“What is civilisation? I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms, yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it. And I’m looking at it now.” -Kenneth Clark

It’s interesting that LLM slop has been proliferating in legal circles and science academic publishing - but not so far in the humanities. I assume it’s because fewer people use it, but also because the close-reading ethos of the humanities makes it unthinkable. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/b...

As the owner of an independent bookstore, I must ask all of y'all to do the opposite of this forever and ever, amen.

Things are not that bad in my experience - very few students actually complain about their grades to me, maybe because I give extensive feedback, or because I’m also guilty of inflating grades - but the piece does capture some existing phenomena.

“on Reddit, r/MyBoyfriendisAI has more than 85,000 members championing human-A.I. connections, with many sharing giddy recollections of the day their chatbot proposed marriage.” Hard not to see this as a symptom of an extremely sick society.

JOB(s)

The Modern Language Association "Calls upon law- and policymakers, LMS vendors, and companies offering agent-based AI browsers to cooperate... to prevent misuse and to ensure that academic institutions have the ability and option to block agentic AI when needed." 1/ www.mla.org/Resources/Ad...

It is extraordinary that the best work I've ever read offering a hollistic view of the eighteenth-century sugar market, largely transcending methodological nationalism, was written in 1946 by Alice Canabrava, the first woman to become a professor of Economic History in Brazil "O Açúcar nas Antilhas"

“His imaginative storytelling techniques, well known to readers of his previous books Will in the World and The Swerve, often threaten to push him [Greenblatt] into the realm of historical fiction” “Imaginative storytelling techniques,” 😅 I liked that burn.

Interested in resources to help students learn what "counts" as an argument when interpreting a text. Because they're accustomed to more empirical modes of argument, they struggle with the difference between "interpret" and "just say your opinion." Any resources that outline this in a helpful way?

Great book, I’m really enjoying it! Even relevant for today, on the relationship between free trade, labor, and state power.

I rashly promised to bring in a "fun" primary source for our optional extra class on my first-year Early Modern World module tomorrow. I've got a couple ideas but what's your favorite #EarlyModern source to throw at first-years? Max 1-2 pages. Any topic! 🗃️

Usually not a pleasant experience for professors, and I assume not for the students as well…

Every time I read Douglass I get the chills, just one of the best writers I've ever read. I need to choose a two-page extract of one of his speeches to discuss in class, but it is impossible: everything is just so damn good that I want them to read it all and bask on Douglass' moral clarity!

A propos of nothing: I was today years old when I found out (through @adamtooze.bsky.social’s Chartbook linking this obituary) that Hayden White got his BA in History at Wayne State University, and briefly taught here! 😱

“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.” William Zinsser #NationalAuthorsDay

“The walls of the Panopticon are closing all around us — and the managerial eye is becoming at once ever more penetrating and ever less discerning.” Do we need a LLM trained on Foucault’s writings to analyze this dystopian scenarios?

This long read is interesting, bizarre, disturbing, and deeply, deeply misguided. www.wired.com/story/ai-the...

Shares in chicken-frying robot maker rise after three men were seen eating chicken. This is what markets news is now. www.ft.com/content/b003...

“The most pressing question, then, is how to keep our agency intact: how to remain the authors of the systems that are now poised to take on so much of our thinking” Worth, it perhaps a tad optimistic.

Do apply - it's a wonderful opportunity, and the team is great. Up to 3,000 pounds for three weeks of research at the British Library. "Our themes for this round centre on maps, popular music, the age of revolutions or the novel in the Americas, but all topics will be considered."

“Higher education aims to create cognitively mature adults, which in turn requires us to ensure students learn to read, think and write all on their own.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

Hah! My article with Chris Ebert (CUNY) got accepted at the AHR. Research started in January 2020. I presented the first draft in 2023, we did a lot more archival research and submitted it in May 2024, got a R&R in January, and resubmitted in July. Thanks to everyone who helped along the way!

Reading a summary is not the same as reading an argument. All the steps that come before writing--coming up with ideas, figuring out how they fit together, drafting--that's the important work, not the stuff we outsource to make time for the important work. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

Cheating with an LLM is the easiest thing in the world for a student to do, but it creates a massive, laborious headache for a prof, if you intend to take it seriously. There’s meetings, emails, discussions, moral dilemmas. It’s just incredibly burdensome, on top of everything else right now.

If anyone needs a freelance researcher in London (or across the UK), I'm your person! I've reasonable rates, lots of archive experience & great recommendations from academics globally. I'm only teaching 1 module this term, as the job market is what it is. Therefore, I'm open to all work. DM me!

The concept of this “AI-powered school” sounded like a nightmare. It seems like the reality is even worse.

Just after winning the Nobel Prize: that must be one of the best-timed book releases ever! (Are any of the three specialists on China, by the way? Do any of them read and speak Chinese?)

*Plantation Goods* has had an incredible run, beyond anything I could have imagined. I am absolutely thrilled that the book is being honored with the Horowitz Prize from the Bard Graduate Center for scholarship on decorative arts, design history, or material culture. @uchicagopress.bsky.social

My whole FB feed is now things like this. Obviously a cheating tool but also worth noting so many of these have this messaging--if you don't cheat, you'll be "left behind" (and also that "work smarter, not harder" is shorthand for "don't work at all")

What an awful, heartbreaking story.

British Library staff are out on strike from Monday 27 October until Sunday 9 November over pay: please do not undermine their action by attending this exhibition (or any other events at the BL) during that time. www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour...

Beautiful short piece on playing roleplaying games physically together with friends. I haven’t played in over a decade, and most likely will never play again (my old group is scattered across multiple cities in three countries), but I treasure the memories. Via @adamtooze.bsky.social

Tomorrow! Here's the link to RSPV (and get the link/chapter) i.wayne.edu/view/68e8242...

Really excellent piece. By eliminating friction, LLM slop destroys meaning - in culture, human relationships, politics, and learning. It’s the effort that creates meaning - the effort of writing that difficulty paper, crafting that poem, making a movie, finding the right words to say to a loved one…

Job Ad❗Editor-in-Chief of the William and Mary Quarterly williammary.wd12.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/WM/det...

An excellent piece on how and why LLMs are detrimental to learning. I agree with all major points, even though I do find them useful for multiple tasks. For instance, “reasoning” models are very good at searching now (although not so much for obscure scholarly references);

It's been a while, but I have exciting news! Our department is hiring a Digital Historian with a specialization in Early America. Help us spread the word by sharing this opportunity within your networks. #DigitalHistory #DH #HigherEdJobs jobs.uc.edu/job/Cincinna...

A bit over the top, as often with the author - @dkthomp.bsky.social - but a good post nonetheless on the importance of reading and writing for thinking.

As always, a fascinating post by Mark Humphries about advances in manuscript transcription by Large Language Models. Seems a bit overblown, as Humphries only tests English sources and even the hard ones are not that bad, but we will have to wait and see when Gemini 3 becomes available.

I am thrilled that we're hiring a tenure-track archaeologist in my department, focused on Great Lakes / Midwest US archaeology. My department is amazing and we'd love to have you as a colleague. I'm not on the search committee but would be happy to answer questions. Share widely!

If anyone finds themselves with too much free time next Friday and an inexplicable urge to learn more about the sugar and tobacco markets in seventeenth-century Europe, I’m presenting something. It is an attempt to offer a transimperial view that uses Brazilian commodities as a case study.

Sometimes it is very hard to avoid getting distracted by random things. I'm reading the correspondence of Luc Magon de la Balue for a paper on the trade of enslaved Africans. from the archives départementales d'Ille-et-Vilaine because he was slightly interested in trading with Brazil. Then I find...

Very hard to choose which primary sources to assign for a class on the British Caribbean from 1763 to 1807! Decided on the Jamaican petition, the famous Cutlers 1789 petition, and extracts of Cugoano (1787) and Robinson's awesome "Slavery inconsistent with the Spirity of Christianity" (1789).

I've been doing a lot of short primary source analysis with my students this semester, but some told me they struggle with the vocabulary. I started annotating them, but: 1) It is quite boring to do so systematically. 2) As a non-native speaker, I do not always know which words they don't know!

Are you excited about the Semiquincentennial and the history/legacy of Am Rev? Do you like to think about democratic societies and knowledge production--past, present, and future? Do you want to spend an upcoming research leave in Providence? Senior and early career positions alike. Click below...

Sebastian Mallaby, author of a book about the history of the VC industry, summarised the thinking among investors as “if we have AGI this will all be worth it, if we don’t it won’t”. He added: “It comes down to these articles of faith about Sam’s ability to work it out.” So... It won't be worth it.

One phenomenon I find it understudied (or maybe I'm just ignorant about it) is hostility to slavery prior to 1750. You can find odd references here and there that suggests it was relatively widespread, such as this critique of the trade in enslaved Africans from 1746, but not much work on it.