How did Korean firms like Hanjin carry containerization from Vietnam’s Cam Ranh & Qui Nhon to Busan, transforming ports & unsettling U.S. contractors like Lusteveco? 🚢 John DiMoia @ Harvard #STinAsia, Tue Oct 14, 10:30 ET Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia #histstm #histtech 🧪

Our librarian Mårten Söderblom Saarela will give three online talks for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, on November 8, 2025, 9:00am-1:30pm Eastern time. The theme of the talks is "The Jesuit Mission to China." For details and registration, see ncta.princeton.edu.

In food history, we notice how super-refined foods--gelatin, vienna sausage, white bread--lose class and become horrifying once they become industrialized. Suddenly, fingermarks in bread dough demonstrate skill, not clumsiness. Post-chatGPT, I'm feeling this about writing. Smoothness feels gross.

Announcing the new Animal History Group seminar series for the 2025-26 academic year! - All seminars held online at 8pm UK time. 🎉 The details are here: animalhistorygroup.org/seminar-seri... And here is a list for your calendar! 🧵💚

A new essay from me synthesizing the rich body of media criticism in Japanese focused on the practice of "August journalism" (八月ジャーナリズム): the tendency for rehearsed, compressed, and hollowed-out coverage of war memory each August. apjjf.org/2025/9/fedman

Congratulations to @clarewatson.bsky.social, whose Hakai Magazine story on an inventive scheme to cleaning up ghost fishing gear is going to be included in this year's anthology of Best Australian Science Writing: hakaimagazine.com/news/using-t... www.linkedin.com/posts/clare-...

Sad intersections with my current research. The US and Canada began shared shellfish sanitation regulations in 1948, with one US observer noting in the 50s that "cooperative efforts with Canada have been built on a long history of parallel development in the two countries." Perhaps no longer.

I finally read computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum’s 1976 classic “Computer Power and Human Reason.” This book deserves a massive revival in our current age of grotesque and largely thoughtless AI creep into everything:

NEW: Tenure-track position in History at UC Berkeley in the GLOBAL HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY. We are casting a wide net here: *all* periods, places, and fields are under consideration. I'm on the search committee, so do let me know if you have questions.

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

Hear me out: Blue books and in class exams are back, but let's be real: penmanship is so passé. I propose a disruptive, portable, innovation in classroom tech.

Off to Mie for a quick research trip. Nothing like the Kintetsu Ise-Shima Liner's modular (and, fortunately, no longer accessible) smoking pod.

Many thanks to our friends @hyperallergic.com for spreading the word about @ransomcenter.bsky.social's 2026-27 #fellowships! Learn more by visiting the Center's website: www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/ #Humanities #Photography #Literature #ArtHistory #RareBooks #Theatre #FilmHistory 🗃️📜📚

Feeling rather lucky to have made it home on my bike just before the start of this huge thunderstorm in Kyoto ⛈️

In which a NYT writer, allegedly in possession of an abundance of something, imagines that *all* human knowledge ever produced has somehow been digitized...this person has never seen an archive.

Le nouveau numéro des Annales est sorti sur @universitypress.cambridge.org Au programme, un numéro double consacré aux #animaux (pour la première fois dans l'histoire presque centenaire des #Annales). Bonne lecture et à bientôt pour une présentation détaillée ! ▶️ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Back in Kyoto with lingering jet lag. The main upside is the ease with which I can go jogging at 5am, in the "crisp" 27C hours before the scorching miasma kicks in.

excited to share the call for the workshop EXTRACTIVE NATURES / NATURES OF EXTRACTION happening at @uobrisceh.bsky.social on 6-7 Nov 2025, 
made possible by the @britishacademy.bsky.social deadline: 10 September! full call below ⤵ #envhist #envhum

We founded the U of Arizona Center for East Asian Studies three years ago with a US Dept of Education grant. Last Friday marked the end of year 3 of 4. Though the grant was for four years, we have not received word about year 4 funding. Without this support, we have no choice but to close down.

It used to be completely the opposite, science as the gateway to morality. Such historical swings between thinking that science or humanities are the foundation of ethical life show that neither is inherently

Explore JJS's Summer 2025 issue: online.ucpress.edu/jjs?searchre.... Discover new book reviews and articles by Reut Harari, Edwin Michielsen, Andre Haag, Melek Ortabasi, Brian Hurley, and Satoru Hashimoto’s timely Perspectives article “Repairing a Form of Life: Ritual in Ibuse Masuji’s Black Rain.”

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act's passage in Congress. Here's what happened next:

I hadn't seen a 20th century usage of yasai 野菜--the everyday term for "vegetable"--to refer, as its written form implies, to "wild" vegetables. Just came across an intriguing aside in a 1952 document on how some vegetables have gone from "wild" to "cultivated": 昔は野菜で今日は栽培に移されているものも数種ある. Curious...

Please register for the HSS meeting @NOLA & come meet Ashton Wesner 🐟Sam Muka 🪸 Rebecca Woods 🐒 Aleksandar Shopov 🐫 and + discuss their research on animal mobilities and why such histories of science matter. Thanks to Sonia Wigh, co-organizer of this roundtable with the Osiris editors! #histsci

Come hear from me and other journal editors about academic publishing in maritime history

Hypothetically speaking, would anyone be interested in joining a #aas2026 panel on settler colonialism in the Japanese Empire? My thought is, emphasis on how (un)applicable(?) settler colonial/critical Indigenous studies theory is to different colonial spaces.

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research. about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

stoked to share the latest book in the @cornellupress.bsky.social Environments of East Asia series, this one from my colleague Jon Pitt (with whom, naturally, I grow a veggie garden) Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501... Open-access!

New Feature Story: "From Natural to #Synthetic? Rethinking Narratives of #Chemical 'Replacement' in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" 🎨 In brief case studies, Leije Zeng, Jonathan Haid, and Omri Polatsek highlight how social elements shape material advancement 🧵1/5 🔗 bitly.cx/ToM14 #HistSci

Next week, the German university semester begins. I'll be teaching a course on "The Global Narcotics Trade: From the Opium Wars to War on Drugs"at the Free University of Berlin as part of the Global History MA program. Here is the syllabus for any who are interested:

Did you know: our researchers have developed a suite of resources for A-Level students and teachers? "History & Philosophy of Science in 20 Objects" draws on an incredible array of items from our own collection ft. prompts, questions, videos and more! sway.cloud.microsoft/cEekCFBF5CGF... #histsci

Our minds are elsewhere and for good reason, but I'd remiss not to plug a new book by my brilliant colleague Jung Lee. Curious to know why many Korean flora carry the name of a Japanese botanist (Nakai) in their taxonomic signature? This is the book for you! www.routledge.com/Renaming-Pla...

Valuing the humanities means supporting Federal funding for the humanities. The humanities are not a luxury.

The White Horse Press just republished a Global Environment article by our project coordinator, Jonatan Palmblad. "Environmental History's Usable Past: On Reviving the Scholarship of Synthesis." @palmblad.bsky.social #envhist #envhum

📢Calling all natural historians! This year our Summer Meeting is exploring the ✨senses✨ So we want to hear from you! We're looking for papers that explore the intersections of the senses - including sight, sound, smell, taste and touch - with the history of natural history.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the March 10, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, a thread introducing one of the most remarkable primary sources I've come across in the archive: Gen. Thomas Power's eye-witness report, recorded while circling over the firestorm for nearly two hours. 1/

Changing map perspectives is often an interesting exercise. Here‘s a map of Taiwan oriented towards the Pacific Ocean, showing it as an island in an ocean of islands (換個角度看台灣, 2004).

New #EnvHist article! In this collaboration with art historian Rachel Kase, I explore what the visual legacy of #Arctic whaling can tell us about the possibilities - and perils - of #ClimateChange adaptation. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

First issue of the brand-new journal History of Social Science. Decompartmentalising the history of social science is a really good thing. Lots of great-looking articles! Long live this new journal : muse.jhu.edu/issue/54109

A very snowy Kinkaku-ji this morning.

REU programs are being cancelled for fear of not receiving funds and graduate admissions are being limited or completely halted. Hundreds of Americans are losing the opportunity to train as STEM professionals.

An interesting digitized resource. Here is the search page: j-dac.jp/chosakai/

Please repost! My department -- Waseda University's Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies -- is planning to offer a tenured position to begin in 2026. We're a friendly place and we offer one of the best research environments in Japan. Application information here! Thanks for reposting, folks!

What a pleasant surprise in my campus mailbox: a copy of Mariko Iijima's new global history of Kona coffee! Can't wait to read it.

CFP for an edited collection: “Japanese Video Games and Critiques of the Western Aesthetic Tradition.” call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/02/... If interested, send abstract (300 words) & CV to DA Hall & Austin Anderson ([email protected]) by 31 March 2025. Please share!

Post-doc in planetary health humanities, to work with Andy Lakoff and colleagues at USC on their timely project on 'The city on life support: Los Angeles as a laboratory for planetary health'. Important topic... #STS #envhum #medanthro

Last night I found out that the NSF math postdoctoral fellowship I applied for is being deleted because it does not comply with Trump’s executive orders on DEI in the federal government. I’m going to answer some FAQs and share some thoughts about this ordeal in this thread 1/n

On changes to #NIH indirect rates, there is a law in place that prohibits NIH from making such changes without the approval of Congress. See Division D, Title II Section 224 of The Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (Public Law No: 118-47) grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

From what I hear from multiple people in the space, the latest NIH indirect costs for medical research grants will basically mean the end most academic medical centers.