"We want to gear on the side of entertainment," he said, "because we think especially biblical content is over-indexed to educational." …is a remarkable statement given Religious Studies Departments around the country closing.

I’m teaching modern US history survey in-person in the spring for the first time in six years. What are the new cool supplemental books to assign students? 🗃️

One of the reading groups this fall at my institution is @cjdenial.bsky.social Pedagogy of Kindness. Love to see it!

@uncpress.bsky.social is having a flash sale to celebrate their new website 🎉 You can save 50% off all books, including pre-orders of mine, for 48 hours with code 01NEWSITE50! uncpress.org/978146969032... Plus there are new blurbs from @therubellion.bsky.social and @rachelbgross.bsky.social!

In Arlington, a church and artist mark sidewalks where ICE tore families apart. These ‘stumbling stickers’ force memory onto public ground—reminders of grief, resistance, and the refusal to let erasure win.

So much is happening in the Sweeney ad and it’s not just the play on the word “jeans.” There’s also a play being had on emphasizing her jeans being “blue.” How did blue get passed down for generations? www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ame...

Critical secularism studies - are we still doing this? Any juice left in that lime? I say yes!

<turning to look directly at the camera from an office at a public, teaching-emphasis university>

thinking for no apparent reason about @felixh.bsky.social's brilliantly titled chapter "Invisible Umpires" in his book Ku Klux Kulture

www.christianitytoday.com/2025/07/died... Excellent piece by @danielsilliman.bsky.social These two screen shots are horrifying

How to I not merely dislike a Spotify suggestion but make the algorithm feel shame for even suggesting it in the first place?

It’s always “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, drop out of the public sphere and become a tradwife” and never “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, form a union.”

Tale as old as time.

“His deftness in removing the specter of violence from his own narrative is a reminder of the ways violence against women is normalized. It isn’t that people don’t believe in what happened to Jolie on that plane — they just don’t care.”

“Swaggart’s scandals taught aspiring megachurch personalities that institutional accountability was no longer required when it came to redemption in the age of independent media.”

I left my purse in a library today and the librarian who found it saw my library card in my wallet, called my local branch to get my number, called me to come back and get the purse, and then apologized to me for invading my privacy. We do not deserve librarians.

UPDATE: The Indiana legislature announced that, across the state's public universities, it will immediately eliminate 75 programs, suspend/teach-out 101, and force 232 to consolidate or be eliminated. Not surprisingly, these closures disproportionately affect arts, humanities, and social science.

BREAKING: Justice Jackson cites the Colored Conventions Project Digital Archive her dissent in Medina v. Planned Parenthood. These public collective digital projects MATTER and they WILL be heard. 👏👏👏 @ccp-org.bsky.social @profgabrielle.bsky.social @jimccasey1.bsky.social

So what this brief paragraph and single footnote does is accuse Thomas, not only of failing to practice what he preaches but doing so in a very specific way that produces very specific effects. Ignoring Black voices gets you bad originalism that harms people. Now as then. Whew.

"Learn to code" was always bad advice, unless you actually like to code. College students have the best chance of professional success if they major in topics that interest them. Today in @startribune.com. Please tell high school students and parents. www.startribune.com/what-should-...

This is part of the reason why for all the shade theoryheads throw at description vs analysis (because description is assumed to be advocacy), I think it still matters to describe religion It’s a real struggle to have students write or say something with descriptive accuracy and withhold analysis

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the news yet committed to talking about hard things with students, @laurenfturek.bsky.social and I edited a volume that might help: Routledge History of Religion & Politics in the US Since 1775 www.routledge.com/The-Routledg... Relevant to this week’s news …1/?

Dropping lore and suggesting side quests is pretty much all I’d like to do ever. Why limit this to a summer?

I am curious to see how evangelical orgs will respond since international students are a sizeble part of their campus ministries across the country. This is one of the issues that puts evangelicals at a crossroads with their loyalties See: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

You might not think cars and religion have much in common. "Assembling Religion," out now, explores how Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel. Read about how he believed his work was prophetic and meant to remake the world, with research directly from Ford’s archive.

If you're an Americanist who's decided that maybe it's worth paying attention to US Catholic history, there are lots of great books and articles to read, many of them by people who weren't able to get jobs in academia. Start with my friend Bill's book. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

“The pope will be from Chicago” sounds like an 1880s Republican’s dire prediction for if we don’t stop Irish immigration

Chicago Pope's here

This comment from Robert Barron, appointed last week to Trump’s WH commission on religious liberty, was spot on, only he didn’t realize it.

Sounds like an excellent time to hear from some experts on the history of religion in America, folks.

Tonight is the #MetGala, celebrating the upcoming opening of the new exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," which was inspired by Monica L. Miller's 2009 book "Slaves to Fashion." buff.ly/BTlV1TY

An evergreen skeet if I ever saw one

Yeah this is an old fem tech argument. It was recently misapplied in a piece about AI and emotions. We don’t think of tech as human to humanize the tech. We are supposed to think about tech as humanoid, with possible rights or ethical needs, BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL TREAT HUMANS (WOMEN/FEMMES) LIKE TECH

I use Scrivener for my dissertation work because of this, but still have to share it to committee using Word. I have now started including a caveat about AI in my emails to help people understand the risks of writing and reading research in Word and Docs. #AcademicSky

Since “babies will die” isn’t persuasive enough, maybe messaging needs to target macro-counters: “Dude, your bro-tein shake might kill you” “Girl, all that cottage cheese you’re eating to hit your perimenopausal protein percentage of the day will put you in the hospital” We need food safety.

Wow! #Sinners www.aaihs.org/the-sinners-...

There's just no convincing some people that studying the history of a religion is not the same as proselytizing.

There’s lots to think about here. I’m currently at a “teaching emphasis” regional comprehensive with a 60% Teaching workload. Most college students go to school like mine, a regional whose faculty teach…so who and what needs adjusting exactly?

The same corporate reformers who stormed through K12 are set on "fixing" higher ed and I really think it's alarming that Rick Hess is focusing on professors' workloads: www.aei.org/research-pro...

Finally, they’re getting rid of the woke scholars that populate the field of … diplomatic history?

For non-Historians, it’s hard to explain just how important the FRUS series is to any historical topic that even tangentially relates to US foreign relations.

The office is a true jewel and the historians that produce FRUS are phenomenal. This is a resource everyone who studies foreign policy and national security should care about protecting, and anyone who believes in government transparency should care too. 3/3 history.state.gov/historicaldo...

Unhappy to confirm that the entire Historical Advisory Committee at the State Department received termination notices this afternoon (myself included). The HAC, set up by Congress, oversees the office that produces the FRUS series. history.state.gov/about/hac/in... 1/

“food was one of the top 10 causes of death in the 19th century. That's not true today. …These rules have made us safer, so we don't wanna undo them. We don’t have to repeat every mistake we’ve ever made.”

So…confronting/disrupting distracted students is worth it?

It is official! Harper Collins just acquired my next book, "Dirty, Sexy, Bible."

“I recently attended a scholarly talk…but the talk was not easy to follow. Frustrated, I opened ChatGPT….I had a rich exchange with the system.” It’s not that you just “like” AI. you fundamentally prefer a system over human connection. Humanities profs and students have a real problem with that!

This premise is absurd & dismissive: “everyone seems intent on pretending… [AI] isn’t happening. The approach appears to be: “We’ll just tell the kids they can’t use these tools and carry on as before.” Policies limiting or prohibiting AI, esp when framed well, can be a legit response