Romanticism folks, I am looking for new contributors for The Year's Work in English Studies (YWES). YWES is an annual review of scholarly work. It's the largest & most comprehensive work of its kind. I am looking for two people to join the poetry team and one person to take over drama.

#WhiteHouse has an official journalist burn book, Trump is already testing fraud claims in California, DOJ is defending presidential bulldozer power, and the #Iranwar is spreading across the Gulf. #uspolitics #kakistocracy #authoritarianism open.substack.com/pub/marygedd...

IT'S TIME! The #CFP for #BSECS2027 has been released! This year's theme is 'Artifice and Authenticity'. The deadline for submissions is the 15 September 2026. The conference will by the 6-8 January 2027 @pembrokeoxford.bsky.social #18thC #skystorians 🗃️ www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/...

ISECS Early Career Scholars Seminar 2026 Reforming Religion, Morality and Society in Afro-Eurasia: Intellectual and Cultural Traditions in Motion in the Global Eighteenth Century Universität Trier, Germany 17-19 June 2026 The programme is now available: oraprdnt.uqtr.uquebec.ca/portail/docs...

Don’t miss this term‘s programme of our Enlightenment Workshop! Info here: www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/home/researc...

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories we celebrate Alan Ginsberg’s 100th birthday on #WyrdWednesday with: “Counter Cultures & Things we Howl!” as this week’s topic! Come, howl with us, you Wyrdlings!

The USA's hard slide into authoritarianism escalated again yesterday, with the Pentagon now banning journalists from entering the press office inside the building.

DRAGONS WITHOUT WINGS Not all dragons have wings or fly, such as wyrms, and some magically breathe wisdom instead of fire!! Stunning Katsushika Hokusai wingless dragon illustrations c.1836

A 7-year-old is not a threat to public safety. But today the Public Advocate witnessed one of the admin's large-scale immigration hearings—'mega masters'—which are designed to speed up deportation, even for young children. Delaney Hall or 290 Broadway: The cruelty is the point.

We've published a new article Ahead of Print in 'Plant Perspectives', being review by Luiza Teixeira-Costa on V. Aresheva and C. Morette's exhibition 'Science/Fiction: A Non-History of Plants' at Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; #openaccess here: www.doi.org/10.3197/WHPP... #plantstudies

THIS is your sign to come and do #bookhistory research in Antwerp in the outstanding collections of Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. Apply here for the Nottebohm Fellowship by Oct 1: sl1nk.com/i61nfmk 💙📚 📜 Come and join us... It’s pretty great here! 😉

Submissions for the Little Ghost Fest Short Film Festival are open! filmfreeway.com/LittleGhosts...

Now is a good time to remember that Meta has announced that it is laying off 10% of its workforce, including 2,000 people just today, while going in on a "AI will replace workers" strategy. www.404media.co/hackers-simp...

10 Lib Dem MPs have just added their names to our open letter to Ofwat and the Environment Secretary, calling on them to reject the Thames Water creditors and place the utility in special administration without delay. vist.ly/568jn 1/2

Shabana Mahmood and Keir Starmer should hang their heads in shame.

Good book. Well worth buying. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Day 2 Part 1: more thought-provoking papers at Horror Studies Now26 - I started my day listening to the wonderful Mars Nicoli @marsnicoli.bsky.social and then a fantastic paper from Sam Dubois on Transness in horror @horrorstudies.bsky.social

Gothic Fairyland Talk & CFP on Fairies A video of my talk from the International Fairy Seminar in May has now been posted. You can read the synopsis below and watch the video of ‘Gothic Fairyland’ …...

Yet another example of a polling agency actively participating in spreading an actual, serious and consequential lie to the public. Fossil fuels are more expensive. Clean energy is cheaper. @yougov.co.uk is very literally lying in this poll, and there should be actual consequences for this

Please check out & share this incredible new digital humanities archive w/ interactive map, the Black Church Burning Project. blackchurchburningproject.org It exists to identify & document every Black church & congregation that was burned, bombed, or otherwise attacked during the Civil Rights era.

Faulkner: "Sanctuary cities include Boston, Chicago, Denver, LA, NY, Philadelphia, SF. All of those airports handle 1,100 int'l flights per day. They're not just gonna not fly. They're gonna go to red states and cities. A boon for red states. People will just really hate living in blue states."

Dear media, You don't have to say "E Jean Carroll accused Trump of defamation and rape." You can say "Trump defamed and raped E Jean Carroll." It's been adjudicated. Thank you

This is a nice little BBC documetary from 1975 on Ghosts and Ghost Hunters #FolkloreThursday youtu.be/VTqtPtCy-NY?...

#FolkloreThursday In Scotland stonechats were believed to be in league with the Devil, carrying a drop of his blood and in constant conversation with him with their calls. If you destroyed their nest you would die of a disease and if you stole their eggs the Devil would break your back in revenge.

Markwayne Mullin: "If CBP isn't there processing international flights, then those individuals when the airlines land won't be permitted into the United States. If things don't change, we're gonna have to make this step pretty quick."

In Rip off Britain, education has been treated as yet another commodity. And those who work in education are treated badly over and over again. Awful for educators and awful for students. I'll be speaking tonight at the University and College Union 👇🏼

Discover how Hollywood uses the female body and disability to create our most terrifying movie monsters. Through analyzing The Brood and Immaculate, Katherine Lucia Prentice explores how teratology and physiognomy underpin the development of Hollywood monsters.🧌🏆 Read: muse.jhu.edu/pub/235/arti...

Kevin Spencer reviews On Edge, a study of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett. Discover how these "doubly disadvantaged" authors challenged 1950s prestige to expand our understanding of the American landscape. 📖✍️ Read: muse.jhu.edu/article/986108 #Women #Gender #1950s

Kieran Strand-Leeds explores the ignored sci-fi side of Dungeons & Dragons. 🐉 By analyzing Spelljammer: Beyond the Moons, he shows how explaining science through magic turns "space fantasy" into a brilliant meta-commentary on the genre itself. Check it out here: muse.jhu.edu/article/986106

From the Archives: "King of the Witches is Sacked from a Nightclub" Daily Mirror, Thursday April 15, 1971.

The OGOM Project has a Resources page that we are gradually adding to, with bibliographies and chronologies for vampires and associated topics. Comments welcome! www.opengravesopenminds.com/resources/

WORLD DRACULA DAY Shout out to all #Vampire scholars and fans celebrating #WorldDraculaDay our first book @ogomproject.bsky.social was on vampires!! @GothicMUP. Have a gothtastic day and avoid the sun!!

👏 We're delighted to announce the winners of the Francis Jones Prize 2025 for Welsh Literature: Shaun McGuinness (ed.) for 'Bangor Episcopal Acta, 1092–1306' (Woodbridge, 2025) & Rhys Kaminski-Jones for 'Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707–1819' (Woodbridge, 2025) 👏https://ow.ly/VeqF50Z2zpq

Rosa Gallica, Mary Delany, 1782.

In Youyang Zazu, the Walnut Monster (胡桃怪) is ancient China’s nightmare of transformation: wasp, walnut, old man, hunger. During the Dali era in Weinan, a boy woke at midnight to see a pale, toothy elder enter the house. His mouth gaped like a winnowing basket, and1/2 #folklore

"the great phrase from marx's critique of hegel: modernists believed it was necessary for any art, any realism, to take the forms of the present deeply inside itself, at the risk of mimicry almost ventriloquism; but that out of that might come the possibility of critique, of true destabilization"

A “former Palantir executive recently confirmed what many have long suspected. In a public stmt, the whistleblower said it plainly: Palantir intended to take over the US government, & many of his former colleagues are now installed inside the federal apparatus. He called it an occupied nation.” 1/

In Polidori's The Vampyre of 1819 we see the #vampire as rake or libertine. No longer a revenant of Eastern Europe, this predatory creature is an English Lord with irresistible powers of seduction. This Romantic Vampire's history is out in paperback in June #FolkloreSunday @ogomproject.bsky.social

Or as I put it in the abstract to a talk I recently gave cdh.princeton.edu/events/2026/...

They’re at it again. None of this is valuable historical research. It’s about exploiting historical artifacts and historians to develop computer vision further and to make a soft cultural argument for surveillance tech. This nonsense has been going on since c2010.

I assign Sonja’s public pieces on the modern fad for AI reconstructions of portraits all the time when I teach Roman portraiture. Portraits aren’t Polaroids. There’s real harm in these studies.

Booking closes Friday for the Masterclass at @cymerafestival.co.uk from June 3-5. Are you a new writer with questions about feedback, editing, the publishing industry, and other related topics? I'll be answering all! (plus you'll get a folk horror workshop!) www.cymerafestival.co.uk/programme-26...

Hans Christian Andersen’s "The Little Mermaid" was inspired by the novella Undine (1811), which tells the tale of a river spirit marrying a knight to gain an immortal soul. She gets pulled back into the river by her relatives, then returns to kill her husband for marrying another. #FairyTaleTuesday

We hear people are discussing the best 100 books again... not knowing that Reactor has already delivered the final word on this subject #Booksky

Petition: Save undergraduate Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire Please do sign the petition below and defend undergraduate humanities studies!! Thomas Gradgrind apprehends his children Louisa and Tom at the Circus, Hard Times by Charles Dickens The University of Hertfordshire's…

*taps the poem*

BOOK PRIZE 📢 Thrilled to announce that The Legacy of John Polidori: The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny has made the longlist for this year’s International Gothic Association Book Prize @IGA_Goths. Congratulations to all nominated authors and editors; a fantastic recognition of our work!

Sad to announce that I have had to cancel this talk due to staff consultations on the future of Humanities at the University taking place on Wednesday. Thank you to everyone who showed an interest in my research.

Just out here writing midterm ads for Democrats