The new Mill Creek exhibit at @mohistorymuseum.bsky.social is a beautiful combo of calling out injustice while celebrating Black community and placemaking. And for my medievalists, here’s a reminder that STL is full of medievalisms that are easily and often wielded as a tool of white supremacy.

I’m well beyond “why apply,” I’m at “I cannot in good conscience apply.” Gift link to the NYT piece on the NEH’s awarded projects since it was gutted: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/a...

The Careful Consequence Checker, a free, self-directed tool for understanding the impacts of building, buying or adopting an AI-powered product or service www.careful.industries/consequences Thank you @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

This Friday! Join us for our next Morning Bytes, where Dr. Jill Anderson (English) will present on her work producing a biographical chronology for the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Online Letters project. #DigitalHumanities @mhs1791.bsky.social

My new favorite fact about the archaeological chronology of the American Bottom. What other names should we give to archaeological periods? Our current moment gives strong Chad energy.

CFP alert! If you're working on digitization, replicas and reproductions, living history practices, or other forms of surrogate sources, we'd love to see a proposal for organized sessions at the 2026 Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies. #DigitalHumanities #LivingHistory #CFP #MedievalSky

I’m watching a very old Jeopardy episode with a contestant who, when she was in high school, mailed her fingernails to a lady in California who would use them as false nails for celebrities. And like… I don’t think that lady was real?

Let this be a lesson to us all 🚵🍷

Happy Halloween from the definitely-not-haunted lamp that appeared at my metro station this morning!

This Wednesday! @hrambsy.bsky.social will share his work on the Black Lit Network, a #DigitalHumanities project that brings scholarship on African American literary studies to public audiences and provides innovative discovery tools that link people to books based on their interests.

We’ll happily take donations from non-SIUE folks too, and although I can’t promise a university pennant, I do have some snazzy stickers I’d be happy to mail!

IRIS (fund 4332) fosters collaborations among students, faculty, and community members that use digital tools to explore the intersections of technology and culture. Donations support tech upgrades, equipment for check-out, and student workers and GAs who support the Center’s teaching and research.

CODES (fund 4251) provides students the opportunity to work in small research teams with a faculty member and a community org to consider how the world's vital issues impact communities near SIUE. Donations fund student research supplies, graduation stoles, student mentors, internships, and more.

📣Calling all SIUE faculty and staff📣 Join the SIUE Faculty and Staff Fundraising Campaign and make a direct impact on the programs and projects that inspire you most. If that inspiration includes digital humanities, experiential learning, and community-engaged pedagogy, keep reading!

"Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities" invites Black Digital and Public Humanities project directors to submit their projects to an interactive map and searchable database of 650+ international #Black #DigitalHumanities and #PublicHumanities projects. networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

People think coding is a sedentary job, but when you’re trying to debug a user location feature, it can involve a lot of steps.

When the people demand donuts for Friday morning meetings, who am I to deny them? This morning’s border-crossing baked goods are brought to you by Donut Drive-in, Metrolink, and Madison County Transit.

University of Illinois campuses pays a for-profit company to recruit students for online programs — a practice that would be illegal if done by the universities themselves, a WBEZ investigation found.

“Dusty archives” aside, this is what really got my goat. 1) DH is a sprawling field that comprehends a huge number of qualitative approaches, and 2) a facial recognition algorithm is absolutely a quantitative method. Don’t conflate how you would handle a task with what happens in the machine.

lol what a day for Josh Hawley to finally write me back about FY26 appropriations with a bullshit “don’t blame me 🤷‍♂️” email. I can’t even remember when I sent it.

Today at 3:30 p.m. BOA Public Infrastructure Committee hearing on #BOAres111 for data centers. Testify at city hall or via Zoom. Email comments to: [email protected] We need a moratorium, by ordinance, on #datacenterSTL #ArmoryTIF #SLU353 Details: www.stlouis-mo.gov/events/event...

This can mean nothing good for student data.

My autocorrect changed chat to Chat this morning, and I have achieved a new level of loathing for it. (Impressive, since it also autocorrects the Dr. in my title to my friend’s name Dru.)

Well, uh, psa: the trail at Saint Stanislaus is blocked, and if you try to go around the blockage, you might just slide down into Cowmire Creek and spend 15 minutes trying to claw your way back out of the 3ft deep muck. But at least my shorts will dry out as I bike back to the bus!

Had she actually sought out readily available answers from wildlife rehabbers, she’d have found that newborn rabbits can’t be safely moved, and doing so is in fact illegal in some jurisdictions. Convenience culture kills, and not just bunnies.

What’s medieval armor doing in a #DigitalHumanities class? Opening up questions about the role of surrogate sources! We often talk about the affordances of digital surrogates: gains like access and linked data, as well as limits like the inability to convey material, multisensory knowledge.

The wide range of currencies and modes of exchange in the Middle Ages of course turns this specious analogy on its head. And don’t forget that trans people existed then too! #MedievalistsForTransRights

It’s World Car-Free Day today! It’s a great reminder to explore your non-car options and make some concrete plans for Week Without Driving (Sept. 29-Oct. 5). #CarFreeDay #WeekWithoutDriving #WeekWithoutDriving2025

Just finished my rewatch of Buffy S1Ep8, “I Robot, You Jane,” where they accidentally digitize a demon into the internet. I’ve assigned it for my DH/Technology and Literature class tomorrow, and if you don’t hear from me after, it’s because the class discussion will have turned me to dust.

100%. It exacerbates the existing cycle : When transit agencies lose funding and slash routes/frequencies, it becomes less usable. Fewer people ride, because fewer people CAN ride. But falling ridership numbers become a pretext for further disinvestment. The best way to improve transit is to use it.

Take a listen to @hrambsy.bsky.social’s interview about the Black Lit Network on @stlpublicradio.bsky.social! From the barbershop to the classroom, it’s a project deeply rooted in a genuinely public humanities. When you’re done, visit www.blacklitnetwork.org and try it out! #DigitalHumanities

What’s the term for corporations using grants and charitable giving to launder their reputations? (Maybe greenwashing works here too 💵)

Finished my first century ride! 100 miles (and a little more) on a circuit of Door County, Wisconsin’s thumb. My dad and I did a good 25 miles together before he peeled off for the 70 mile route. It was windy and unseasonably cold, but we got it done!

My sister and her family are getting cats, and I am a good cat aunt but maybe a bad sister.

Feels good to make the news with some positive change! Not only do we have rising enrollment, but our budget is balanced and retention is up.

The dean's new schtick this semester is to label lectures as bad pedagogy on the basis that they're medieval. It's a double whammy of faculty-shaming and medieval-shaming. Bad news pal, the whole kit and kaboodle is medieval. Wanna know what else is medieval? Active reading! Annotation! Debates!

Alright #DigitalHumanities, I'd love your recs! I'm assigning DH project reviews using the Reviews in DH model, which means I'd rather have things that haven't already been reviewed there. I've got a list but I know it's probably missing some bangers. What are your favorites?

A colleague pointed out yesterday that I didn’t manage to take a ferry. A challenge for another day! Or maybe… youtu.be/k-DLqc9Vplg

After some required reading this week that I did not enjoy, it’s so pleasant to turn to @jeffmanuel.bsky.social’s faculty book club pick! @biblioracle.bsky.social’s critiques of both AI and reductive writing pedagogies are thoughtful, generative, and (blessedly) engaging. #DigitalHumanities

Hitting all the transit modes this morning, across a pretty good swath of the Metro East! It’s a sleepy, early morning bus-train-bus-bike from STL to Edwardsville, where I’ll pick up a university vehicle to drive students to a partner visit in Cahokia Heights. There, we’ll talk about libraries! #stl

One of many advantages to making your own clothes: cavernous pockets ensuring you’ll never be without a whiteboard marker again! #DHMakes

I enjoyed chatting with some St. Louis Metro Transit staffers on my bus this morning! We talked about challenges of regional connectivity between Metro and Madison County Transit, frustration with the fare gates, and lots of other little features and bugs of STL-area transit. #stl #StLouis

We have unfortunately come to that time of year when both summer and fall seasonal allergens are floating around, so if you need me, I’ll be the sniffly, red-eyed, teary mess in the corner.

We set up our shared norms* in class today, and they kept it brief but thoughtful: Collaboration, Experimentation, and Playfulness (all guided by a humane ethos). It's shaping up to be a great semester! *Guided by Spiro's "This is Why We Fight" and @timothyburke.bsky.social's "The Humane Digital"

Everyone please tell me your favorite Calvino and/or your favorite Oulipo! I’m assigning “The Burning of the Abominable House” this semester in Technology and Literature, but it was a tough call to pick one. #DigitalHumanities

More handmade palazzos, freshly hemmed this morning for the CODES Welcome Reception! (Photo taken after a very long day, hence the name tag still dangling around my neck) These were made from some secondhand chambray purchased from City Sewing Room, a local #StLouis reuse studio. #DHMakes #sewing

Today, #DigitalHumanities looks like arts & crafts, as I trim down student research posters for our CODES welcome reception on Wednesday! Later, it’ll also look like writing DH training materials for faculty, setting up more eportfolio pilots, and evaluating tool sustainability for a new project.