A #CreativeWriting & #History 🧵 Yesterday I gave a seminar at the University of Suffolk on "Life-writing as History-writing", looking at historians who have used memoir as a way of writing history, & the relationships between (auto)biography, family history, creative nonfiction, memoir, etc. 1/9

This is REALLY exciting news for authors - especially indies! Thanks, @bookfunnel.bsky.social 💙📚 #bookfunnel #indieauthor #authortools blog.bookfunnel.com/2024/truly-u...

For #mosaicmonday 🏺 St Vincent of Saragossa rushing to the gridiron to be martyred, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna. My late mother Gillian wrote a seminal re-interpretation of this work, challenging the long-standing orthodoxy it represented St Lawrence. drive.google.com/file/d/1n-EK...

Marlborough Mound is 19 meters high and was built in 2400 BC. It's often referred to as Silbury Hill's little sister and is located within the grounds of Marlborough College. Legend has it, this was the final resting place of Merlin, and was once called Maerla’s Barrow. 🧙‍♂️

#MedievalSky: if you'll be at the Medieval Academy (#MAA2024) meeting in March, do make a note that I'll be doing a lightning round presentation on my new teaching module on the Black Death/2nd Plague Pandemic. 1:30pm 03/16. Can't make the presentation? Grab me at coffee time for details.

“If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anyone, come and sit here by me.” -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (who had it needlepointed onto a pillow) 1st c. CE Roman fresco fragment with two women. #GettyVilla (96.AG.302). 📸 my own 🏺

Excavations in a cricket club in Carlisle, north-west England, revealed an Imperial Bath House, built for Septimius Severus while he was in the city around 200 AD. 34 tiles with the letters IMP suggest the bath house was built for the emperor. 📸 Dot Boughton 🏺 Ancientbluesky

I'm really looking forward to speaking about women in 'Gnostic' Christian traditions as part of a day of talks at Southwark Cathedral on 2 March next year. Also featuring @kateantiquity.bsky.social, Helen Bond, and Sara Parvis. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/womens-voi...

well hello *Gospel Thrillers* in the new books column of HARPERS MAGAZINE (!!!!!! ad. inf.) harpers.org/archive/2023... (that URL is awesome)

Such a pleasure to join a virtual almost-conversation on the Augustine Blog, thinking about Monnica in Book 9 of the Confessions. Also: three cheers for whoever chose this window to evoke the Ostia vision - an inspired choice! augustineblog.com/the-voice-of...

Bit of an odd story this one - the main analysis says women don't use AI because they lack STEM skills, confidence and value in the workplace. Yet the anecdotes suggest that women excel at communication, whether writing or interpersonal, and can spot ChatGPT's flaws www.bbc.co.uk/news/busines...

What's some amazing phrase-ology that you first saw on social media and now use all the time in real life? I'll go first: "Normal to want and possible to achieve"

Excavations underneath Basilica San Giovanni in Laterano (Rome) revealed vivid fresco in what were 2nd c. CE elite houses, followed by a complex sequence of spatial reuse and rebuilding ending up with the first ever cathedral. 🏺 ClassicsBlueSky

If you don’t know NZD’s own extraordinary history, read this www.universityaffairs.ca/features/fea...

Almost too many fine details to digest. The flowing garments of the floating figure, the serenity and luminosity of the figures against the black background, the delicate greenery of the tree What it must have been like to live with these decorations... Villa San Marco, Stabiae

I'm writing up the final report of our (with @sebhth.bsky.social) Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project (PALP) - generously funded by a Getty Foundation's Digital Art History Grant - so I thought maybe I can share some of the results of that work to get started on here.

"📢📢In partnership with the journal Early Medieval Europe, the British School at Rome is pleased to announce the BSR/Early Medieval Europe Fellowship 📢📢" bsr.ac.uk/bsr-early-me...

Many thanks to @kateantiquity.bsky.social antiquity.bsky.social for sending me a code and giving me access to this new adventure!

Listening to @kateantiquity.bsky.social talking about Augustine and his family, in particular his mother Monnica.

Happy St Thekla’s Day to all who celebrate! 💓

John Rylands Research Library & Institute, Manchester, England explores slavery in its history and its funding (20 September 2023-23 March 2024): www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/visi...

Please RT if you are interested in history/heritage! I need to find my people 🖤

Alright let's test the strength of the twitterstorian migration: Looking for a reading for my first-year students about what it means to study history in college. Needs to be pitched at a pretty basic level - most of them are still in HS. Something I can assign and talk about week 1. Ideas?

Call for Papers, Association of Ancient Historians 2024 meeting www.aah2024.org/home

I'm reminded of the way that towns are rendered on Trajan's Column, and the fantasy town backgrounds in the cubiculum fresco from the villa of P. Fannius Synistor (Met Museum, below). Photos of the fresco: my own Photo of Trajan's Column: Steven Zucker, Smarthistory (edited)

Now this is the kind of tabloid I can get behind

Hiya everyone! I'm Flora, a freelance artist specialising in vibrant illustrations of the ancient Mediterranean world 🏺🏛️🌞 I'm still building up my audience here, so any shares are greatly appreciated 🧡🧡🧡

I asked one of the founders of my wife’s company why they liked working with historians and nothing in The Discourse to date has better captured what it was about the work itself that drew me in as an 18 year old.

In the US, the number of jobs for historians of the pre-modern world has fallen precipitously, even though students remain interested in the subject. How can we reverse the trend?

Rereading Roberta Gilchrist's Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (so rich with detail) before bed. In my dreams people wore shoes gorgeously embroidered with fantastical birds & vines. Look for them in the next Owen Archer. 😍

Looking forward to visiting @egsaba.bsky.social ‘s and Pamela Klassen’s classes this Fall to talk about my book, Theory, History, and the Study of Religion in Late Antiquity. If you are also teaching it this year and you want me to zoom in, get in touch. www.cambridge.org/core/element...

I can buy myself towers Saint Barbara, ca. 1450, National Gallery of Art Washington, 1943.3.585. Medievalsky

Many lovely reading suggestions on this thread! But just the tip of the iceberg! I would add Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls; would love to hear other suggestions!

For #FrescoFriday a glimpse into Terrace House 2 at #Ephesus, Turkey. The luxurious residential complex from the #Roman period was built on a slope, that had been terraced. It consists of seven separate dwellings. Foto: Bob Fosbury via Flickr

I’m very excited to have Bettany Hughes’ long-waited new tome to crack open this weekend! Thanks Maddy at W&N.

An amazing #Roman gold fibula (brooch) carrying the Latin inscription VTERE FELIX - use this happily, one of the most common inscriptions on Roman finger rings and fibulae. From Ostrovany, Slovakia. Dating late 3rd century AD Photo: KHM Wien

Beowulf taps into the primal human of fear of defeating someone in combat and then being forced to fight their mom

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who prevent history from being taught intend to repeat it.

University student here: Please *do* tell us about your new work. I follow many people whose work interests me, and sometimes is relevant to my studies, and I like hearing their latest. Also I love seeing people being proud of their work.

barbie is the new pope