"He stands athwart history, yelling the wildest possible bullshit" is a sentence that rattled around in my brain for MONTHS

We are excited to engage in this work critically in ways that align with our values. Grateful to have @jimccasey1.bsky.social, @snblickhan.bsky.social, @bcgl.bsky.social, Tiffanie Smith from Lincoln as co-pis, with all of us bringing unique perspectives is

Figured I’d wait to post anything for this, but I can’t tell you how excited I am for us to have the opportunity to be funded to do this work. We really do believe that our project connecting communities, digital archives of the early Black press, and human-AI systems will have a large impact

Trying to avoid posting all the long posts today, but I want to add: Sam Blickhan & her Zooniverse crew are some of most generous, principled, and utterly brilliant people in the biz. We have dreamed about this project for literal years and years. Still pinching ourselves!

Grateful to the brilliant @jimccasey1.bsky.social @profdancy.bsky.social @bcgl.bsky.social and Tiffanie Smith, who I am extremely lucky to be co-PIs with on this project. I'm so excited to dive into this work together over the next few years.

I am over the MOON to be part of this cohort with our project, "Communities in the Loop: AI for Cultures & Contexts in Multimodal Archives." It's so wonderful when years of "Wouldn't it be cool if..." conversations can actually come to fruition! Read more: daily.zooniverse.org/2025/12/11/c...

I am beyond thrilled to share some good news: 1. I've moved to a new job at UC Santa Barbara. 2. We have been selected for a 2025 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute award from @schmidtsciences.bsky.social! Both, we hope, will allow us to continue building the work! + hfa.ucsb.edu/news/schmidt...

Newsletter out today! - Ways to get involved - Organizing kit - New swag on "All Rights for All" - Schedule for Feb 13 and later events douglassday.substack.com/p/douglass-d... Help us spread the word?

Save the date! Douglass Day 2026 "All Rights for All" Fri, February 13 Sign up today! DouglassDay.org Feat. the Colored Conventions Project! @ccp-org.bsky.social @digblk.bsky.social

We are going to focus @douglassday.bsky.social in Feb 2026 on the Colored Conventions and their visions for citizenship. We need to tell a much fuller story about the 14th amendment. The history is crystal clear. The Constitution is crystal clear.

As we face up to SCOTUS arguments over birthright citizenship, understanding this constitutional guarantee has never been more important. @brennancenter.org & @oah.org have you covered with this video feat. @katemasur.bsky.social @marthasjones.bsky.social & Erika Lee: www.youtube.com/live/6QCIt0l...

It starts with knowing the truth. Don’t allow yourselves to be gaslit into believing this is a real question.

People don't live tweet events anymore? Anyways, today I am attending the very cool "LOOKING BACK TO THE FUTURE: Realizing the "Afric-American-Picture Gallery" Symposium at Winterthur (a place that I would have never imagined hosting an event like this, truly)

“America does not have a full accounting of itself without the historic Black press,” says Nicole Carr, author, investigative journalist, and professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta. www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/...

You African Studies majors out there: you too can become mayor of New York City!!!

Looking forward to the discussions at Swarthmore today! Come on thru if you’re around

A nice excuse to share one of my all-time favorites — "What Baseball Does to the Soul" by Column McCann www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/o...

These con artists have set up shop in downtown Santa Barbara. Tuition is $50,000 per year. Their ads promise your child will - Learn to manage an airbnb - Pass the FBI fitness test - Win a sailing trip to the Bahamas

If your Monday night-in is looking a little dry, listen to me and my fantastic friend and colleague Barrye <3 luma.com/cyxih6zu

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!! The University of Texas-Austin is beginning a process to eliminate the Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies departments in the College of Liberal Arts. This is a grave threat to the educational liberty of students, faculty, staff, and the people of Texas. 1/

New essay in the Atlantic today: How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution by Ned Blackhawk (with many lessons on how we ended up where we are as a nation, and a gift link) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

- put down the damn AI.

GET YOUR CALENDAR OUT 🗓️ and write these two dates down… 10/16, 2p ET USA: Dorothy Berry’s (@dorothyjberry.bsky.social) The House Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities available for purchase. The first 50 copies sold will be signed 🫢 www.weherepress.org

Happy 195th birthday to the Colored Conventions movement! The first convention debated whether this country would ever be a place for Black people to enjoy their full civil rights and citizenship. As those fights continue today, it is powerful reading omeka.coloredconventions.org/items/show/70

I come from generations of freedom fighters who taught us to fight oppressive forces. Whether it’s fighting for a livable wage, to make housing affordable for all, or stopping the genocide – I’m answering the call of my forbearers. I'm Chris Rabb, and I’m running for Congress.

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

This week 14th Amendment Center webinar series begins. Tuesday & Wednesday night will be focused on the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. Follow @the14thcenter.bsky.social REGISTER NOW! howard.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Excited to be co-editing a special issue of @dhquarterly.bsky.social on Artificial Intelligence for Digital Humanities: Research problems and critical approaches dhq.digitalhumanities.org/news/news.html We're inviting abstracts now - please feel free to reach out with any questions!

Did you hear? Douglass Day 2026 is on the way! Friday, February 13, 2026 Sign up today: DouglassDay.org Oh, and this year we are featuring a massive *new* trove of rediscovered documents from our friends at the @ccp-org.bsky.social! 🎂

❤️💙 the @douglassday.bsky.social community so much! Save the date for Friday, Feb 13th! Newsletter went out this morning. Nearly 800 people signed up in the first hour!! douglassday.substack.com/p/save-the-d...

We took the paywall down on this one. defector.com/how-the-fuck...

Camelopards on Broadway - with goats from the Holy Land!

SAVE THE DATE: We are excited to co-host #Harper200 Sept. 19-21. We invite you to attend in person! The weekend festivities include a dance performance, scholarly panels, poetry readings, receptions, and more. Most events are free. Learn more & register at: coloredconventions.org/harper-200-s...

Happy New Chronicling America Day! Chronicling America is one of the great shining examples of public investment in our libraries and histories. The National Newspaper Digitization Program is special and well worth fighting to protect. Congrats to all whose years of work made this day possible!

I have always liked reading these NEH announcements. It's great to read about people getting funding for cool new projects. But good grief - the absence of the Office of Digital Humanities is SO LOUD.

Israel Detains, Chokes, and Beats Up Amazon Union Leader Chris Smalls newrepublic.com/post/198550/... via @newrepublic.com

I'm working on a new proposal these days with a bunch of ridiculously smart and creative people. Getting to riff on their genuinely original ideas and deep bodies of work, well, I really can't recommend it enough.

I am thinking about a new version of my "intro to dh" next year. CCP, Douglass Day, CBDR, etc are all based so thoroughly on the principles and lessons of various organizing traditions. I'd love to make that more visible in classes. "We Want People's Community Control of Modern Technology 101"

You don't want to miss this!! If you can't attend and would like to sponsor someone to attend, please scan the code at the end of the video. And one more thing: PLEASE SHARE this time!! Thanks!! youtu.be/btNpuZW8xao

"We must create an atmosphere of expertise about birthright citizenship, and about the 14th Amendment, and about its significance in our lives." sherrilyn.substack.com/p/facing-thi...

I cannot tell yall how excited I am for the things we have cookin up involving the new Liberatory tech project & crew within @digblk.bsky.social 👀.

Proofs are proofed. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction is on track for 1 Oct release from Oxford UP. The book wouldn’t exist w/o support from the NEH & so many librarians & scholars committed to the fact that Black history is American history. We still have so much to learn.

A wild week in so many ways... slate.com/news-and-pol...

With @yh-huang.bsky.social, I'm excited to share our Digital Collections Explorer, an open-source, multimodal viewer for digital collections! Users can search with both natural language inputs and reverse image search. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2507.00961 Public demo: digital-collections-explorer.com

There's so much evil in that bill, but tax breaks for killing whales??

This is a concentration camp

Those who organized Colored Conventions rallied for democracy and citizenship rights as state and national forces sought to deny them protections clearly outlined in the constitution. They were often forcefully dissenting voices. We will soon make public a new trove of Reconstruction conventions.

There's something really interesting going on here methodologically in Justice Jackson's Medina v. Planned Parenthood dissent. You can see it in one footnote. In short, Jackson is emphasizing that Black Americans are part of the original "public" about which "originalists" should be concerned.

I’m so excited that my book is now out in the world. It pulls together my scholarly training in African American literature with my turn to digital humanities. I’ve also published the complete data dataset of 100 years of AFAM and am lit anthologies that is the backbone of the book.