This #earlymodern print was to be used by 4 singers, standing on the four sides of the broadside, enjoying the get together. Part of the title says: for four voices, composed for children: "Mit vier Stimmen, für die Kinder Componieret". The year is 1571. 🎵 #skystorians

There is no improving the book as a form of technology. There may be ways to improve its storage or sale or its creation. But the book is the perfect form. Similarly I think comics in print is their platonic ideal (32 pages stapled, ads if any at the end rather than sprinkled through)

In honor of the Library's birthday 🎂 🥳 and National Poetry Month, here's 25th U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze reading his poem, "Library of Congress."

Apparently it's St George's Day 🐉

An Easter gift from a very talented and kind co-worker. (Yes, that’s a portrait of my cat)

get up, put on your shoes, get started, someone will finish

TV show pitch: ‘Tome Team’, where a group of rare books librarians and book historians are sent to investigate an uncatalogued library for interesting incunabula, marginalia and provenances - and they have just three days to do it.

🎉📖 Greetings, Bluesky! Our latest edition (28.2) is now live! This issue is fully open access and free to read via Project MUSE’s Subscribe to Open Access initiative. Start exploring here: muse.jhu.edu/journal/687 Follow us in the next few days to learn more about what's inside! #EarlyTheatre

Now in Early Theatre 28.2: Molly Ziegler shows how the single mention of Aaron’s “melancholy” in Titus Andronicus shapes the play’s imagining of race—positioning Aaron to secure a white Roman identity while commodifying Black bodies within early modern racial logics. buff.ly/puWcpvm #Shakespeare

Mayra Cortes shows how sound is the medium for working class resistance in A Midsummer Nights Dream: out now in Early Theatre 28.2 Access here: buff.ly/iiVrh3b #Shakespeare #Drama

What do dramatic portrayals of the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba reveal about the links between fairness, chastity, and the social construction of gender? See Laura DeLuca’s (@lauradeluca.bsky.social) “The Dangers of Idealized Femininity,” out now in Early Theatre 28.2: buff.ly/kM8nYTY #ET

Well, let's give it a shot again and see what we get.

Egg-cellent news! The first California condor eggs of the season have been laid at our wildlife conservation center, and more could be on the way.

Did you see Ian McKellen on The Late Show?? "But chartered unto them, what would you think To be thus used? this is the strangers case; And this your mountanish inhumanity." youtu.be/2l2RqzVG4ag?... Throw back this piece from Ruben Espinosa from 2019. tinyurl.com/s8nb6mww

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

We can accomplish anything together

Reminder in the face of all the angry gaslighting propaganda.

Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number -- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many -- they are few.

Common Sense, published 250 years ago today.

Always worth a post

We’re excited for #Shax2026 in Denver, but have you considered submitting a proposal for #Shax2027 in Atlanta? The deadline to submit proposals to the #Shax2027 program committee is February 15! Have questions? Check out our website: linktr.ee/saaupdates

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up. I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

He ys ridinge a horse He ys emerald and svelte He will get reallye weirde If you lie about beltes The Greene Knighte Ys Cominge To Toun

Merry Christmas from the cat who has stolen the cat toys out of the gift bag intended for friends who are having me over for supper. I hope you also get to enjoy all the gifts

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.” -Jacob Marley, A Christmas Carol

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @reuters.com

What's in a name -- Romeo's name? And what's conversion (not just love) got to do with it? Read more in @hollypickett.bsky.social's essay on Romeo's transformation 'from renegade to martyr': forthcoming in our upcoming Issues in Review, ET 28.2 (Dec 2025). @swittek.bsky.social

What happens to faithful wives in early modern English plays where prodigal sons give way to prodigal husbands? Hannah Korrell explores how "Griselda Fights Back," along the way changing trajectories of gender in conversion narratives. Forthcoming in 28.2's Issues in Review. @swittek.bsky.social

What counts as lawful, as opposed to criminal, conversion? And what are the stakes of each? This depends on which genre of early modern English drama is taking up such questions, according to Sheila Coursey. Read more in ET's upcoming Dec 2025 issue. #EarlyTheatre #EarlyModern @swittek.bsky.social

Up next in December 2025: Issues in Review contributing editor @swittek.bsky.social introduces a brace of short, cutting edge essays tackling how early modern English drama represented conversion -- a complex process shaped, this IR shows, by by race, gender, politics, and performance. #EarlyDrama

Emily Parise highlights the paradox in Marlowe's Jew of Malta: while early modern religious conversion suggests an internal change, the need for outward performance can lead to insincerity. Learn more in our Dec 2025 Issues in Review on Drama and Conversion organized by @swittek.bsky.social

He is not helping me with my writing or marking or household chores, but I appreciate him tackling the to do item “nap” since it otherwise wouldn’t get done today

They had me from the opening line 🦃

For my American friends and family: Happy Thanksgiving! For all of my Canadians friends and colleagues: Happy Thursday in late November very close to 1 December deadlines and the last week of fall term classes!

Time to disseminate my most firmly held food opinion to folks in the US prepping for Thanksgiving: you ought to serve sauerkraut with your turkey

Read the alt text

Too many smart people have impostor syndrome and too many dolts have columns and podcasts and it's basically this

Before AI, we linguists used large scale corpora to study relationships between words and all sorts of other things. Some of them are at risk of going down because of reduced interest, including the most used (COCA), so I bought it. I also added five of old and middle English. Alpha test, fiddling

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings

Help me share to 100 (big number!) You know you want to 😀 #RecipesfromtheAmericanSouth youtu.be/G71MZynajjQ?...

#Latin #Medieval

🔊ON & UP 😍👇🏾'The Git Hoan Dancers (People of the Salmon) fr Metlakatla/Seattle r known for their theatrical performances and put on incredible shows during #Celebration in Juneau, AK. #Cele' (FB Reels: #Tlingit & #Haida. June 12, 2024) #GitHoan #NativeAmericans #Indigenous #FirstNations

“I look ridiculous.” “I think you look adorable.” “I won’t be made a fool, Steve.” “Just one more picture.” “Fine, but after this...” “I know, I know. Nevermore.”

I'm sorry, WHAT?! A new piece of the Bayeux Embroidery has been found?! OMG!

I'm incredibly patriotic, which is why I teach all the ways America has failed to live up to its ideals and promises and dreams, in hopes of inspiring the next generation to do better, to be more, to make America a place that may one say be great.