Pamela update: volume 2 makes the bold choice to have zero action and to spend pages and pages of Pamela and B harping on about her condition, virtue, clothes, and wedding date, while occasionally a Foreboding appears. It's so boring, but the hope remains that something bad will happen.

I'm now reading Pamela with a sort of queasy horror. Mr B just read her poem about being imprisoned by him to the ladies in their company to great applause.

Paperback of Trans and Genderqueer Subjects is apparently on sale #MedievalSky www.routledge.com/Trans-and-Ge...

if you're thinking about coming to do a #fanstudies PhD with me, here's your chance to learn more.

When I’m accused of “technopessimism“ I counter that I’m not “pessimistic about technology“; I am opposed to the economic, political, and social project of upward wealth transfer that “AI” is being leveraged to bring about. If that phrasing is useful to others, then go ahead and use it.

Just came back from a delightful visit to MIT Distinctive Collections, where my fanfiction seminar group looked at a collection of fanzines from the 1970s! They had Spockanalia 1, and a full run of a Dragonriders of Pern fanzine that had spun off from a Star Wars group.

I'm in volume 2 of Pamela and am riveted by the book's apparent total heel turn and the nauseating scenes where Pamela and her father weep with gratitude for their blessings as this gaslighting s*head treats them with basic but patronizing decency and respect.

The way that Pamela folds over itself periodically, where Mr B[ooby] is reading chunks of the novel at a pace behind the reader, is so weird and dizzying.

Pamela just said that she is the "tennis ball of fortune" and I'm absolutely smitten

A thing I'm finding stunning about Pamela is how successfully it shows that the natural result of a moral fixation on virginity is pornography, and it performs both genres successfully at the same time. It's so commercially viable. The man was a genius.

The same pieces that are written as "people are dating A.I. boyfriends!" can still be written as "people are getting very into chatbot gaming and many are turning away from dating; why are they doing that and what can we learn from it, and how do we keep them safe?"

Delighted to announce (ugh, can't believe I'm saying that) that Alon Lischinsky and my bibliography of Trans Media Studies is out with Oxford Bibliographies! It's basically the equivalent of a compilation tape - key works, deep cuts and things we like www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/docu...

I was fascinated to see today "Worth Fighting For" by Jesse Q. Sutanto in @lovestruckbooks.bsky.social - it's a Mulan AU set in the contemporary business world, part of a series of Disney-based adult romance novels, printed by Disney Hyperion. Disney commissioning and printing its own fanfiction!

Calling all Folklore people! Come be my colleague! If anyone knows of people that might be interested, please share widely. lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/LSU/job/0260...

Steve Silberman is so pissed about this Tylenol bullshit that he's screaming from the afterlife he didn't even believe in. Increased rates of autism are due to testing, a broadened definition, and greater awareness. It's not vaccines. It's not Tylenol. It's like his work never happened.

If you’re in the Boston area this Wednesday I’d love for you to come on out! This talk is free and open to the public. as.tufts.edu/art-architec...

@dorothyk98.bsky.social just emailed you - can I get a link to attend your talk later remotely? I'm registered in person and there's no details about the hybrid option.

A while ago, Lincoln Geraghty, @acafanmom.bsky.social, @memorieschild.bsky.social & myself did a special issue on “The Past, Present & Future of Fan Fiction”. This is now being reprinted in book format, & available for download for free #FanStudies www.mdpi.com/books/reprin...

David Townsend's novel about Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich has arrived! I can't wait to read it! I take full credit for the author bio; "for God's sake mention your cat, David" I said. www.amazon.com/Ram-Thicket-...

I'm reading Pamela for the first time. Blimey it's harrowing. She cries a lot, doesn't she? I'm reduced to inner screeching, "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE, PAMELA!"

This is apropros of nothing, but I learned today that noted cultural historian Philippe Ariès was not a professional historian; he worked for most of his life at a "documentation center for international commerce in tropical fruit."

my article with @rouselaurenc.bsky.social, "Quantifying fandom: Identity, romance, and platform preferences on archive of our own," is out today in New Media & Society! now we know how fandom demographics relate to their practices in a broader way. journals.sagepub.com/eprint/KNQFQ...

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@philistella.bsky.social Lady Bradshaigh would have been into Reylo, y/y

Wow.

The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.

I was telling 5yo that I was teaching the Canterbury Tales. He said, "Do you like the pictures?" I had to admit there are no pictures, and he was irate. "That is a DESIGN FAIL. If you don't know what's going on, you can look at the pictures!" He was so cross.

My son watched the minecraft movie 4.5 times during two transatlantic plane rides and 3 times since, and I can say that anyone who hates the minecraft movie hates children and hates fun. It's a banger. Everyone in it is giving 110%, Jason Momoa is hysterical, the aesthetics are joyous.

A book that means a huge amount to me. So glad we got to do this.

Take advantage of this opportunity to bring a senior medievalist to your campus for free! With thanks to the @medievalacademy.bsky.social Fellows for making themselves available in such a generous way.

There's been a fundamental shift in trad publishing "mining" fic recently, because now they're actually like, smelting (? lol) it to sell it back to the fandom. These cover choices feel like clear winking signals—the connections back to the original are an actual selling point. And I do mean *sell*—

Wishing a good first week of the semester to everyone to whom that is relevant!

A beautiful piece by my friend Alice about dependence and Christian community. "To become a parent is fundamentally a radical act of hospitality, a promise to welcome and care for a tiny stranger who comes along, whoever he or she may be." www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

This is such a beautiful, thoughtful essay, and I'm so pleased @tessagratton.bsky.social wrote it for me!! On the societal power structures (aka money) that bestow cultural capital, publishers' changing attitudes about both queer fiction and fanfiction, protecting fannish joy, and much, much more.

David Townsend. The Ram in the Thicket: A New Novel of Julian’s Norwich on The Other Sister blog. othersisters.hypotheses.org/2235

For too long the world of theological magazines and leaflets has been utterly dominated by slick corporate mass produced hatred. It's time for inclusive Christians to lean into the long Queer history of underground printing, zine making, resource sharing, and other such physical tangible activism.

I'm really late to this news - visiting family - but how absolutely devastating. It's a program with a very serious pedigree, with fantastic faculty. What lost opportunities for future graduate students.

Absolutely loved "Mr Collins In Love" by Lee Welch, a sweet, tender, sharply observed gay romance novella. A really intriguing take on Mr Collins as autistic in a way that felt sympathetic and plausible, and really gets right how merciless the Austenian eye is.

Absolutely love this idea for a grad class. I wonder how I could adapt it for a lit class.

Woah. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Devastating critique of the choices made by U Chicago leaders that led them to the current cuts, which started long before the Trump administration.

If you like horror-scifi and interesting talks with cool people, come to hear my great colleague Case Kerns talk about his new novel with my other great colleague Neel Mukherjee, at Porter Square Books! portersquarebooks.com/event/2025-0...

Classic teaching anxiety dream last night: first day of a Canterbury Tales course to a huge room of uninterested teens with poor acoustics. Tried to go round and get everyone's name; couldn't hear any of them, kept having to go to bend down to hear them spell them. One was called Williiiam (4 i's).

Extraordinary to roll out the red carpet for plagiaristic, energy-guzzling AI companies while telling ordinary citizens to save electricity

#medievalsky - I remember a few years ago (?) someone (maybe Ruth Evans?) gave a keynote on "not loving the middle ages." I've been unsuccessful on trying to recover who this was or the title of the talk. Does this ring any bells?

If you're in the vicinity of Middletown CT on September 16, come on out to this public lecture I'll be giving at Wesleyan (and if you're not there but ARE in Boston, I'll be giving it again at Tufts the following week). I'd love to see folks there! www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/events/2...

David Townsend's book is available for preorder, and he has a talk on Julian and the novel coming up next week at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, East Hampton. Details at the link. #medievalsky substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Replace every "AI says.../AI told..." headline with "text-producing bot produces more text"

The Vatican is one of the very few major voices challenging the dominant narratives of AI. There's a clear line from Laudato Sì to this stance: placing humanity, the environment, care, respect, and what we owe each other and our shared world at the heart of all we think and say and do.

Delighted to hear about this new resource on teaching race in the premodern classroom from ACMRS: "Throughlines: A dynamic pedagogical resource for engaging premodern critical race studies in the classroom." Warning: homepage contains flashing video (I've written to them) www.throughlines.org