Good article from on language revitalization efforts among the Passamaquoddy Indians in eastern Maine. www.pressherald.com?p=7550180&uu...

My book has a (preliminary) page @pennpress.bsky.social ! Contested Currents: Rivers and the Remaking of New England will be published in October 2026. www.pennpress.org/978151283015...

It was an opportunity for historians to interact with the public and bring their work out of the ivory tower. But their exodus to this highly censored echo chamber site reveals that historians prefer the protection of the ivory tower, and that they would rather talk AT the public than with them.

Proud to say, my former PhD student Jack Bouchard, now at Rutgers University, has published an outstanding new work in Atlantic history: *Terra Nova: Food, Water, and Work in an Early Atlantic World*, with Yale University Press. Congratulations, Jack! yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

This is how you blurb

Save the Date! Details coming soon.

assistant professor, associate professor, grad student

‘Nickname’ is not ‘nick’ + ‘name.’ It was originally ‘ekename.’ ‘Eke’ was the Middle English word for “also” or “in addition.” Since ‘ekename’ began with a vowel, people used ‘an’ before it. Over time, 'an ekename' became 'a nickname.'

Big conservation news on Maine's Kennebec River! The Nature Conservancy has reached an agreement with Brookfield Renewable to purchase 4 dams on prime sea-run fish spawning habitat. #envhst www.nature.org/en-us/about-...

This new land will be used to forward the Penobscot Tribe of Maine's first priority: restoring Atlantic Salmon runs. www.pressherald.com/2025/09/16/p...

French fashion and the devil go hand in hand.

#OTD September 11, 1692, in Salem Village Reverend Samuel Parris preaches on Revelation 17:14 "These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them."

Atlantic sunset: “as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever” saith Herman Melville.

There is truly no “getting high on your own supply” quite like writing a proposal for research funding.

Happy to announce that I've signed a contract with UPenn Press for my book Contested Currents: Rivers and the Remaking of New England. Also...I've submitted my revised manuscript and that after several years the final product will hopefully be out in the world sooner than later!

"Between 2010 and 2024, at least 170 dams were removed in this region...That’s more than double the number of removals during most of the preceding century." Great to see dam removal and river restoration highlighted in the @csmonitor! #envhst www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/a...

A very cool map of the Chesapeake from Edward Williams' 1650 book Virginia

New research from MIT found that those who used ChatGPT can’t remember any of the content of their essays. Key takeaway: the product doesn’t suffer, but the process does. And when it comes to essays, the process *is* how they learn. arxiv.org/pdf/2506.088...

This book is a classic.

Observation: nearly all states that were founded by the English have Anglicized names, but nearly all states founded or incorporated by the USA have Native American names. Is there an explanation for this? #vastearlyamerica

More academic leadership positions should come with talismans

I had to confront someone in the gym today for writing in a library book, in gross disregard for all that is decent and holy.

New Englanders were the first to build dams, and they have been the first to tear them down. The resurrection of Maine's Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers over the last 50 years is an incredible story. #envhist www.pressherald.com/2025/05/30/a...

To this day, very few in Portland, ME (where I grew up) know about this event. Only a small plaque denotes the location of the heap of 200 bodies--still nobody knows where those people were buried.

Old Rough and Ready

I'm grateful that I work at PRIVATE military college where the state can't dictate what we teach. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

I wonder what Cotton Mather and other Puritans would have said if you told him that there would be an American Pope one day

Chris Gerrard of @arcdurham.bsky.social and I will be speaking on "Landscapes of Indenture: the Scots of York Maine’s Scotland District and the Piscataqua Region" on May 30 at 6pm, at the York Land Trust yorklandtrust.org/event/landsc...

Maine-iacs! If you're looking for a way to celebrate Earth Day on Tuesday, I'm giving a talk at the Topsham Public Library about how our rivers can help us understand humanity's relationship with the natural world today. Register fo' free here: www.btlt.org/events/voice...

I like to remind people that the Hudson's Bay Company still exists, although that 350-year run might be coming to an end www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

🗃️Exciting New Book News: Alessandra La Rocca Link's 'The Iron Horse in Indian Country Native Americans and Railroads in the US West' is out in a few weeks. Preorder: global.oup.com/academic/pro... and preview: books.google.com/books?id=1lh...

Taylor M. Moore traces the scientific afterlife of the mummified body of Queen Henhenit in “Living Fossils,” highlighting the implications of the use of women’s bodies in the practice of medicine and the production of race science in modern Egypt. 🗃️

Mainers have been beer enthusiasts for over 400 years

The legendary David Hall will be be giving an online talk next Thursday (March 13) www.eventbrite.com/e/wonders-po...

In 1626, a Cambridge fishwife sliced open a cod, only to find a gelatinous, half-dissolved manuscript inside. It was published the next year under the name "Vox Piscis or, the Bookfish." At this point, why not get your news from inside a dead fish? #earlymodern #bookfish archive.org/details/bim_...

I can't help but look at this cover and think of Madison's veto of the Bonus Bill. For him, and the other Founders, the scale and power of our present federal bureaucracy would've been their worst nightmare

I'm thrilled and a bit humbled to learn that my 2023 NEQ article "A Means of Removing Them" inspired some Mainers to work with Wabanakis to create a "counter-map" tracing indigenous portage routes and knowledges along the Androscoggin River. Check it out here: earth.google.com/web/data=MkE...

An update on the Vermont Abenaki identity controversy: this was the first time Odanaks presented their case at the State House. vtdigger.org/2025/02/20/a...

I recently learned that academic freedom is in the Finnish constitution.

"Freedom hath been hunted round the globe...Europe regards her like a stranger...O [America]! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind" -Thos. Paine" www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOs...

I had a great class session introducing Native American cosmology to students with Keith Basso's brilliant Wisdom Sits in Places. Holy smokes I love that book.

Resharing my first book, which came out in August before I joined Bluesky. Reading Practice is about the information economy of medieval & early modern England, & the strategies consumers of medical & scientific info developed to make sense of their world. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

The painting was "commissioned in 1760 by Williams himself to immortalise his brilliance as a trailblazing astronomer who...successfully managed to compute and witness the trajectory of Halley’s comet over Jamaica in 1759." www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

I will be presenting at #AHA2025 in NYC next week on the future of early American environmental history. It should be fun to re/connect with a lot of historians. Say hi if you're there! aha.confex.com/aha/2025/web...

A cannon from Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's 1510s expedition recently found in Arizona. archaeologymag.com/2024/11/olde...

Very cool river conference in Natchez, Miss. this upcoming May from the Society of Oceanic History: "Continental Connections: Inland Waters and the Shaping of Maritime North America." networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

I'm trying to finish my early U.S. history survey with something uplifting or hopeful. Any primary sources from Reconstruction or its aftermath come to mind? Right now F. Douglass's speech "Lessons of the Hour" is leading.

Check out this neat article about the material history of the canoe written by my friend Scot McFarlane www.historians.org/perspectives...