, secondary, teaching tools, blogs), tips and tricks that they've found useful this week! #AcademicSky (pls boost to any relevant feeds

Very nice graduation ceremony today! Literally had a front row seat 😁

In honor of May Day 🚩, we've scoured our archives to bring to you some of the best pieces that explore the history of labor struggles in the US. We've also linked to timeless advice pieces about how to find balance and joy in our work as academics. Give us a follow if you like what you see. 🗃️

Finished the multiple choice portion of three exams. Now to read 100+ essays 😪😓

So this is technically not a polonaise! It has the fitted back and pointed waist seam of an Italian nightgown; a polonaise was made with no waist seam, especially in back. 🗃️🪡

This is horrifying! Family members of some of the people sent to do hard labor in a Salvadoran prison by Trump confirm their loved ones weren't members of a gang. One woman said her brother got a tattoo of a rose in Dallas, and because of that they accused him of being a gang member.

Digital historians! I know some of you are doing amazing work with GIS, and I was wondering: could you share your favorite guides, courses, and tools for this work? And for data generation, management, and use in general? #skystorians #academicsky

Our inaugural issue Volume 1, Number 1 is FREE! online.ucpress.edu/ah/issue/1/1

Friends & colleagues! I'm giving my first book talk about *A Cold Colonialism* on Thursday, February 27th, 1 pm PT / 4 pm ET, in my department's public speaker series. The talk is hybrid, so if you would like the Zoom link, please DM or email me. [ The book: www.ubcpress.ca/a-cold-colon... ]

Hot off the press! See our latest article by Vincent Ho & Novem Tsz-Wing Ho on 'An Exhausted Colonial Botanist: Charles Ford and Hong Kong Botanical Gardens, 1871–1902', accessible freely here: doi.org/10.1080/0308...

Finished one batch of exams…two more to go! Wish me luck 🫡 #midterms-are-a-drain

(a bit of unsolicited writing advice: you should read your work out loud. read it in front of a mirror if you must. it will help you catch errors but also help you write in a way that is easy to follow and understand.)

⏰ Don't forget to apply for this year's History of Science and Technology scholarships. @kingshistory.bsky.social provides full tuition fees and a maintenance grant. Find out more here ⬇️

Took this photo on Sunday on my way back to Nashville from Dallas. No place like home 🙂

To contribute to science, it is critical to know the history of what work founded your field. Robert Hooke first identified cells almost 400 years ago and named them after monks sleeping quarters. This discovery is now used to define life as comprised of cells as the basic unit.

Academia in a time of genocide: www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....

go.bsky.app/NWPG67s After a post yesterday by someone hunting for people with similar interests I thought I’d have a go at creating my first ‘Starter Pack’. It’s not intended to be exhaustive, just a starter for 10. If you can suggest accounts to be added please let me know.

Transcripts of Alfred Russel Wallace's Four Surviving Field Notebooks From the Malay Archipelago are now Available: tinyurl.com/29pcrzhw #histsci #HPS

Enjoying some delicious homemade pozole for Christmas Eve 😋 So good! 😊

"you'll be visited by three spirits" The three spirits

For sci-fi or general non-fiction, definitely via audiobook since it makes commuting enjoyable. “Canonical” fiction and scholarly works, always reading and I can’t imagine doing this via audio 😵

Taking rhetoric classes as a freshman did help me become a better writer, but it also helped me to better recognize the structures of arguments. That the rhetoric courses were also thematic, be it in media analysis or environmental issues, also helped me to understand why it mattered.

Finished grading on Monday and I’ve finished my assessment reports yesterday! I’m done with the semester! 😎 Now I have time to finally get back to writing! 🎉

By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate. www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/nugg...

Can we get to 300 downloads before the holidays? What better moment to think about the entangled histories of Europe and empire, oh and also it's FREE, why wouldn't you want to read it? (rhetorical question no need to respond) 🗃️ doi.org/10.5040/9781...

Earlier this year I was at a university meeting on the use of LLMs in assessment, and the presenter said “there’s no reliable system that detects AI”, and all the STEM people nodded while all the humanities people said “er, you just *read* it.”

This is what's so baffling about so many suggestions for AI in the humanities classroom: they mistake the product for the point. Writing outlines and essays is important not because you need to make outlines and essays but because that's how you learn to think with/through complex ideas.

First exam proctored! ✅ Three more to go! 🙃

If you could fix one☝🏻 piece of terminology in your field, what would it be? I’ll go first👇🏻(replying to myself like it’s normal)