Bread-binding: 18th century almanac housed in a wooden case meant to look like a Vienna bread roll! Images courtesy of the Rare Book School

eavesdropping on a couple of english lit academics in st. john, i overheard confirmation of what is surely going to be the biggest literary news story of the year

In May 1962 Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were sentenced to six months imprisonment for defacing the dust jackets of library books using cut-out illustrations from other library books. I do not condone mutilating library books but I do really like their cover collage for The Secret of Chimneys.

57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals. And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked. And then the DEI office was killed. And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.

Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.

You see the printed black square from a page in Robert Fludd's "Utriusque cosmi maioris" (1617) that represented the nothingness that was prior to the universe. The square is framed by four sentences in Latin: "Et sic in infinitum" (And so on to infinity). #earlymodern #skystorians

how did i go so long not knowing we were literally teaching people to read wrong. i knew something wasn't right but jesus christ www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

I’m trained as a digital humanist which is arguably why I’m deeply invested in the analog.

Good morning! [Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, A Soul in Hell, 1670-1700, Wax, 11.5 cm x 10 cm (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)]

So much think-piecing and op-ed'ing about data centers. I wish folks knew that some scholars have been studying these things — as real estate, as geopolitical battlegrounds, as ecological disasters — for a decade+. Mél Hogan, Alix Johnson, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Holt, Patrick Brodie, et al

When I say “technology” I mean the codex

bastille! no prisons, no kings. yes public goods, yes pro-social state.

Friends, please share! Proofs are ready for @skeuomorphpress.org's edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology." I am so pleased with this book—in many ways our 1st real book project Details about how to get one through our fundraiser at skeuomorph.ischool.illinois.edu/le-guin-book...

The academic’s mid-summer crisis is a mid-life crisis in miniature: You realize summer is half gone, & not only that: you see that the longest & least burdened days came early, & they are well past. You compare all you thought you’d do against the days remaining & grieve for what never will be

Here is the grad speech that NYU is now withholding the student's diploma for: "As I search my heart today in addressing you all…the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine."

"I asked ChatGPT, and--" ...the ghost of Ada Lovelace appeared and punched you in the face, I hope.

Poisoning the air of a Black community for a fucking chatbot.

#BookHistory friends! Work has begun on the LGBTQIA+ Book History bibliography, and the team is looking for you to share your citations! If you know of or have published something on LGBTQIA+ book history, submit it to this Google form! forms.gle/c1pkNBPbbyCF...

columbia, brown, georgetown, cornell and now tufts — they’re taking our students, our colleagues, our kin https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/international-student-tufts-university-reportedly-taken-into-federal-custody/2VK55QMAOZFIDBR2A6XNKC5XOU/?outputType=amp

“Working conditions are learning conditions, we like to say, and it is so obviously true you want to tattoo it on your clavicle.” New: Peter Coviello on austerity in the English department.

I heard the NEA is only considering proposals related to 1776 & the USA’s 250th birthday & I was feeling intensely patriotic, so I’m printing these really big posters inspired *directly* by the Founding Fathers The cut was carved from the masthead of a 19th century newspaper

[any 18th-centry novelist tries to tell a joke] THE ALEHOUSE; or the SURPRIZING HISTORY of A TAVERN containing the CHARACTER of A Rabbi, A Prieſt, & A Miniſter WITH An Account of how, having left their Lantern at a Table found themſelves loſt in a Wood & were at laſt Deliver’d by a HIGHWAYMAN.

if you thought archives were problematic, wait till you see no archives

Folded & assembled proof sheets for @skeuomorphpress.org’s forthcoming letterpress edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology"—an LIS practicum student created the woodcut illustrations of tech mentioned in the text, which we carved on the laser—I set type for the book & fold-out poster

This year’s Haggerty Prize will award a peer-reviewed article published between 1/1/22 and 12/31/24. $500 cash prize! Please submit your work or nominate others. Deadline is 1/1/25. And please repost to spread the word. Info at link. #c18 #ASECS #LGBTQ

I am continually fascinated by Fludd’s back square, both conceptually and materially. To depict this void required a substance: black printing ink. Which is composed of carbon: so the void or absence ends up depicted by the presence of burnt, earthly matter.

📣 New zine!! "A Librarian Against AI; or, I Think AI Should Leave" is a 40-page zine about why we should think twice about using & supporting generative AI. violetbfox.info/against-ai/ #noAI #zines

This is the first bird extinction in mainland Europe in 500 years. 1400 birds are globally threatened with extinction. 230 are Critically Endangered. The Slender-billed Curlew is just the latest in over 200 bird extinctions since 1500. 😢🪶🧪

Once again, "protest the way I want you to" defeats the essential nature of the act and is an insult to the First Amendment and the rights it offers. Protest is not and cannot be an act of convenience. library.harvard.edu/about/news/2...

This is so fucked up. US$29 million spent on anti-trans ads in less than a month. I don't even know how to express how dangerous this is, how many people this puts at risk, how many lives will be lost.

Just an English pamphlet from 1649 (about a fire in London) with an image from a walking juvenile skeleton on the title page. The 'a', 'b', 'c' labels around the skeleton are evidence that the copperplate used for this print was borrowed from an earlier medical publication. 1/2

Please spread the word about this wonderful opportunity for humanities grad students! This fellowship offers 1 month at the FAU Collection and 1 month at the Huntington Library for research in the histories/literature of early America, early modern Europe, and/or the Atlantic world. Apps due Nov 15!

Happy to announce the MLA’s new “Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship”: www.mla.org/About-Us/Gov.... It represents 2 years of work by our MLA Committee on Information Technology to revise the previous, narrower “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media.”

'Watteauian Miniature/French Souvenir' (2017) by my friend Kris Knight, a nice image for Bluesky (with #c18th #c18 vibes)

In preparing this, I happened upon a great historical collection of eclipse viewers + souvenirs at Williams College! astronomy.williams.edu/hopkins-obse...

#18thc friends, are you missing the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC)? Nikolai Vogler built a stopgap ESTC when the British Library's went offline. As of 11 Jan this site has entirety of the catalogue (though only core info available for post-1700s records). #GLAM 🗃️ #bookhistory spread the word

If you need your brain to explode over and over, especially over activism vs. academia, do I have a link for you. www.chronicle.com/article/why-...