I enjoyed this unusually literary bit of marketing from my university with @mckeever.bsky.social

Call for Papers: 'Politics, Place and Print Culture: The 14th International Walter Scott Conference', @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social, 28-30 June 2027, organised by @mckeever.bsky.social & team. Deadline for proposals: 1 October 2026. Details of financial support for PGRs to follow. tinyurl.com/yt2vj4x7

The special issue of Eighteenth Century Studies on coasts is now out! If you click on the link and scroll down a bit, the very eclectic table of contents is visible. Pleased to be a part of this. #CoastalHistory #CoastalStudies 🗃️ muse.jhu.edu/issue/55889

British.

Recorded on 4 Sept 2025 – Dr Gerard McKeever, lecturer in modern Scottish literature at @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social, speaks about Walter Scott’s relationship with Scotland, particularly through the lens of his so-called “Scotch Novels” #C19th #romanticism www.youtube.com/watch?v=twvr...

Huge congrats to the wonderful @cleoocy.bsky.social who passed her viva today with no corrections!

Just watched There Will Be Blood for the first time in about ten years. Holy mackerel, what an unbelievable film. Had forgotten quite how unhinged Day-Lewis’s character is.

Went on a holiday and it was totally awesome

IDF soldiers have now themselves admitted they have been ordered to murder aid-seekers in Gaza. Truly an atrocity built on atrocity. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

I like the Pope, the Pope says nope

The secrets are out! Great to see this years-long labour of love out in the world. The official publication date is June 28; available for pre-order on the OUP website now! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Call for Applications: Stephen Copley Research Award Deadline 1st June 2025 The BARS Executive Committee has established the bursaries in order to help fund research expenses up to a maximum of £500. More information and how to apply: www.bars.ac.uk/main/index.p...

Normalise writing a nice quick note to scholars literally every time you read and like their work. Our world is small and getting smaller. We need encouragement.

3/3 Only at the very end of this rehearsal of the lore do we get to the real basis of the problems here:

Key lime time

Email I received from a senior colleague at Berkeley this week opened ‘Greetings from the anarcho-neofascist hellscape!’ … thoughts are with everyone in the US 🙏

A new Five Questions interview up on the BARS Blog (@bars.bsky.social) - @mckeever.bsky.social on his new monograph, Regional Romanticism: Literature and Southwest Scotland, c.1770–1830: www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=5944.

🔥🔥🔥 Some much needed good news at last!: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316427...

It could be an April Fool but, apparently, it’s publication day for this wee book. Thanks to all at @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social for bringing it into the world!

Fellowship opportunity here at Edinburgh for unaffiliated ECRs in C19 studies. Very happy to chat to anyone who’s interested in applying.

Big news! The digital edition of Alice Thornton's four Books is now complete and online. There are 1,019 pages (c. 270,000 words) of Thornton’s life-writings in both modernised and semi-diplomatic versions and they are fully searchable. #EarlyModern 🗃️ 📚 📜 thornton.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/posts/news/2...

“I have no doubt most of you feel that the on-going genocide is wrong, I likewise have no doubt each of you feel you did the best that you could (at the MLA, or elsewhere).” Please read @palumboliu.bsky.social’s open letter relinquishing his lifetime MLA membership. academeblog.org/2025/02/05/r...

I’m collecting literary maps relating to Scotland for a thing. A few examples here. If anyone has suggestions for others, I’d love to hear them 🙏

Spare a thought for the Burns scholar on Burns night, wincing in the corner with his precious little facts.

Truly among the worst things about living in the British countryside is the regular encounters with aggressive dogs, off the lead, frequently with the owner nowhere in sight. When (if) owner appears, they invariably expect you to adopt a fondly understanding attitude to their terrifying pet.

Does anyone know of book history/bibliographical work that imagines books as actors in the terms of actor-network theory?

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing literary scholars that a 35-year-ish Romantic Period is somehow equivalent to the whole of other centuries, and like 1,000 years of medieval history.

Applications are now open for 2025-26 Fellowships at IASH, with 60 places available! Apply here: www.iash.ed.ac.uk/application-... Senior/mid-career programmes close 28 Feb. Postdoctoral/early-career programmes close 25 April. See our Fellowship pages for details: www.iash.ed.ac.uk/fellowship-p...

This v interesting 1787 edition of Robert Burns’s poems has been brutally washed in solvent, probably by a lateC19 collector. This results in super clean pages but also a kind of cancelled, ghost marginalia that has been almost washed away. It’s like the book has repressed memories of a former life

30 years old this year. Still the most important Scottish novel since Lanark.

So the word ‘month’ is essentially ‘moonth’, a lunar cycle. How did I never notice that before?

7 December #adventgold The bird pin from the Galloway Hoard had to be part of this! Dated 500-900AD it was found with the rest of the hoard in 2014 www.nms.ac.uk/search-our-c...

The GCSE Natural History will see a massive enrichment of kid's love & understanding of nature, & government won't see it through. All designed, ready to go, decades in the making, now facing inertia. Poor Mary Colwell, the genius behind whole thing (& no Tory) www.theguardian.com/environment/...

If you are an academic writing on any aspect or period of Scottish Literature, please consider submitting an article to the peer-reviewed journal SCOTTISH LITERARY REVIEW. Published twice a year by @scotlit.bsky.social, the journal is edited by me and the very excellent @rhonabrown.bsky.social

My new book is out in the world! It advocates a new, regional way of thinking about Scottish literature and Romanticism. It’s been a labour of love that’s seen me through two babies and a global pandemic, can’t wait to hear what people take from it 🙏 link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

The world outside is shit but my 6yo daughter is in a deep toilet humour phase and it turns out I’ve been waiting 30years for this. Absolutely loving it.

Very difficult at the moment to advise bright PhD students and postdocs who are determined on UK academia. What do you say? There’s no job market! The sector looks set to shrink, possibly dramatically.

I’ve got my 4th years reading a whole monthly issue of Blackwood’s Mag this week (June 1820 to be specific). Very interested to hear what they make of it. We’ll see how it goes …

Why is learning languages so bloody difficult? Am I missing a trick somehow? Tips and suggestions gratefully received … No statement of the obvious can possibly patronize me!

Am teaching Mansfield Park for the first time in ages this semester … What an astonishing creation Mrs Norris is. Surely in the literary pantheon of villains.

The fascinating EDITION lecture given by Prof Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social in Edinburgh last month on ‘Book Collecting in the Age of Slavery’ is now available online here: edition.ed.ac.uk/events/

Armagh Observatory (est. 1790)

Met an extraordinary group of people yesterday to begin a new big collaborative project on ‘Scotland’s Regional Condition’. Thanks to @iashedinburgh.bsky.social for hosting us!

Fabulous launch last week of the new phase of History of the Book at Uni of Edinburgh (edition.ed.ac.uk) with a workshop feat. disbound Shakespeare First Folio plays with performance annotation, then lecture on ‘Book Collecting in the Age of Slavery’ from @oldfortunatus.bsky.social

so great to have @oldfortunatus.bsky.social join us in Edinburgh last week for the launch of EDITION with a 1-2 combo of an Expert Workshop & Inaugural Lecture on her initial work on "Book Collecting in the Age of Slavery" EDITION high-five to @mckeever.bsky.social ! edition.ed.ac.uk

In the archives with my ‘Scotland and the Supernatural’ students today. Highlight was this 1st edition of James VI’s Daemonologie (1597), which quite a lot of them already knew as Shakespeare’s source for Scottish witches and necromancy in Macbeth.

Dug out some early Shakespeare quartos for a thing recently. They’re really nice

Randomly started watching the Costner/Rickman Robin Hood last night and there, surreally imagined somewhere on the route between Dover and Sherwood, it was … 💔