Great photos, great story: Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacenters www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Today is Equal Pay Day: the day women effectively stop earning compared to men. We fight inequality wherever we find it. That’s why GMB Union members have launched more than 25 equal pay claims at employers across the UK 👏

Encountering myself in the wild at #LesbianLives — just outside the room where I’m about to present. @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social @uminnpress.bsky.social

Enjoyed seeing prints by women at the V&A, but will there ever be a print exhibition that doesn’t feel compelled to explain print processes in detail? Other media don’t get this treatment. Also have qs about the aggressive pastoralism of their 21st-c selection…

This morning’s FT inadvertently summarises management everywhere in its analysis of corporate discussions of AI: “When we spoke to executives, they would often say the internal tool was very successful,” said Challapally. “But when we spoke to employees, we found zero usage.”

Summer’s almost over (where does the time go?!) and I’ve been meaning for months to share this lovely short review of Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon by Cassandra Langer for The G&LR: glreview.org/article/shor... — next up, new research from this project at Lesbian Lives in NYC this Oct!

Starbucks CEO discovers people prefer people to machines: “We’re finding through our work that investments in labour rather than equipment are more effective at improving throughput and driving transaction growth,” he told analysts. (Financial Times, 29 April 2025)

Mieke Bal, 2003: “one must study a boundary without policing it … studying a boundary and policing it are *incompatible* activities. When you police a boundary … it is no more open to questioning than the law is to the police. When you study a boundary it is put at risk, denaturalized.”

Today's the big day! There are 22 planned protests all over the UK and even one abroad! Find out if there's one near you here: whatthetrans.com/compilation-...

Unabashedly delighted to see Good Pictures in person at the @forarthistory.org.uk book fair in York — thanks @uminnpress.bsky.social for being present!

Today: the @societyofauthors.bsky.social protests #MetaBookThieves in London. Amidst widespread, centuries-old (admittedly quibbly) consensus around copyright, why is wholesale corporate theft even a debate? societyofauthors.org/2025/04/01/s...

Hello world! We’re a new nonprofit that brings together academic, libraries & university-based publishers. We’ll be launching a large collection of hundreds of HSS diamond #openaccess journals in Jan. 2026.

Is it AI undermining peer review, or is it offering evidence that we have definitively hit the wall in terms of pressuring academics to do more with less? (Hint: it’s both.) theconversation.com/vague-confus...

“The free space of creation exists only when it is actively, aggressively, courageously, persistently occupied” — Marilyn Frye, “Do you have to be a lesbian to be a feminist?” off our backs (Aug/Sept 1990): 22.

M. Gessen nails it: “The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/o...

The brilliant and delightful Andrew Swaine came to my IVFDF workshop, Dancing Queer History, and had some thoughts which led to a conversation, the results of which he has written up here: andrewswaine.uk/interpretati...

My ‘Dancing Queer History’ workshop at IVFDF this Sunday comes with a free two-page handout for the first ten dancers, which is what happens when concern for the environment and the excitement of sharing collide in the copy room.

Winchester School of Art is looking for an artist with substantive creative digital/technical knowledge, either hardware- or software-based -- someone who uses tech as their medium, not just their platform. Does this sounds like you or someone you know? jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Don't delay, listen today! The lesbian gaze waits for no man. open.spotify.com/episode/3HXJ... (Queer Lit episode with @lsiddons.bsky.social about this gorgeous, gorgeous book.)

@lenamattheis.bsky.social & I just had this 💜 convo, but in US politics it was ahe’s ago (before, eg, Trump attacked USAID, which work[s/ed] with/for queer & Indigenous people in the US & abroad). Book is free bc of @neh-odh.bsky.social & @uminnpress.bsky.social. open.spotify.com/episode/3HXJ...

Virginia Woolf, 1926: ‘however interesting facts may be, they are an inferior form of fiction… we become impatient of their weakness…, of their compromises and evasions, of the slovenly sentences which they make…, and are eager to revive ourselves with the greater intensity and truth of fiction.’

Delighted by this accolade for my dear colleague's brilliant and innovative work! Congratulations Prof Jennifer Borland! @okstate.edu www.medievalacademy.org/page/GouldPr...

Great review of our current exhibition at The Winchester Gallery, curated by @lizziereed.bsky.social: www.in-common.co.uk/2025/02/01/a...

On holiday (again!), and this time it’s Isabel Miller’s canonical lesbian novel, A Place For Us/Patience and Sarah, 1969/1979: “I can’t say how much it meant that there would never be a hurry again.”

Fantastic talk by @themedievaldrk.bsky.social in our Material Interests series at Winchester School of Art @unisouthampton.bsky.social this evening — huge win to see students engaging with Prof Kennedy’s thought-provoking connections between Medieval English manuscripts and comics theory!

Looking forward to speaking about Good Pictures in the History dept at #BristolUni tomorrow — join us! www.bristol.ac.uk/arts-law-soc...

vm.tiktok.com/ZGdBBFSwg/ book now for #ContraDancing at Halsway Manor with @lsiddons.bsky.social Heather McAslan Will Allen Will Power and Linda Game. halswaymanor.org.uk/event/contra...

Emma Donoghue, Learned by Heart: “But if it’s true… about the mad being capable of a sustained performance of sanity, then I wonder how many people going about their business… in the world may only be keeping their wildest impulses in check by means of such an ‘immense and harmful effort of will’.”

Last HGW post: “It may be I see decay all about me because I am… decay. To others it may be a scene… radiant with hope. I… [find] no promise… in any of the great things of our time. How they will look in history I do not know …; that is how they have mirrored themselves on one contemporary mind.”

Wells: “For this… millions toiled and perished in suffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished… and make our lives one vast dismal spectacle of witless waste! …It came to me like a revelation… at once incredible and indisputable of the abysmal folly of our being.”

Wells, 1909 and still nailing it. “In these plethoric times when … the struggle for life takes the form of competitive advertisement and the effort to fill your neighbour’s eye, when there is no urgent demand either for personal courage, sound nerves or stark beauty, we find ourselves by accident.”

More from Tono-Bungay: “I do not know how far it is possible to convey to any one who has not experienced it, the peculiar interest, the peculiar satisfaction that lies in a sustained research when one is not hampered by want of money. It is a different thing from any other sort of human effort.”

Hols, so I randomly pulled Tono-Bungay (HG Wells, 1909) from my mum’s shelf. “A country which leaves its medical and literary criticism, or indeed any such vitally important criticism, entirely to private enterprise and open to the advances of any purchaser must be in a frankly hopeless condition.”

We're pleased to announce that @uclofficial.bsky.social will be offering a fully-funded PhD studentship (with stipend), in partnership with the English Folk Dance and Song Society. For further description, specific candidate requirements and how to apply, go to: bit.ly/3ZKMggt

Marketing colleagues asked for an author photo, so we took several and I asked my sister for her help choosing one. This was her reply.

What an honour to be included in @karlajstrand.com’s December Reads for the Rest of Us in @msmagazine.bsky.social! And such brilliant company to be in — my winter reading list just got that bit longer :)

Just adding my voice to the many saying this is a dangerous policy based on flawed ‘evidence’. Please stand up to protect trans kids. Indefinite ban on puberty blockers to be introduced www.bbc.com/news/article...

"An excellent example of an intersectional art-historical monograph, impressive for its incredibly productive dialogue between queer and Indigenous studies." Great review of @lsiddons.bsky.social 's GOOD PICTURES ARE A STRONG WEAPON at The Brooklyn Rail: brooklynrail.org/2024/12/art_...

England’s new towns must be walkable and green, say campaigners

It's officially here from @uminnpress.bsky.social! Some reminders: - #NEH supported open access: manifold.umn.edu/.../good-pic... - Prefer real paper? www.upress.umn.edu/.../good-pic... - Stay tuned for our 2026 exhibition at @unisouthampton.bsky.social! - Book tour in 2025 - #queer venue ideas?

Mood: “Ambrosia Tønnesen was unmarried, but not alone.” Kode Permanenten, the word you are looking for is lesbian. A beautifully crafted exhibition, though, and it is delightful to discover another reason to revisit my lesbian sculptors project, which had to take a back seat to the book for a bit.

At the Bryggens Museum, wondering what the evidentiary/connoisseurial benchmarks are for identifying a medieval artefact as an ‘ear spoon’. Also googling ‘ear spoon’.

Sadly relevant to my current collaborative research project.

"Our research reveals evidence of courage and fresh thinking taking place in many different kinds of institutions, and it is this story we wish to convey." Stacy Hartman and Heather Hewett examine how the humanities are being reimagined across higher ed today. lareviewofbooks.org/article/reje...

Monday morning got you feeling a little like a zombie? We feel you. Check out Helen Lewandowski's “Zombie Humanism, Generative AI Images, and Photography” in the current #JournalPanorama, a review of the @flickrfdn.bsky.social's “A Generated Family of Man.” bit.ly/3CKVCB9 #AHAATakeover 1/3

Going over my old conference notes and feeling seen by my past self: the only note I took on one paper is “ethnography is hard for introverts.”

Pleased to share the 'Whose Rainbow?' research project report! We asked LGBT+ students, staff & those considering themselves 'allies' what they thought of the use of LGBT+ symbolism in universities. Full report here: shura.shu.ac.uk/34366/1/2024... Or continue this thread for the headlines... 1/8

Together, ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ (Jean Rhys) and ‘The Madwoman in the Attic’ (Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar) forced me to rethink one of my favourite childhood novels through postcolonial and feminist lenses — and set me on my critical journey. I wonder how often Gilbert and Gubar get assigned today.

Bedtime reading: short stories by Billy-Ray Belcourt, beautiful in many ways but specifically of interest to me for the multiple ekphrastic moments around imaginary photographs. Woke up to a sunrise that feels positively triumphant on the heels of so much recent grey.