Interested in learning Coptic? Check out my 8-week primer focused on Gospel of Thomas (Sahidic/Lycopolitan Mixed Dialect). Part 1 Starts Oct. 27 Asynchronous and Synchronous (Mondays 9am Atlanta, GA time) via The Religion Department Sign-up here: www.religiondepartment.com/learning-cop...

NEW: ICE agents violently arrested a man in a busy Hyattsville, MD intersection this week, at one point brandishing guns and pointing them at bystanders. I spoke to multiple witnesses—including a local priest whose church is a sanctuary for undocumented people: www.thehandbasket.co/p/ice-agents...

Rocky Horror was my first outlet and introduction into queer culture growing up in ultra-conservative Omaha, Nebraska. It was nothing short of a lifeline for so many of us at the time

Letter to NYT by Elizabeth Castelli & Hilary Callahan (via the former FB) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...

Out now: New issue of MTSR featuring a symposium on @feelingtheory.bsky.social's WILD EXPERIMENT, in which @maiakotro.bsky.social and I take the opportunity to fire off some long-simmering hot takes on how J. Z. Smith is used in discussions about comparison as a method. brill.com/view/journal...

The digital version of God, Slavery, and Early Christianity is officially out! If you're interested in ancient Mediterranean slavery's effects on Christian thought and practice, this is for you. www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...

Gavin Newsom, Kristi Noem Nod Silently To Each Other In Plastic Surgeon’s Office

finally had time today to sit down w the summer issue of JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES and friends do not miss this piece by Christine Luckritz Marquis muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

white academics stop writing about power if you’re just going to cede yours at the slightest pressure challenge.

“The study found that about 7% of US adults have been present at the scene of a mass shooting in their lifetime, and more than 2% have been injured during one.”

I spoke with Amanda Heffernan, a nurse-midwife based in Seattle, about what's like to currently work with pregnant migrants in ICE custody. What she has witnessed in Washington state mirrors other recent cases of mistreatment in detention centers across the country: www.thecut.com/article/preg...

In After Transformation, @maiakotro.bsky.social offers a lyrical history of Christian late antiquity as it lives on in and with the present. Read the intro for free now. buff.ly/TNIwz7k

New pod! Mike interviews Tina Shepardson about A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity. Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0HyD...

The U.S. government is trying to deport Ohio children’s hospital chaplain Ayman Soliman, alleging tenuous connections to terrorism. If DHS succeeds, experts say it could hand the Trump admin. a “sledgehammer” to use on mass deportations. ➡️ Read the full story: www.propublica.org/article/ayma...

Duke UP has put the Introduction to my book online! See here: bit.ly/42yhObv

It’s often hard to see how the quiet world of academic thought-making figures in the wider one, so dominated by the loud, self-righteous proclamations and vicious threats that characterize the moment. But having spent a lot of time this year reading new, beautiful books and…1/2

“.. I can’t remember anyone ever telling me we can’t say anything critical about a civilian like this. He was not in our chain of command or anything,” the officer said. @nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

There's a new issue of the Journal of Ancient Judaism, in which I discuss palm trees, Smyrna, and the discursive deployments of Judea in the Roman Empire: brill.com/view/journal...

Twitter is owned by a neo-Nazi, the LA Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal are owned by pro-Trump billionaires, and CBS News will soon be run by a far-right Likud extremist. American media still has a liberal bias problem.

The new issue of Religious Studies Review is live, featuring responses to Lee Edelman and the Queer Study of Religion that include my own essay, "'She Laughs at the Future' (Prov. 31:24b): Reading Sarah's Queer Jouissance." It's available open access here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🐣 Our SBL Review Symposium for Mike Chin’s new monograph “Life” has just been published with Religious Studies Review 51/2. Have a look here, especially if you are interested in ancient natural history or new ways of writing old history: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17480922...

I have a new article out today in Public Humanities, where I try to find some words for how historicide is (and has always been) a project of European colonialism - and I try to find some words for the historians who continue to support it. 🇵🇸✊🏻 Open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I've been working for many months on this article on Silicon Valley's under-the-radar role in bringing AI into schools across the US. I really hope you'll read it — here's a gift link — but I'll tell you some of the highlights in this thread. (1/x)

Teens are calling Idaho's suicide hotline and being told that they can't proceed with the conversation without parental consent. Many of the callers are then hanging up. Idaho approved a strict parental consent law last year.

It’s September 1 so now begins the long stretch in which I play Earth Wind and Fire loudly every day when I pick up my teen from school.

Got new glasses last week thinking they’d help with migraines. Then saw neurologist who wants me to try a new pill for said migraines, one side effect of which blurred vision.

In news that is entirely unsurprising to faculty

“The specific cuts [at University of Oregon] reflect a misunderstanding of the essential reasons for the existence of the university. Cuts in teaching & research should always be a last resort, after budgets for administration, athletics, & other nonacademic programs.” www.aaup.org/news/aaup-pr...

A must-read: Carly Daniel-Hughes, Adornments of Empire: Early Christian Dress and the Colonial Composition of Gender journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Synecdochal surrender to the will of the sovereign, but also tacit admission of exasperation/exhaustion with autonomy-as-neoliberal (consumer) choice

The cover for After Transformation. The @dukepress.bsky.social designers are just so great. dukeupress.edu/after-transf... #ancientbluesky #byzantinebluesky #classicsbluesky

Exclusive: An internal planning road map obtained by The Post shows the strategy behind ICE’s breakneck expansion, a chaotic effort that has already triggered lawsuits and accusations of cruelty. wapo.st/41FWkck

Remember that conversation folks were trying to have about defunding the police?

ICYMI: Amazon still doing Amazon things The company is not only reintroducing new versions of old features that allow police to access footage from Ring users Amazon is introducing a new Ring feature that will allow police to request *livestream* access to our home security devices. @eff.org

my little elements family reunited! @calthalas.bsky.social @maiakotro.bsky.social @andytobo.bsky.social @vox-magica.bsky.social

The “deal” that Brown made with the Trump admin is much more extreme than is being reported. It includes government oversight of course evaluations and no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring. Read it for yourself here: www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

It's time to tell you to pre-order this! $34.95 for a handy lil' paperback! www.ucpress.edu/books/things...

Did you know an unprovenanced papyrus possibly from the West Bank held by 🇮🇱 + published by a 🇦🇹🇮🇱 team will be presented at the international congress of papyrology in 🇩🇪this week? We wrote about why we are boycotting the conference 👇 & the papylist admin refused to share our post🙃 tinyurl.com/3vc4byyw

Only doing this because I wish I had one of these in my hand right now: Paper plane Oaxaca old fashioned Gin fizz Rusty nail (winter only) Cin Cyn

More from Jill Osier ♥️ @bullcitypress.com

The book will be out in a month or two, but in the meantime here’s a blog post for @universitypress.cambridge.org about enslavement to God cambridgeblog.org/2025/07/why-...

If the authors (including @letteney.bsky.social) are right about the pervasiveness of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean world, then this book will require a paradigm shift in how we think about coercion and social control in antiquity. Not often that the historiographic stakes are so high!

The absurdity of a situation in which Prof. Hirsch, a child of Holocaust survivors & a renowned scholar of trauma & memory, wonders whether she can teach Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem at Columbia University.

I’m behind on all of my planned reading these last couple of months, but I’ve taken peeks at the three of these because I just can’t wait. Mandatory reading, all of them.

Many of us in the humanities are going to have to get clear for ourselves on why, outside of institutional rationales, what we do is vital. And many of us will have to let go of the lure of institutional reward in order to do the kind of work that matters. chicagomaroon.com/48215/news/u...

Two things are true: 1) shit’s really hard (job market is grim and every academic system seems to be breaking simultaneously); 2) there are reasons still to pursue a graduate degree—just don’t go in thinking that doing one will be a ticket to security or prosperity.

60% off sale @ NYU Press! Save on Disability Works and other award-winning titles in the Performance and American Cultures Series (and still more amazing books)! Use code NYU60 at checkout to get Disability Works for a mere $12.80—free shipping for orders over $40! nyupress.org/978147982487...

60% off selected @nyupress.bsky.social books. Here's the list of Religion books on sale: nyupress.org/sale25-relig...

friends and enemies, the ebook of mine & @lollardfish.bsky.social's THE BRIGHT AGES is once more on sale from @bookshop.org! Only $7.99! get you one or a few, maybe a baker's dozen! #medievalsky #booksky bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Alex de Waal has worked on humanitarian causes across the globe for over 40 years. “There is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.”