It's our first birthday. Please consider an end-of-year gift to the Diasporist: thediasporist.de/donate/

In 1925, the painter Chaim Soutine was interrupted by the Parisian public health authorities – his neighbors were complaining about the smell of his homages to Rembrandt and Chardin. Art prevailed and he got to keep the meat, but had to promise to spray them with ammonia every day:

Just 3 days left of our fundraiser! Become a Friend of the PDR before midnight on Dec 17th to get our latest postcard pack themed on ATTENTION. Other Friend perks include 15% off our prints. (One-off donations also very welcome!). More details here: https://publicdomainreview.org/support

these grafs make up roughly a third of the AP story. if you're going to say something is being "ignored by US media" you should probably first confirm that it's being ignored by US media! www.pbs.org/newshour/wor...

For @publicdomainrev.bsky.social, I follow the history of the Schefer Maqāmāt (BNF Arabe 5847), which goes from Iraq to Paris and back again. Also a great opportunity to spend time with the incredible illuminations, which include some brutally efficient censorship of a man dropping his pants...

The 2025 issue also includes a pedagogy file by Sylvia Wu on mosque architecture in China, aimed at helping to diversify the types of sources available in the undergraduate classroom.

Thanks to all authors, reviewers, & readers as we close out issue 33! We published 550 pages in 2025: 7 articles; a thematic dossier w/ 4 more articles; a roundtable; an Arabic edition; a pedagogy file; 7 book reviews; & some short communications. Here’s a thread to gather some highlights! 🧵

I reviewed Gabriele Tergit's THE EFFINGERS, a mighty and brilliant and extremely readable book out now in English thanks to a cracking translation by Sophie Duvernoy >>> www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

Our End-of-Year Fundraiser is launched! https://publicdomainreview.org/support We're a not-for-profit project reliant on reader donations to stay afloat. Please do give if you can! Available to donors, our themed postcard packs: upcoming theme on... ATTENTION. #GivingTuesday

Looking for a pièce de résistance for a birthday party or Christmas day? The February 1911 edition of American Homes and Gardens has you covered with Quaint Dessert Dishes like Welshwoman with Cat, banana pigs, and of course the booby bird:

Digital Humanities Showcase TOMORROW! Join us for our finale session of the Digital Humanities Showcase! Friday, November 21, 1-2 pm ET (10-11 am PT): Immersive Realms (Elina Gertsman); and AnyBook Experience (Sabina Zonno and Lynn Dodd)

It was such a pleasure to commission Sylvia Wu for an amazing & insightful Pedagogy file on Chinese mosque architecture for the new issue of @alusuralwusta.bsky.social. If you're interested in teaching about the legacy of Islam in China, there's maybe no better place to start:

urbanomnibus.net/2025/11/a-qu... back on da horse

Of mixed Surinamese–Dutch heritage, Paramaribo-born Gerrit Schouten (1779–1839) fashioned intricate papier-mâché dioramas depicting life on Suriname’s colonial plantations — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/gerrit-schouten-suriname-dioramas/

I have two new pieces up at @publicdomainrev.bsky.social this week: first, about the human-animal hybrids of Louis XIV's court painter Charles le Brun... publicdomainreview.org/collection/l...

Berlin pals, this is happening tomorrow! Please come along. The book is great and Tim is very funny and eloquent. It’ll be nice.

This morning, The Berliner began – against the will of its staff – posting a series of advertisements for the Nova Festival Exhibition. Our concerns having been dismissed and stonewalled, we have had no choice but to strike.

The amazing Cristina Rivera Garza is serving as guest curator at the ILB this year – had an amazing time talking to her about the events she organized and what multilingual literature can offer us in these horrible times:

I had a great time picking 12 short stories and writing about them for Jonathan Gibbs’ great project, A Personal Anthology. You can read about them - and browse the archives of past writers’ choices - here:

London pals, on July 7th I’m going to be talking about Poor Ghost! with the brilliant @nrolah.bsky.social at Reference Point bookshop, WC2R. Come and join if you’re free!

My debut novel, Poor Ghost! is out today with @sceptrebooks.bsky.social It’s about class, mourning, love, fathers, Manchester, and lots of other stuff. I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

FULL LINEUP for our little festival of Australian and Aoteoroa/New Zealand literature in Berlin on May 24th!! Come see professors, poets, artists, & novelists (& me); come hear about Weiss & Bismarck's bastards & Sebald in the desert & multidirectional war memory >> stadtsprachen.de/en/event/par...

in this month's Berliner mag, I waded in to the "brodernism" debate—and called time on the genre of anglophone literary criticism that was designed to go viral on Twitter >> www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...

A pleasure as always to spend some time with Seagull Books' stable of world-bending fiction:

in my urgent, whipsmart, unputdownable column in last month's Berliner, which has been described by both Zadie Smith and Ocean Vuong as "necessary", I call for an end to the book blurb—because it's ugly & stupid & skews the industry towards the well-connected >> www.the-berliner.com/books/editor...

🤙 Call for Proposals! Seeking topics like professionalization 💼 community building 👥 skills training 🔬 etc. If your proposal addresses the medievalist grad student experience, then we want to sponsor you! First round consideration due May 22nd ⏳ #MAA2026 #ICMS #IMC

Viktor Orbán's Hungary: scourge of the EU, role model for the US right. For @thebaffler.com, I wrote about how the Orbán regime seeks legitimacy by telling dodgy stories about the 20th century—stories not all so different from those that we've been telling in the West thebaffler.com/salvos/house...

Berliners, my novel is coming out in two months and I'm throwing a launch party at @lettretage.de with my great pal @ajbwells.bsky.social. Come along!

proud to see The Berliner – and specifically @mathildegm.bsky.social – at the top of the critical praise for Peter Cornell's WAYS OF PARADISE .... sucked in Josh Cohen!! (also buy this book it's amazing)

I first saw The Klezmer Project, a beautiful film that plays with fiction, history, text & image, urging us to consider culture beyond blood and nation, at Berlinale 2023. @jewishcurrents.bsky.social let me write about it. Thank you, Nathan & Nora, for supporting and editing this labor of years.

Berliners: my football club is starting a women’s team and we’re looking for players. Please share if you know anyone who might want to join a fun, inclusive women’s football team with professional coaches.

"One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow..." My wintry The Berliner column about snow in literature at a time we're getting lots less of it—from Stevens and Stifter to Stepanova and Amy Waldman >>> www.the-berliner.com/books/what-d...

It was an honor to review Omar Khalifa's SAND-CATCHER, out now from @coffeehousepress.bsky.social, for the Berliner this month. Whether about the Nakba to the current genocide, we demand so much of Palestinians' memories and grief:

As @ajbwells.bsky.social has been saying (and Michel Friedman, a former CDU rep, for what it’s worth), the greatest threat to german democracy is the CDU burning the brandmauer and collaborating with the AfD…god these quotes are alarming.

✒️📓Join us for "Writing Against the Clock: Nurturing Your Creativity in the Academic World" In Pt 1 we welcome @irinadumitrescu.bsky.social , @bruceholsinger.bsky.social , Julia Istomnia, & Helen Sword. In Pt 2, we write together 😎Register now! 🔗1: bit.ly/MAAGSCWrite1 🔗2: bit.ly/MAAGSCWrite2

CDU breaking the taboo on coalitioning with the far right remains the greatest threat to German democracy. But you wouldn't know that from the anglophone papers

It was a real pleasure to round out 2024, the Year of Surrealism, with Saskia Vogel's new translation of Peter Cornell's THE WAYS OF PARADISE, out now from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social:

dear brains trust – for a column about the book blurb – what are your most loved and most hated blurbs of all time? or clichés that drive you mad when you see them? or funny blurb stories? come at me. gerne auch auf deutsch

Now the new year has begun the release of ELEGY, SOUTHWEST is imminent. If you’re keen on preordering, you can get a 25% discount for the next fortnight with this link from Tertulia, a much better option than ordering from other Terrible Companies that will go unnamed. tertulia.com/book/elegy-s...

Tomorrow in Berlin: a multilingual reading of Adania Shibli's Minor Detail at Hopscotch Reading Room, 14:00 - 17:00.