Call for papers for a special issue of Humanities journal, edited by Professor Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz. Here are the details: www.mdpi.com/journal/huma...

To bring a smile to your face, here’s an ancient Egyptian sketch of a tabby cat serving a mouse! 😁 The artist used a flake of limestone as a sketchpad to draw this comic scene some 3,200 years ago. 📷 Brooklyn Museum www.brooklynmuseum.org/en-GB/object... #Archaeology

RIP Steve Cropper. Behold this Stax Revue in Oslo in 1967, still available to watch as "Rhythm & Blues i Njårdhallen" with Booker T & The MGs as the backing band. It starts with "Green Onions". tv.nrk.no/serie/rhythm...

#CFP for the 27th International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival: www.hardysociety.org/oxo/817/ths-... July 25th-August 1st 2026, Dorchester #ThomasHardy #19thC #Victorian 💙📚 #booksky

For when you wish you had a lamp that only moved sideways, here is the crab lamp you've been waiting for 🦀💡 Ancient Animal Advent Day 4! Info card below.

Hillfort-loving ducks. Definitely a first for #HillfortsWednesday - a skein of ducks who love Stanwick Camp so much that they deliberately mirror the shape of the earthworks beneath them as they fly over for a look. Slightly off on the extreme left, but otherwise a solid 9/10.

#CFP for the 27th International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival: www.hardysociety.org/oxo/817/ths-... July 25th-August 1st 2026, Dorchester #ThomasHardy #19thC #Victorian 💙📚 #booksky

‼️CfP Discuss with us how to rethink (or not) kinship in the context of technology at the next Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies!! dgfa.de/annual-meeti... (you need to scroll down a bit to find us 🙂)

✨ The York Magic and Witchcraft Conference is back for 2026! ✨ Join us in historic York from 24–26 June as we explore the mysteries of Nature and the Supernatural. 🪄🌿 Submit your abstracts by 14 March 2026 to [email protected] ☺️

A couple with a child by the wonderful Gesina Ter Borch, she made this picture #otd 2 Dec 1652 (Rijksmuseum)

#Day2 of our #TimeTravelAdvent and we're reading Chapter 2 of #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems - taking us to 991 and the Battle of Maldon. The Old English poem is so grounded in the watery geography of the Blackwater Estuary. I wanted to share these photos from a recent visit. 1/2

"Negotiators are aiming to finalise a deal by January that would allow the UK to participate in Erasmus from 2027 onwards, according to two UK and EU officials." www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Some monsters and prodigies to end the week (from Paré’s ‘Opera’, 1582).

You do forget sometimes that there are also oddly funny bits in #ThomasHardy. Giles' party going all wrong in The Woodlanders could've been a sitcom episode. And note the survival of the belief in spontaneous generation.

fen-līc, adj: fenlike, marshy. (FEN-leech / ˈfɛn-liːtʃ) #OldEnglish #WOTD

One of the absolute highlights of my trip to Ingolstadt in September was seeing the exhibition ´Ansichtssache’ (a matter of perspective) at the German Medical History Museum. It showed the knitted anatomy of Katharina Sabernig, and I can’t say how much I loved it!

Good historians know that being a true German Protestant pamphletist in #earlymodern Europe included making pejorative jokes with sausage-content to vilify Catholic clergy. Like this "Ja, ein Leberwurst" comment in a marginalia next to a passage cited from disliked Catholic sermon #skystorians

All of this thread, plus a favorite example from my own research: a computer transcription would pick up the "correct" signature of one of my guys writing his code name in a secret message but not the fact that underneath it he had (oops) accidentally started to sign his real name.

The latest Hither Shore is out now! Not only does it contain articles on the volume's topic #Tolkien and his editors, but various Tolkien editors reflect on their own experiences of editing Tolkien's works. 📚💙 #fantasy #lit #littwiss

In a forest near the Augustenruhe in Marburg, you can find little offerings under some tree roots which have been consistently placed there for years. On the left, the current state in autumn 2025; on the right, the same place in 2020. #WyrdWednesday

Mushroom horror, from H.P. Lovecraft to THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS and THE LAST OF US, is really having a moment. Karel Šima's "Fungi in popular culture reconsidered: Four more-than-human entanglements" is #openaccess from @ejcs-journal.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1177/1367...

The Google AI search results are a bit like an Irish person giving directions. They might not know the answer but they're happy to give it a go and guess along with you.

Saturday #morningread #ThomasHardy Have a restful and warm weekend ✨✨✨

Went to see Hamish Hawk tonight - a very intimate gig with several new songs. Their Hogmanay gig won't be in such a familiar setting...

sprǣc-hūs, n.n: a house for speaking. (SPRATCH-HOOS / ˈspræːtʃ-ˌhuːs) #OldEnglish #WOTD

THREAD. A collection of photographs of excellent trees I have met on walks. You will find the captions to each photo in the alt text.

Der neue Hither Shore ist da, mit vielen spannenden Inhalten. Was euch erwartet, findet ihr hier:

Green with envy 🌵, because our collection now houses this new 2025 "Cambridge Handbook of Literature & Plants"? No reason! Order the book, ed. by @bonnielj.bsky.social today from our library and explore the essays on #LiteraryStudies & #Ecocriticism & #EnvironmentalHumanities & #CulturalStudies

It was lovely to see homage to the Hunterian Museum’s Evelyn Tables in @realgdt.bsky.social Frankenstein. These four tables were made in Padua, taking arteries, veins and nerves dissected in Padua’s famous anatomical theatre, pasting them to boards and varnishing them to protect and preserve

Well hello!

And of course the most important "inspired by Michael" creation, Tom Bombadil

In 1928, Tolkien drew "Owlamoo" to dispel his son Michael's night fear of sinister owl creature. This was 3 years after he created Roverandom, a tale about a dog turned into a toy and went to adventures, to comfort Michael because he was sad from losing his toy dog. #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday

2025 marks the centenary of A.N. Whitehead’s Lowell Lectures, Science and the Modern World; 2026 the centenary of the first British edition. Nick Gaskill and I are organising a panel on Whitehead, focused on SMW, for the MSA/BAMS conference in 2026, and are looking for an additional contributor.

Well hello!

Tuesday #morningread #ThomasHardy

Snazzy poster for our Brontë Studies CFP on Poetry (more details here: think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...) Submit! Share! Please and thank you!

Some modern standing stones for #StandingStoneSunday: this is an art installation in Newtonmore in the Cairngorns. You have to zoom in to see the individual carvings on the stones. 📷 from 2023

"Pünktlich" zu Halloween

Really pleased to have an essay in the new issue of Gothic Studies -- it's a special edition on Algernon Blackwood. It's also OPEN ACCESS so free for anyone to enter its region of singular loneliness and desolation. Many thanks to Henry Bartholomew for inviting me on board and putting it together.

Call for paper for a special issue on the Brontës and poetry - on their work as poets - on poetry in the novels - on poetic influences and legacies - hoping for creative responses too! Abstracts due April 26 Articles due December 26 #Romanticism #Victorian #Gothic Please share!

niht-ēage, adj: able to see at night (lit. ‘night-eye’). (NI’HT-AY-ah-yuh / ˈnɪxt-ˌeːa-jə) Image: Aberdeen Bestiary; England, c. 1200; @aberdeenunilib.bsky.social MS 24, f. 50r. #OldEnglish #WOTD

Ic ēow þancung, everyone who shared their favourite Old English word(s) for Old English Wordhord’s 12th birthday. May your hoards of words grow ever more wondrous. For my personal favourites, see the "hord highlights" category on oldenglishwordhord.com or on the Old English Wordhord App.

#CFP: "Poetry's Environments" June 9-11, 2026 (University of Leeds, UK) Keynote speaker: Simon Armitage Deadline for proposal: December 5th 2025 Info: conferences.leeds.ac.uk/poetryenviro... #envhum #envhist #ecolit #environment #poetry #ecocriticism

Proposals are invited to present at the Poetry’s Environments conference to be held Jun 9-11, 2026 in Leeds, UK. For international poets, critics, translators, activists, and anyone who is involved in poetry and its environments. Dec 5, 2025 deadline. conferences.leeds.ac.uk/poetryenviro...

Publication day! My special issue on Algernon Blackwood and the Gothic is officially out: www.euppublishing.com/toc/gothic/c... My heartfelt thanks to all the contributors. So much in here - will cover in future posts. The issue positions B as a major force in C20th British Gothic.

Interested in Hauntology? Take a look at these papers and presentations from a recent PGR led conference 😁 (organised by my legendary friend and colleague) (Some presentations require downloading due to formats) doi.org/10.25421/yor...

Fancy some gilded genitalia? www.uni-muenster.de/Ejournals/in...

Die finden mich nie, summte die frohlockende #Großkatze nahe Kalenborn.

Update on my WYRD TV: Folklore, Folk Horror and British Television book PLUS exciting news about a CFP for a new edited collection on Folk Horror on Television from me and @drdjohnston.bsky.social !

Last night, I watched Nosferatu on the big screen for the first time. The screening is part of the accompanying programme for the special exhibition "Echoes of the Night. Dark Romantic Resonances in Art, Music and Film" in Marburg, which runs until next February. If you're in Marburg, have a look!