Now here is something that doesn't happen everyday: I am about to see an unpublished manuscript of Madame de Genlis, famous French educator. I worked on her novels, her guidebooks (which are also language books), her memoirs which contain her travels - but never encountered this manuscript. Excited!

(cont.) ... Davide Vago, Odile Gannier, Pierre Schoentjes, Jean-Baptiste Bernard, Nina Rocipon et Haila Koo. www.fabula.org/actualites/1... Aussi, comptes rendus des livres de Catherine Pinguet, Jean-Jacques Bavoux, Christina Kullberg, Eva Johanna Holmberg et Philippe Antoine - Gilles Louÿs (dirs).

Vient de paraître: numéro hors-série 8 de la revue Viatica, intitulé "La littérature de voyage au prisme de l'écopoétique". Dirigé par Yvan Daniel et Alain Romestaing, articles par Sylvie Requemora, Anne-Gaëlle Weber, Daniel López, Virginie Teller, Pascale Auraix-Jonchière, Philippe Antoine (cont.)

(cont.) ... Davide Vago, Odile Gannier, Pierre Schoentjes, Jean-Baptiste Bernard, Nina Rocipon and Haila Koo. www.fabula.org/actualites/1... Also featuring reviews of books by Catherine Pinguet, Jean-Jacques Bavoux, Christina Kullberg, Eva Johanna Holmberg et Philippe Antoine - Gilles Louÿs (dirs).

The latest issue of 'Viatica', journal of travel literature, is out. It is a special issue on travel and ecopoetics, edited by Yvan Daniel and Alain Romestaing, with articles by Sylvie Requemora, Anne-Gaëlle Weber, Daniel López, Virginie Teller, Pascale Auraix-Jonchière, Philippe Antoine (cont.)

Off to Paris, with a conference in Le Havre and an archives day in Rouen in the middle. If you have a quick Archives nationales or Bnf query, I might be able to help, just let me know in time (today for the Archives as I'm going tomorrow).

Sames.

We are now escalating our efforts! @ucu.org.uk With just over 830 signatories, we are looking for 1000+ so we can take these requests higher on up. Please do sign against outsourcing @uniofsurrey.bsky.social

Job klaxon: The Department of Modern Languages is looking for an Assistant in French. Lovely students, great colleagues, unbeatable location. Research training and contribute to content teaching possible! jobs.aber.ac.uk/en/vacancy/l...

Using big LLMs for basic queries is 'like turning on stadium floodlights to look for your keys' - this is good on the AI environmental questions.

After a couple of days working well through the pain barrier, the end of the marking tunnel is in sight.

Labour has a whopping great majority and four years left to turn this country around. They should be setting the agenda, not chasing about trying to placate voters of a party with five MPs who will never vote for them anyway. It's not only disappointing... it's embarrassing

A really exciting event for next spring in Angers on a very poorly explored topic, travelling children. I am very honoured to be invited as plenary speaker.

Just booked a 10-day Italian holiday, because. Plans include moderate amounts of sightseeing and inordinate amounts of ice-cream and focaccia (when in Liguria...).

We have moved to this new platform, but the annual ALCS appretiation post cannot be cancelled. If you are not registered yet, do - it's easy, and every year provides a handy little sum for your scholarly travails.

"Advanced linguistic and cultural skills are essential for any deep understanding of how people see themselves and their relationship to the precarious and rapidly changing world around them" www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/mode...

Last chance if you need something checked at the Bnf Mitterrand site, will be there tomorrow Tuesday before heading back.

Is there something you needed to be checked in Paris - mostly BNF and Archives Nationales Pierrefitte? I am lucky enough to head there now, and happy to assist with reference hunting, particularly (but not only) for junior colleagues.

New article out in 'Studies in Travel Writing', in a special issue on 'Decolonizing Travel Studies'. It is the 'twin' article to my earlier essay on the settlers as travellees, with the focus on the colonized, assessing their manyfold reactions to travellers. (1) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A tad surprised to hear for the first time on Bluesky about this intriguing event happening in the building next to my office, on a topic very close to mine, but it sure looks good.

That's a no from - I guess - the whole of the UK university and research sector as well as creatives. By the way, where is @ucu.org.uk?

A very intriguing invitation to a workshop to discuss incorporating mobility studies approaches into history of early modern travel and related fields. (I only wish many mobility studies scholars were less systematic in ignoring decades of works in history of travel and of travel literature...)

Cardiff Archaeological Society. Thurs 12th Dec with Dr Toby Driver Landscapes of fear and respect :exploring the hillforts of Iron Age Wales. This lecture will look at the people, landscape and monuments of Iron Age Wales It's a zoom only lecture, email cardiffarchaeologicalsociety.co.uk to join us

“Taking Britain out of the Erasmus+ programme was a huge mistake. Labour must rejoin and accept the EU’s offer of a youth mobility scheme”👏 Our youth have been robbed of the freedom of movement we enjoyed - this is the absolute least the Gov’t can do for them sussexbylines.co.uk/news/educati...

They were not joking with the red weather alert. Currently electricity is out in Aberystwyth, and I don't think I have ever heard wind howling like this.

My new book, ‘Dealing with Dark Pasts’, where I try to coin a new memory concept, is now out online and is free to download for the first four weeks…! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

📢 'Decolonising the Discipline' Join us on 6 December in our round table discussion on decolonising the discipline in Modern Foreign Languages and English Studies! 3:30-5pm online via Zoom, all welcome. Registration below 👇 #MFLBluesky @ies-sas.bsky.social ies.sas.ac.uk/events/what-...

If you'd like to work with me from January, please apply here: manmetjobs.mmu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancy... You'll need to ask the recruiter about start and end date though

Could you all share? We're advertising a 2 yr postdoc position for someone who works in #VastEarlyAmerica #VastEarlyAmericas to help coordinate the @jcblibrary.bsky.social projects and programs around 2026. Fuller info here: apply.interfolio.com/159279 and v happy to answer questions!

My edition of four travel journals by 18th-c servants is out now, including accounts of France, Italy, the Low Countries, Germany and the Ottoman Empire by three valets and a maid – the majority of people who went on the 'Grand Tour' #skystorians #18thc #c18th global.oup.com/academic/pro...

The key benefit of a humanities education is in all likelihood a person is going to go through several careers over the course of their life because the economy is chaos and a humanities education 1) ideally equips you with a broad basic toolkit and 2) gives you the skills to learn on your own

We've been saying this for a while and UCU took their precious time getting here. I went mildly viral a few years ago with a threat pointing out that without reintroducing student number controls, pay-related UCU demands risk throwing non-RG university colleagues under the bus in the long run.

Whoah.

“We’ve closed all the arts and humanities departments, but those depts are low cost and actually run operational surplus on tuition fee income alone. We now have to close other more expensive depts. The ones cross-subsidized by the arts, humanities and social science depts we’ve now closed”

Everything about this Fara Dabhoiwala piece on Francis Williams in @londonreview.bsky.social is terrific. Come for the take down of Edward Long, but stay for the exquisite read of Williams’ portrait and the evidence hiding in plain sight. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Brief moment of shameless self-promotion: Boydell's 60% sale (on until Nov 30) is an opportunity to purchase my monograph 'Lessons of Travel in 18th-century France' boydellandbrewer.com/978178327436..., aka 'everything you ever wanted to know about French arts of travel but were afraid to ask'.

Me: I did well these last two months. Other me: You said you will start drafting the book. M: I reviewed two book mss and an article. O: YOUR OWN BOOK. M: I reviewed a book. O: THE ONE YOU WERE MEANT TO START. TWO YEARS AGO. M: But I have a book review to write. Two even ! O: *gives up, leaves*

I am devastated to share the news that our colleague and friend, Björn Weiler, Professor of History at Aberystwyth University, passed away after a period of illness. He was one of most kind and helpful people you could encounter in academia, and a world-leading scholar of medieval kingship.

Have a paper looking for a venue, on the - very loosely interpreted - question of 'art of travelling'? Travel's (dis)advantages, discussions of individual and collective practices, the idea of travel writing? Please consider travel writing e-journal 'Viatica' - get in touch with me to discuss!

Proofs are in for my article due to come out in the "Decolonising Travel Studies' special issue in 'Studies in Travel Writing' - more about it shortly. Fortunately, upon re-reading, I still quite like it.

Plus ça change... "Women, if they wander alone, find but rude entertainment from the masculine sex." (Margaret Cavendish, Assaulted and pursued Chastity) www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...

The first of two "twin" articles, based on my BA/Leverhulme-funded research on local reactions to a colonial propaganda trip to Indochina, is now out in Studies in Travel Writing: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10..... I am looking here at the rarely explored category of the 'settler travellee' (1/).

Reading proofs of my article in the upcoming volume 'Microtravel', ed by Charles Forsdick, Zoë Kinsley and Kathryn Walchester (due some time in the spring?). I had fun writing this one, features loads of juicy gossip, outrageous behaviours, as well as silly pictures.

Have a paper looking for a venue, on the - very loosely interpreted - question of 'art of travelling'? Travel's (dis)advantages, discussions of individual and collective practices, the idea of travel writing? Please consider travel writing e-journal 'Viatica' - get in touch with me to discuss!

In case any of you were not aware: the High Tatras are among the most stunning places on Earth.

25 years ago was snowed in for several days in the Slovakian mountains. Now two days of intense snowing and minus 7-11 are predicted, so we might see a repeat...

📣*JOBS* Exeter's Department of Languages, Cultures & Visual Studies is appointing 3 postdoctoral research fellows to join the ERC-awarded, URKI funded project 'Cultures of #Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in #EarlyModern Europe'. 🗃️ 1) focus on Italy: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

It's December so time to make beigli. In case you are not familiar with it, beigli is the undisputed best Christmas cake (similar but much better than Polish makowiec). My family's secret and obviously perfect recipe for those interested in this blog entry: gaborgelleri.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/a...

I might be too literary/historial and not philosophical/contemporary enough for this, but it might be of interest for many of my mutuals.

Today's teaching features the oldest known graffiti in Paris - a cool quiz question for the French early modernist crowd. I have heard about the surviving graffiti (and checked it out) just a year ago, while I have been teaching its author, and their habit of writing on the walls, for many years!