I’m only $110 away from my goal: supporting a Gazan translator for making an Arabic version of my forthcoming short intro and sourcebook of late ancient Gazan literature! (Thx to a friend donating $100 off-platform) Please consider chipping in a few dollars to reach the goal! spot.fund/klk26smsc

Come to my book review panel at #AARSBL2025 ! A cross-organization, interdisciplinary joint session, Sat. Nov 22 @ 1-3:30 Hynes Convention Center 201 -- if not for me, then to hear one of these fabulous panelists! @jaxhidalgo.bsky.social @elprofebarba.bsky.social

I am so proud of @vox-magica.bsky.social!! Cannot wait to dive into her latest book!

My book is now available open access on project muse, with OAPen launch coming soon. Hard copies should start going out this week (if they have not already): you can get yours for 50% off with code SAR50.

honored to be part of this #ScholarSunday. check out all this amazing work!!

Announcing a brand new series launching this #Halloween 👻 Manchester Studies in the Supernatural explores how the #supernatural shapes human experience across time and place. Bridging disciplines and challenging boundaries, it welcomes bold new research on the #occult and the #unseen

I don’t suppose anyone connected to the SBL or AAR would like to tell them that misspelling the name of a scholar like Phyllis Trible in the heading of a Memorial is a disgrace. #SBL #AAR

it’s officially book promo time! so, hey, i wrote this book; it comes out in a week! would you mind signal boosting and asking your library to buy it? if you’d like a copy, the code AUFLY30 will get you 30%off.

I'm gearing up to record on @mikemotia.bsky.social's New Book Network podcast, and people, if you want to catch up on what's been going on in ancient Mediterranean studies lately, you should go look at his catalog! newbooksnetwork.com/hosts/profil...

We are pleased to announce a dedicated podcast feed for "New Books in Late Antiquity," sponsored by Ancient Jew Review. Follow on Apple (podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n... ) or Spotify (open.spotify.com/show/6uGXkAl...) now!

Please reskeet: CFP is open for the North American Patristics Society meeting, May 21-23, 2026 in Chicago Submit abstracts either for the general call or to a pre-arranged theme, or you can submit a whole planned session! Deadline is Nov 19th, details at link: www.patristics.org/annual-meeti...

Usually, to show an author love, the first rule is: buy the book. And, you can totally buy this book---but, it's also available OA, which means you can in a few weeks' time get it for free. luminosoa.org/books/m/10.1... So, the updated rule: to show an author love, get her book and read it!

hope we’re all paying attention to the conflation of christianity and neosegregation. hope other christians start pushing back. and i’m biased, but man, i hope schools stop shuttering their religion departments when we need them most.

Seems hyperbolic, is documentary

This remains the most important piece i’ve written about the goals and ideological principles of the second Trump administration www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc... bsky.app/profile/jame...

Look, these people are Protestants.

my book_smoke & mirrors_ is out on oxford scholarship online. i have many feelings, mostly good! this was a difficult write for many reasons. so i hope you find something useful in it if you read it.

I am not willing to concede the Bible to those who wield it like a weapon

Hahahaha Academia Dot Your Stuff Is Yours messed up so badly that Humanities Commons is currently down, lol When it comes back, scholar friends, go get yourself a profile at a place that won't steaI from you

I made an early Christian studies group---come join! hcommons.org/groups/early...

These ads all feel like they’re from a movie about fascism, a parody. But no, Fascism is literally this. The “deep danger voice”, the 13-year-old’s GI Joe power fantasy, the black/white “good vs evil” presentation, the big letters in all caps… It’s literally tailored to people who don’t think.

Karina Villa protecting her constituents by literally running ICE off the streets in West Chicago and yelling to residents to stay inside their homes.

I'm not the biggest fan of homework (a whole branch of my research* examines its problems). But this is homework at its best: an opportunity for kids to think critically about what they're learning in school and apply it in creative, personally meaningful ways, with time to work/get help in class.

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...

if you know anyone who might be interested, please circulate this Call for Papers: "Rethinking Popular Religion from Late Antiquity to the Early Medieval Period" 📍Venezia / Università Ca' Foscari / 12-13th March 2026 💣 deadline: 30th September 2025 #medievalsky #cfp #Venice @rmblf.bsky.social

My latest column for National Geographic is on Joseph Smith. It features the amazing new biography by @georgemasonu.bsky.social prof. John Turner and quotes from @benjaminepark.bsky.social's American Zion. www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

If a large portion of the organized American Jewish community really leans hard into "Holocaust memory only bears moral lessons for the treatment of Jews," I do not think they will ultimately like the way that will lead the rest of the country to relate to the Jewish community.

Tapping the sign

i do wonder at what point this ratcheting of rhetoric about the democratic party ends up having real life effects

Thread.

I personally don’t think disciplines need to be “relevant” to be important. That said, a day doesn’t pass—esp these days!—when there isn’t something in the news that Religious Studies training/coursework could help one understand

Ashanty is my student, and this is her first-ever professional assignment! She’s a ridiculously smart thinker and writer — read her on AI in school instead of all the adults pontificating. 🤗

An updated Dictionary of AI to help cut through the obfuscating buzzwords. sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/... *with thanks to Joseph Potts and @petertarras.bsky.social for their contributions

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Best cover, or *bestest* cover? Get yourself Jenny Barry's new @ucpress.bsky.social book, with Fuseli's The Nightmare put to excellent use

This week, @kellyjbaker.bsky.social and @johnbrooks.bsky.social talked to @vox-magica.bsky.social about 2024's thriller HERETIC Atheists! Mormons! Monopoly! Radiohead! Creepy Hugh Grant! It's all here! Here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Here's the wager: invest your time in reading and writing and, if they're right, then you haven't lost anything; if they're wrong and you go along, you've lost a skill you should have been developing *and* you've been distracted then whole time

ftr, *this* is who they're shutting down. from ACLS:

just got word that my department's being shut down. two things: 1. no, i'm not okay. i've no words for how hard i've worked for this department and this institution. i feel betrayed, frankly, though i know it's not personal. 2. we rocked, y'all. i've no words for how hard we rocked, either.

We founded the U of Arizona Center for East Asian Studies three years ago with a US Dept of Education grant. Last Friday marked the end of year 3 of 4. Though the grant was for four years, we have not received word about year 4 funding. Without this support, we have no choice but to close down.

I received my MA in Classics at U of Oregon and this is absolutely horrific news. I owe so much to that department and the wonderful faculty there. Unthinkable.

As I’m revamping my Intro to College Writing course, I’d like to hear some of your favorite web articles to spark class conversation, whether recent or past classics. 1/2

Publication day for a book that Matthew and I spent six years on, anguished over, fought for, rewrote twice, and nearly abandoned. I hope it proves useful in continuing important conversations about the ancient world and about the societies we choose to build today. www.ucpress.edu/books/ancien...

"PhD-level experts in your back pocket" is a completely nonsensical description of AI but a pretty good description of social media if you follow the right people

Excited to announce that after a lot of editorial work our volume "Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE - 300 CE" is out now. @jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social @illdottore.bsky.social academic.oup.com/book/60683

We’ve shifted money from helping people to hurting people.

An addled president is shredding the Constitution to usher in white nationalism and fascism while destroying the economy and our health care, so if you’re going to write an alarmist op-ed because a mayoral candidate might open five (5) city-run grocery stores, you can kindly get bent.

So excited to incorporate AI into the classroom and liberate my students from boring tasks like reading and thinking

The Columbia Spectator notes that Columbia and Cornell are the only Ivies that didn't sign on to a new amicus brief defending Harvard against the Trump administration. (Other signatories include Tufts, MIT, JHU, Rice, Rutgers, Caltech, Colorado State, Oregon, Oregon State, Maryland College Park)