After another brief chat with a friend who edits a journal can hardly find referees, let me remind the journal editors on here that I am rarely at capacity, usually happy to accept an assignment, and always return my feedback promptly... :) 🗃️

The great thing about teaching a grad seminar: after I shared my excitement with them, the students committed to writing their term papers on Sven Beckert's new, much-anticipated global history of capitalism — and we'll dedicate a portion of each session to progress reports. 🗃️

Every time I add 2-3 adjectives/adverbs, I hear @nmw1.bsky.social's disapproval. Then, I am left with a one-adjective sentence. At that point, I can hear @marcishore.bsky.social marking the noun, asking if I intended to draw attention to it with the adjective. I then shake my head and remove it.

The entrance ticket to the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza costs 1,450 EGP (30 USD, 26 EUR). My friend, a software engineer at an international company in Cairo, thus earns 22 tickets a month. Luckily, citizens pay 200 EGP (4 USD), so his salary buys 165 tickets...

About to kick off a peer review workshop with our brilliant @sriucl.bsky.social PhD students right now. Thanks to my colleague Alina Pelikh for hosting and I wish something like this was available when I started out.

So, you think calculus is hard? Good luck making sense of the right to vote in Habsburg Austria (from a wonderful article by Birgitta Bader-Zaar) 🗃️

Halldór Laxness is my spirit animal. So relatable at such a young age.

Submitted my course proposals for next year, including a seminar on what Ibsen called "life-lies," the self-deceptions that sustain one's happiness, in nineteenth-century Europe: bourgeois, aristocratic, rustic idylls and those who tried to shatter them. 🗃️

I met with a university press editor 1.5 years ago -- and the advice she gave me for revising my dissertation into a book manuscript is one of the documents I use daily. It is really amazing how transformative these random strikes of generosity can be.

הזכרתי בכיתה השבוע את הנריק פונטופידן, סופר דני שזכה בפרס הנובל ב-1917. הבטחתי לסטודנטים שאתרגם להם קצת כי אין בעברית. הנה קטע קצר גם לכם, קצת אחרי שהגיבור הנוצרי וארוסתו היהודייה, בטיול בלתי מתוכנן אל האלפים, מגלים שהם חולקים סלידה, עוד מילדות, מפעמוני כנסייה:

The mark of a great book: a write-up by the inimitable Holly Case.

surrogacy in #Georgia has plenty of evidence of the slide in basic governance standards across the board -- yes, profits being made, and probably some happy stories, too, but also LOTS of women left very vulnerable. Helena Bedwell for @ocmedia.bsky.social oc-media.org/recent-contr...

Today I spent hours crafting three paragraphs on a sermon that "hints at what other sermons do not even mention," only to do one more Google Books search, just to be sure, and find a sermon that addresses the topic clearly and forcefully. Time to call it a day.

Mini career milestone: signed my first form as someone's Ph.D. advisor!

The good news: My ESTA to enter the US was rejected due to a scribal error—some details I filled out did not match my previous visa, but that was because they entered the wrong data for my student visa. The bad news: "It might take a while for the request to fix the erroneous details to go through."

I personally find it very cool that the National and University Library of Iceland allows you to browse its catalog in English, Icelandic, and... Polish.

Due to consular issues and the university's reasonable concern about the inability to resolve them on time or being deported at the border, I will have to miss ASEEES. See you next year!

Grammarly rarely understands the metaphors I try to inject into my writing--but this paraphrase is really remarkably off the mark. Also: chronology! (I was talking about the end of serfdom + paternalistic ideologies of ruler-subjects relations...)

I needed to add a reference to one piece of legislation by Joseph II, which I thought would be easy to locate -- until I opened this book, candidate for the world's least helpful Table of Contents, that seems to mock me directly 🗃️

Ever since I was 10 and got my first phone, I've been used to people calling and asking for Dr. Beilinson,"-- my dad. Today someone called, and I said, "That's his son." Turns out they were from my university's research authority, and I had to confess I am still new to being Dr. Beilinson, too...

The legacy of the Eastern Bloc is that today, as I struggled to find the right word in Arabic, I could retrieve its equivalent in Russian, and the ceramics seller in East Jerusalem understood: his father had studied in the USSR and had forced him to learn some Russian as a child.

The best postdoctoral fellowship in Israel is now open for applications. The money is entirely sufficient for subsistence, the facilities are utterly stunning, and the administrative staff is friendly and supportive. I am happy to answer questions... 🗃️

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

It is my book and I'll pluralize ethos as "ethe" or "ethea" but not "ethoses" if I'd like (but I'll definitely not insist on that when the editor pushes back), even though typing "ethe" made my computer think I was typing in Albanian (where "ethe" means fever).

Surprisingly, I haven't been to Barcelona yet. I'll be expanding my article in JESHO, which asked whether guilds beyond Europe really had journeymen. Now I'll move from "Islamic" guilds to Russian guilds -- asking more explicitly how the Russian Empire shaped artisanal life in its borderlands...

This seems broadly applicable to me: perhaps I should let white ants serve as peer reviewers for my faltering article manuscripts... From the diaries of Swiss artist Alice Boner, Varanasi (India), 1941. 🗃️

Tomorrow's the first day of classes, and I am very excited to open the semester with a graduate seminar, "Global and World History: Approaches and Recent Studies." Here's our reading list! 🗃️

I am writing an article to convince American high school teachers to adopt recent historiography on nationalism in 19th-century Europe in their classrooms. This screenshot from an immensely popular test-prep book for AP World History demonstrates how confused and blurry the curriculum is.

Dominique and Peter are such a gift to our field.

"Passing through here, one feels for the first time that this segment of Europe is interwoven with those unknown, secret mysteries of life which France, England, or Spain have never touched." -- The Indian writer Nirmal Verma on Central Europe, the 1960s.

I even have a faculty photo and everything!

Scanned all readings. Opened all course websites. Sent introductory emails -- I am officially ready to start Year 1, Semester 1, Week 1 as an Assistant Professor. Happy New Academic Year, everybody!

As a Habsburgist, I was *very* glad to find out during my walks around Delhi that some of my favorite buildings in the city, including the Yugoslav embassy and buildings in the Jamia Milli Islamia, were designed by an Austrian architect, Karl Malte von Heinz -- a Bauhaus refugee from Nazi Germany. 🗃️

My friend in Thekkady, too, is worried about the state of humanity.

My morning walk in Kerala passed through 4 churches, a mosque with a madrasa, a hammer and sickle, an invitation to "Che's Martyrdom Day" celebrated by the Communist Party's youth wing, and a massage parlor presenting Jesus, the Ka'abah, and the locally revered Ayyappan together.

As an Eastern Europeanist, this is a day of celebration: now I get to hear reporters around the world try to figure out how to pronounce László Krasznahorkai -- and, sometimes, mistakenly assuming this "sz" to make an sh sound like in Polish... 🗃️

My very niche advantage as a historian of education traveling in India: I quickly realized 'pass out [of college] meant 'graduate,' and not 'became unconscious.' Many former British armies still refer to their cadets' graduation as Passing Out, I believe.

Started my first morning in Delhi with a guided tour, perhaps a pilgrimage, to see the hotel's peacock. A staff member took me there after I expressed my excitement over the squirrels climbing over tables at the outdoor café...

I met a Chinese teacher at the hotel bar today. He was telling me about his first day, when students pick their Chinese name -- and he suggested I adopt the name 欧乐 Ōulè, which sounds like Orel and can mean "European joy" or "to enjoy Europe." Beyond perfect, really. 🗃️

Revisiting Lévi-Strauss on Indian cities. If one accepts his characterization of Calcutta and the underlying difference in European vs Indian urbanity, it must testify to the transformation of European urban life--his description would've rung familiar to many Europeans a century+ beforehand.

From the Tamil-speaking mosque in Singapore's Chinatown, I learned that there is a Qur'an museum in a city called Bhatkal, named after a medieval grammarian named Bhattakalanka Deva. I can't think of any others -- but who knows what's behind the names of Grammatikovo in Bulgaria and Greece? 🗃️

My time in Singapore was instructive, if not fun. I am very excited for the next leg of my journey: three weeks in India, going Delhi to Kochi!

Deepavali/Diwali season began at Singapore's Indian Heritage Centre. The museum is free on weekends, featuring festive activities such as free henna, tea/snacks, and dress-up opportunities. A wonderful place (best paired with Ar-Rahman's roti prata at Tekka Centre nearby).

The cool thing about Malaysia's National Service Training Program is that every word in its Malay name was borrowed from a different language: Program: English Latihan: Austronesian, not borrowed (training) Khidmat: Arabic (service) Negara: Sanskrit (city [-> nation in Malay]) 🗃️

Today is the European Day of Languages and, incidentally, my birthday. I think it was very prescient of the European Council to declare it as such toward my sixth birthday. It more than makes up for the fact that I share my birthday with Heidegger.

I am dismayed by Singapore National Library's $1.58 reservation fee PER ITEM when requesting a book from the warehouse. Books stored in-house are free, but as a historian whose work consists of many "less-read books," my fees add up quickly. 🗃️

The Straits Times, in Singapore, weighing in on Yugoslavia's fate, July 1991:

The best triangle of Singapore: the National Archives, the Children's Museum, and the Armenian Church/Street. Those who genuinely wish to be world historians -- in the sense of historians of everywhere -- should learn Armenian... 🗃️

II International Seminar for Emerging Historians of Education - Call for papers

Alas, another ancient craft has fallen prey to mechanization. At least it accepts Apple Pay.