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The CfP for the 1st themed issue of our journal Fandom | Cultures | Research is out & I'm especially excited for this one, since it combines two of the things I'm most interested in: #fanstudies & #memorystudies. Added bonus: a workshop in Marburg in Feb 26. journals.uni-marburg.de/fcr/announce...

Hello #academicsky! I'm sharing a cfp for an edited collection on "Naming & Classifying," pulled together by me, Kristin Girten, & @aaronrhanlon.com . We'd love to see your work! Please also circulate to anyone you think might be interested. Deadline 10/31. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Delighted to have come across this lovely book for a patron visit - Isabella Sinclair’s Indigenous Flowers of the #Hawaiian Islands (1855). The first book published with colour images of Hawaiian flowering plants. A great blog here blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2019/03/isab... #rarebooks #flowers

A website that lets you select a country or state and move it around a Mercator projection map to yield better size comparisons. thetruesize.com, created by James Talmage and Damon Maneice

Highly recommend this chapter on "elevated horror" from David Church's book. It's a fantastic history of the genre even as it's unfolding. It starts with a line from @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social!

I hope this helps someone: Regardless of your intention when using AI, it doesn't change the processes involved in using it, which include excessive consumption of water & other finite energy sources and data centers that are placed in vulnerable communities, polluting both people and land.

For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students. 1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

"Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, AI teacher assistants recommended more-punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white" www.chalkbeat.org/2025/08/06/a...

If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages

If historians know something it is this: nothing is inevitable just because it is popular. AI is not an exception. Nor is fascism.

Essentially, as @mildlydiverting.bsky.social points out, a lot of the use cases which techbros put forward for AI are ones which require them to develop adult skills - like knowing what to say to women. It’s a way of letting them be perpetually toddlers.

"It’s so predictable and pathetic how there’s some big uproar every time a cute young lady winks at the camera or a creepy old man who is president sloppily covers up his involvement with a pedophile sex offender."

I am still haunted by this poem, "The Myth Was Never The Unicorn," written by one of the teens who participated in the creative writing program at the museum this summer. A reminder that girls are always aware. Read the full piece and listen to the author recite it: journey75.org/2025/the-myt...

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Next up in our Phillis Wheatley Peters Pedagogy Special Issue: @grubstreetwomen.bsky.social's "Reimagining the Single-Author Seminar: Teaching Wheatley Peters, Milton, and the Master’s Discourse,” ABO 15.1. Abstract 👇 digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol15/is... #philliswheatleypeters #pedagogy

Stevie Leigh's article "Fan fiction as a valuable literacy practice" was published in #TWC34! This article argues for more use of fan fiction in the classroom and emphasizes that fan fiction is a crucial and valuable practice. Read it here:

Here you go! I'll write some new ones for this semester too. They loved them. The "read without your phone or screens in the room" was a revelation, and many of them decided to keep doing it. They had NO IDEA (& were horrified) how often they interrupt themselves to look at a phone for no reason.

Relaxing Tea Better Fucking Work theonion.com/relaxin...

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one of the saddest things about video games using generative AI for bulk environmental decals and posters and stuff is they’re such cool opportunities to expand lore and sneak in jokes and leaving a computer to spit out generic malformed gibberish just smacks of not giving a shit

V into this stack rn (/hints at where my politics chapter is maybe going to end up)

"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality." - James Baldwin

We’re open for submissions! Can your essay contribute to our understanding of literature/ history/culture in the Anglophone world, 1660-1700, or the adjacent periods? We’re open to any subject and any convincing method! Find more information on our website: blog.umd.edu/restorations...

A South Asian man from Uganda checking two boxes in a college application isn't a scandal. The NYT pulling stolen data from a white supremacist to smear him in support of another candidate is.

I did a parasocial episode! We talk about creepy fans, why this term blew up over the last decade, and if anyone *really* thinks they're friends with celebrities.

Managed to get a complete draft of one chapter this summer; hoping to finish another before school is back in session. Thankfully I have found that my years of research at archives resulted in lots of usable content in various notes documents! The book is starting to come into being. #amwriting #c18

happy pride month. that’s right. july is pride month too. in fact it’s pride year, bitches. the pride will continue until rights improve.

If you know, you know. Happy Bobby Bonilla Day to all who observe.

If you have even a passing interest in TTRPGs, you should sign up for @friede.bsky.social’s FREE Patreon. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say she’s the preeminent scholar of the form, but most of what she writes is super accessible for a wide range of audiences.

The Right really is in disarray because they cannot seem to figure out if they should push “Zohran Mamdani is going to bring Sharia Law” or “Zohran Mamdani treats his wife with too much equality” as a smear campaign, so they are doing both.

New article by Esmeralda Orndorff and Joanne E. Myers in ABO Summer 2025! Abstract 👇 “The Maternal Icon in Eleanor Sleath’s The Orphan of the Rhine,” ABO 15.1 digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol15/is... Thanks for reading! #18thCentury #C18 #C18th #18thC #gothic #gothicliterature #femalegothic

I want to do a special issue of @ecfjournal.bsky.social on astrological resonances between the long 18th century and now. I’ll include peer reviewed scholarship and essays by practicing astrologers who don’t necessarily have a PhD. Consider this the initial call for papers! Message me!

Calling all astrologers! I’m the editor of a top academic journal in 18th-century cultural studies and I have been listening to all of your podcasts! You have knowledge that #c18th studies needs to hear! Call me!

Two powerful New York City labor unions that had supported Andrew Cuomo in this year’s race for mayor have decided to abandon him and endorse Zohran Mamdani instead.

Stripping birthright citizenship from people born in this country goes against rights guaranteed in the Constitution. We must stand against unconstitutional actions and stand up for the fundamental rights granted to people in the United States of America.

Are you a cis woman who doesn't want the very real issues we face to be used as a stick to beat our trans sisters? Sign here.

I have openings in my editing calendar. I do primarily developmental edits of novels and novellas, and I have over a decade of experience. More info and contact link here: www.kathowardbooks.com/editing Please feel free to reach out with any questions!

Zohran Mamdani is saying things like “poverty is a policy choice and politicians have a duty to their constituents to make their lives affordable” and it is making a lot of politicians very very scared that they may actually have to start doing some actual service in their public service jobs.

the Cuomo endorsement train is a fun little sop for anyone who fooled themselves into thinking that the Democratic Party was any less in thrall to the death drive than the republicans

digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol12/is... digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol11/is... digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol14/is... Thanks for reading!

May 🔝 reads! Links👇 1/J. Chow’s rev. of @manionjen.bsky.social's Female Husbands: A Trans History 2/K. Hansen’s “Dress as Deceptive Visual Rhetoric in Haywood’s Fantomina” 3/S. Buckner’s rev. of A History of African American Autobiography, ed. by Joycelyn Moody #18thCentury #C18 #C18th #18thC

Happy Pride Month from all of us here at the Museum! Out of the approximately 1500 species of animal that have been identified as displaying some same-sex behaviour, the giraffe is one of the most studied, with same-sex mounting and necking occurring more frequently than male-female mounting.

Something that I think weighs on many is that everyone knows that if ever the Democrats were fully in power at the Federal level again, they will not immediately move to reverse what has been destroyed and build something new. This reality just sits out there like an anchor.

Hey look a new way to determine which restaurants to completely avoid! www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/11/l...

Okay. I've decided on four articles to ask students to read. These are mostly suggestions from @davidhiggins.bsky.social (thanks!). Also tagging @margotlyautey.bsky.social who wanted the list. 1. This is a shorter piece on the environmental costs of AI: www.teenvogue.com/story/chatgp...

I teach a class called Videogames as Literature & I need to fill a gap. I currently use Stanley Parable, Edith Finch, Night in the Woods & Bioshock Infinite. The last is now too old so I have to find a substitute. Recs for similar length & focus on social issues? Bonus if you can play w/o killing.