"All Signal, No Virtue." *** Trigger Warnings *** #HigherEd #edusky #edchat #AcademicSky journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/6/1/...

Reminds me to develop interesting creative critical prompts for my American Gilded Age module.

Related to the above, the people who think that uni is just an empty credentialing system are the exact same ones who'll relinquish the cash streams that the social requirement for credentialing represents over their dead bodies (they might like to cut the uni out though) bsky.app/profile/jeff...

Funny and true: "We start in life with the most preposterous of all human claims--that one should be understood. We get bravely over that after a while; but not until the idea has been knocked out of us by the hardest." Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, from The Whole Family.

"You see, it's so awful recent that I've found there was a world--well, a world where beautiful things counted." Erik Valborg in Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. Was an epigraph in my book, now must be removed for house style.

Glasgow Botanical Gardens are free and picnic lunches allowed in greenhouses.

"Demand for higher education isn’t exogenous – it’s endogenously shaped by availability itself. You can’t desire what you don’t know exists. Hence the huge growth in franchised Business Degrees pushed by domestic agents."

Undine Spragg tops the list I think.

Once you see the gender gap in terms of who is allowed to be disorganised and who isn't, you can never unsee it

Sunshiny walk at Sharphill Woods.

Please join us. Lots of tips for teaching sustainability.

My experience is that this model results in old, white men getting all the research time while young women and scholars of colour end up being pushed into the teaching-heavy roles.

So proud of my sustainable world students for taking risks and articulating deep thoughts well.

A healthy looking fox ran through my garden on a suburban street at lunchtime today.

The next post, on the UK's shameful For Women Scotland Supreme Court decision on defining the word 'female' to exclude trans women. I'm actually proudest of this, because I think it sets out clearly the EU law counter-position to the UK SC's bad reasoning. www.thegist.ie/the-gist-tra...

It turns out that Whitman's 'The Dalliance of Eagles' maintains the power to astonish -- among my students this morning.

Edinburgh UP is offering 50 percent off all books including my New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman co-edited with Myrto Drizou and Cecile Roudeau for St. Andrews Day! Sale ends Monday.

'Beyond the marshes which Doris must cross there were great drifts of bleached white sand, as if the ghosts of the night had transformed the world to their color, and it had hardly regained its own again.' Sarah Orne Jewett, A Marsh Island.

"The university expects excellence from us, but they are not demonstrating it themselves." Feel the same for various reasons every day. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Illustration for “The Shadows on the Wall.”

For day 18 of #31days31books we have Mary E. Wilkins’s The Wind in the Rose-Bush (1903). The book is extra special because it includes illustrations for the supernatural stories.

An excellent essay collection on transnational approaches to regionalism just published open access with Radboud University Press. Not one but two essays on Freeman! It was a pleasure to work with these editors. books.radbouduniversitypress.nl/index.php/ru...

Oh, 81%, eh? And I wonder what percentage it would be refusing care from medical workers who hadn't been born here.

Great roundtable on ghost stories by Wharton, Freeman, and Stowe in the latest _Edith Wharton Review_.

A-level English : Language, Language & Literature and Language : our results 2025 analysis. @tesmagazine.bsky.social englishassociation.ac.uk/the-ea-congr...

Tens of thousands of Americans will have died (literally) from Medicaid cuts by the time Hersheys removes nontoxic synthetic dyes from their high-calorie, low-nutrition candies

Please don’t lump me in with the IDF, that seems kinda antisemitic

These huge cars are vastly more dangerous, kill far more children, as they're higher at the front. They should have their own much lower speed limit in towns; and higher tax. Parking should be charged as for vans, they're larger than normal spaces. It's bizarre that they're treated as cars.

Absolutely thrilled to see this excellent piece by our MA graduate and now PhD student, Nada Saadaoui, on walking as a form of resistance for Jane Austen and her heroines, published in ‘The Conversation’ today: theconversation.com/for-jane-aus...

Foxgloves are blooming in Nottingham

"I do not need to be Bandanese to understand what Gunung Api means to the islanders, just as I do not need to be Greek to be moved by the Iliad." - Amitav Ghosh. I'm moved by his rejection of ecofascist arguments for protecting only one's own nation's nature.

In case you're tired of being asked, when do you break up?

Reminder that today is the last day to object to Facebook using your data to feed their AI. You need to go into the privacy center until you get to 'Right to Object' where they deliberately make it hard to enter your email address. However now had an email confirming they won't use any of my data.

Our future may depend on the humanities wonkhe.com/blogs/our-fu...

Five or six wrens flitting in and out of my woodpile.

Thanks to Valerie Kinsey for noticing our book's ecocriticism: 'Freeman in these critics’ hands moves beyond denaturalizing social worlds toward rendering ways of being in and of nature.’ muse.jhu.edu/issue/53522?...

I'm giving a talk in a few months to some children's publishing and bookselling bods. If you could say one thing to a capitive audience of publishers and booksellers, what would YOU say? #KidLitUK (Dm me if it's something you'd rather not say out loud...)

Can recommend Aimz Rushton's substack. She always has her finger on the heartbeat. aimzrushton.substack.com?r=185r72&utm...

Talking BAAS and SSAWW with Emma in Hertfordshire. She actually approves this Chardonnay.

Nearing Hatfield for #BAAS2025.

Easter walk at Gotham

Women's appearance and behaviour is about to get even more highly policed in the UK, with a few people doubtless being emboldened to "take action". This whole billionaire-funded enterprise dials back gender equity by decades.

'If we're not real women, why are you patronising and talking over us?' sign at Trans Rights rally Nottinham just now.

University of Derby faces mass job cuts as management plans to make half of senior academics redundant. Please spread the word. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1398...

Recommendation for a short story with an environmental critique of consumerism, anyone? I'd like to teach Ling Ma's Severance, but fear it's too long for the students given other things on the syllabus--for a sustainable world module.

In the US, the Government is cracking down on Universities. In the UK, Universities' senior management are cracking down on Universities.

LibGen potentially trains AI on my books and articles, no payments to me, nor any of the other Stephanie Palmers out there. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

I think narrative that mental health services have reached breaking point was true a long time ago, and possibily always was. For folks not watching closely the crisis never quite arrives, as it is atomised in individual lives. Then change only happens based on scandals that are about other things

Dear BlueSky, Please widely share that my book is out today. 🚀 It tells wild & wonderful, (& arrestingly illustrated) little-known histories from the reproductive frontline. It is a history like no other and like any other, ie brill & for any history lover anywhere. Discount code in replies 👇🏾