If you're someone who like a hard copy, but you've been holding off because of the price, I'm happy to say that my book is being paperbacked at the end of the month and it's available to preorder now!

*everyone on Bsky banging tables* SCHISM, SCHISM, SCHISM!

Medievalists just saw our version of the Bat Signal in the sky

This is a very interesting and illuminating thread about the recent history behind the current situation of the Episcopal Church in relation to employment for prospective clergy.

Trust for London calculated in 2024 that the minimum living wage for a single adult in inner London is 47k per annum, by the way, and it's gone up since. The British Library is offering 36k (negotiable) for a CURATOR POSITION. trustforlondon.org.uk/research/min...

It shouldn't be allowed for public institutions to offer positions requiring a PhD at this kind of salary in London. You could barely afford rent. If they can't afford to offer a liveable wage, they can't afford to hire.

Thread.

Loved this piece by Barney Ronay about this world cup. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Absolutely devastated that the Clover in Harvard Square is closing (even though the business was saved at the last minute and so the chain continues). My favorite lunch option!

I read Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup last week and can highly recommend. Rex Stout-inspired sci-fi detective story with a very interesting world built on biohacking and environmental precarity. I have the sequel on hold and can't wait.

I keep boggling at this. The Westminster bubble does something to people’s minds. Was this really why you joined the Labour movement? Was this what moved you, when you were young, and you heard the word “equality”? Do you see what has happened, in that last sentence?

Read the whole thread, for yet another hair-raising example of why we shouldn't rely on AI transcription, and why original documents matter.

i like this photo where it looks like you've interrupted t.s. eliot and virginia woolf in the middle of planning your murder

Should note, for accuracy's sake, that associate's an untenured rank here. Generally, a colleague comes up for promotion to assoc rank 4 years after their hiring. We do have 3 associate professors. That's it. No hiring authorized for next year. What will the future of lit studies be in these parts?

There are stories from all over about universities' dismantling of the humanities. I have a small but dismaying data point from my university to contribute to the discourse. Harvard University now has NO assistant professors of English. That's how long it has been since we were allowed to hire.

🚨 #medievalsky 🚨 Middle English Dictionary update via FB: "In its 100-year history, MED has enjoyed periods of support, and periods when that support was lacking. It is about to enter on one of the latter. After this year...UMich will no longer fund ongoing editorial work and maintenance." 🧵

Genuinely and unironically proud of every single one of my students who worked hard and submitted a final paper draft which has many flaws and needs work. They have recognized that writing is a skill that can be improved and have trusted me to help them do that. Not a trace of AI among the bunch.

THIS THIS THIS. Thread.

Monday, May 25 at Palmerston Library: "Faith and Fear, Repression and Resilience in Medieval Norwich"; David Townsend reads excerpts from his novel, "The Ram in the Thicket". www.blogto.com/events/faith...

If anyone knows of any weird little 1-month fellowships or library residencies taking applications for research in the humanities to take place in the coming year (26-27), please let me know!

If you have or know any graduate students, do encourage them to attend this free webinar! I will be going over the grants offered at the MAA and providing tips. #medievalsky

The Wolf and His King by @finnlongman.com is an exquisite retelling of Marie de France's lai, Bisclavret. Read it slowly, savor it. It will break your heart. Then read it again to savor the language. A brilliant use of verse within the prose. #medievalsky #booksky #medieval #bookreview

Happy Earth Day! Look at this 15th-century depiction of Earth as a sphere, illuminating! #Earthday 🗃️ #arthistory #skystorians #academia #medievalsky

Fab thread, but it omits the equally blockbuster poem of the #19thc Canadian poetic canon: James McIntyre's "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese, weighing over 7000 lbs" "We have seen the Queen of cheese,/ Laying quietly at your ease/ Gently fanned by evening breeze,/ Thy fair form no flies dare seize." &c

Great new teaching resources available for The Ellesmere MS - please share widely, and reach out to the creator with feedback if you use it next semester / for your own experiments! manuscriptreader.org

JLM's Holmes has to work hard, and learn new skills that are difficult for him. LL's Watson is clever, ambitious, driven, controlling, but is FAR better at both masking and suppressing her own needs than him. He teaches her how to be weird, she teaches him how to be in a society. That's interesting.

What I love about Elementary is that it's just a very interesting, complex take on what it means to be the kind of genius Holmes is - a recovering addict, neurodivergent, hyperobservent, both craving sensation and frequently overwhelmed - *and* to want to do good in the world, to be a good person.

Just learning 24hr later that the US government invoked the Avignon Papacy

RIP Averil Cameron. Her work on late antiquity opened my eyes to the historical transformations beyond the classical period I was studying in undergrad and ultimately led me to the middle ages. A brilliant historian and a brilliant writer.

As we mourn the great Averil Cameron, I point you to her autobiographical talk from 2017: on being working class and female in Ancient History wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/05/22/s...

Today! Hope some folks turn up!

This. I don't believe in banning books; I've told my 6yo that he can read HP if he wants when he's older, and I've told him why we'll get them second hand or from the library. I won't assign anything by her in my classes for the same reason, although HP fanfic is ok by me if the students want it.

My 6yo son absolutely loves this song and has been singing it for months - it's really nice for there to be a bridge between his and my cultural spheres.

This Friday: attend in person at U of T, or virtually via Zoom. Reserve your spot now! www.medieval.utoronto.ca/events/siobh...

I wish people hand-wringing about 'romantasy' would read some feminist YA fantasy from the 80s. I'm rereading Mercedes Lackey's early novels and they are a) as sexually explicit as ACOTAR, b) far less thoughtful about things like consent and boundaries, and c) so much more into weird horse stuff.

Academics see the worde TTRPG and thynke "tenure track roleplayinge game"?

But the circumstances of the industry (and editor biases) have shut out knowledgable voices. So much "fandom coverage" now feels like reinventing a very basic wheel; I feel like my and my peers' work is being actively erased. Fandom *should* be covered—but you need to know what you're talking about.

Boston-area pals, the time you're saving tonight by NOT watching the SOTU & catching up on your reading instead, you can expend tomorrow by coming to this fun event: 5 p.m., Fong Auditorium, Harvard campus; Maurice Lee & me talking about TL;DR & why no matter what there will always be more to read.

Thread.

I was recently on the radio to talk about fanfiction with the brilliant @prof-anne.bsky.social & @dylanthyme.bsky.social, and I'm *so* pleased with how this conversation turned out. It's rare that you can get a lot of the nuances of fic into an ostensibly 101 conversation—and in under half an hour!

finally. this is what the internet was meant for.

Honestly, the only people I know who like Wuthering Heights non-professionally are people who read it when they were 14 and remember a different version of it than the book that exits, so I wholly support this film version and plan to see it and enjoy it and never read the book.

While the movie looks abysmal, I actually do think Fennell's stated approach to adaptation—capturing the ~vibes~ of her experience reading the book when she was 14—is v interesting in the way it *does* connect to actual fic practices. But the context of the work matters, and flattening that sucks.

idk idk I just think calling this massively mainstream $80 million-budget film "fanfiction" (uh sorry, "fan fiction") does a disservice to people in fic communities. Actually reading this review, I understand the author wasn't using it as a pejorative—but I don't think that makes it better.

Can confirm that even when people think they're being *positive* about fanfiction with this shit, I still continue to become the joker.

Big props to Shiamin Kwa and Wilt Idema, editors of Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend, for describing a legend* in which two doomed lovers transform into butterflies as "together forever in lepidopterous love". *not Mulan, a different story

LRT: every so often I come across students with learned behaviours that make me wonder about their other teachers. I've had students email me from the ER with concussion or a high fever say they promise they'll be in class and can they have 1 day for the assignment? oh my GOD child just go to bed!

Everyone giggling about this, but in my experience students with complicated lives NEVER ask for anything like the amount of time you'd be willing to give them. "Just two more days, please," she says, which means she'll write that assignment in Olympic Village, between days of competition.