I am UK-bound for much of January (New Year’s til 5th Jan in London, then Oxford, and possibly a day or two back in the Big Smoke), mostly haunting British Lib and Bodleian/Weston. However, I’m keen to catch a few shows, exhibitions, coffee, & whatnot; if you’re around for a catch up, let me know!

Some December midnight Christ, lord, lie warm in our byre. Here are stars, an ox, poverty enough. —George Mackay Brown, “A Child’s Calendar” published in FISHERMEN WITH PLOUGHS (Hogarth Press 1971) #Christmas #poem #poetry #Orkney

No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.

I am UK-bound for much of January (New Year’s til 5th Jan in London, then Oxford, and possibly a day or two back in the Big Smoke), mostly haunting British Lib and Bodleian/Weston. However, I’m keen to catch a few shows, exhibitions, coffee, & whatnot; if you’re around for a catch up, let me know!

me to grad students: share your work with each other, talk, exchange ideas! me to me: no one can ever see this draft it's garbage and they'll think i'm garbage and then i'll have to move into a dumpster where i belong

The handmade, human qualities of your work are more valuable than they've ever been. Don't doubt that for a second.

He was very weary; the day had been long, and full of dragons.

Great seminar yesterday & first #anza25 day today with @anzamems.bsky.social. If you’re around at @unimelb.bsky.social & want to hear about Montaigne, possibility, & early modern multilingual theatre, including Shakespeare, I’d love to see you in the first panel of tomorrow, featuring yours truly!

ROFL. Eco is not wrong. He's not wrong at all.

Every ad now

Just discovering this database of books as symbols in Renaissance art--a wonderful resource #EarlyModern #HerBook basiraproject.org

Every time I sit down to write a piece I feel certain that I would rather die than actually write it and yet somehow I would rather die ten times harder before I ever let the word machine write for me.

I can't decide whose head in early modern England would explode the most watching this video.

I've updated my document that tackles four of the common arguments used to encourage teachers to use AI. I hope this will be helpful to those educators wanting to push back on AI mania.

My Yr10 students and I recently though with Le Guin's full acceptance speech about the power of persuasion. It's a WONDERFUL piece that packs a punch with only a few succinct paragraphs, and gets extra points from me for being extremely readable for many ages/stages...

Very pleased that my review of 'Shakespeare and Montaigne' is now beautifully typeset and online! You can see it now within Volume 106, Issue 6 of @englishstudies.bsky.social.

Don’t forget to register your preferences for #shax2026, and feel free to come join Huw Griffiths and yours truly to talk about essaying Shakespeare!

How it feels to write "my translation"

Thank you for sharing this @equintero.bsky.social! ‪And thank you to @carlhendrick.substack.com for the thought-provoking essay:‬ "Deep reading..trains us in the moral dispositions that public life requires: attention, imagination, restraint." substack.com/home/post/p-...

This is excellent “we need more evidence before drawing sweeping conclusions about the impact of generative AI—and I agree. But that caution should cut both ways. If we're going to question the limitations of this early research, we must also scrutinize the uncritical embrace of AI in classrooms.”

The nemesis of Comicon ys Tragicon

Every. Single. Story. about women not using AI as much as men portray it as bad for their future career prospects (without a shred of evidence) and a result of women being fearful little ladies rather than looking at AI's output and saying "this sucks, it's not going to help me."

Yep, 100% this. Also some fun witchcraft allusions if you're looking for them

Sometimes the historical dictionary offers solace through the existence of an obsolete word that is sorely needed now. One of them is ‘respair’, recorded just once, in the 15th century. It means fresh hope, and a recovery from despair.

Thursday #morningread 🦗🦗

AI is Iago and we're all Roderigos

I post this to say: I know a human voice when I hear one. this is because of my training in the humanities & precisely why we should all train in the humanities.

You will be shocked to learn that universities that disproportionately recruit from independent schools and higher socio-economic groups are less likely than universities that recruit from less favoured pupil populations to have high student drop-out rates in year 1. Shocked.

#PhD opportunity at University of Queensland (domestic students) on the theme of race, translation and adaptation, and tragedy - esp. tragedy, translation and adaptation, and Indigeneity - with Dr Emma Cole - see www.acrsn.org/news.html

I am extremely fortunate to have a continuing position outside of the academy at present. However, if you are aware of early modern / literary roles in HE (Europe or Aus areas, ideally), please don't be a stranger!!

Wow ok unfollowing now. Loved his refusal of servitude in heaven, did not know he was responsible for the fall of man

*me and my book project (courtesy of the legendary John Austen)

'there has been a lot less public focus on the students who don’t want to have A.I. baked into their education—who wish to make the most of their schooling, and say no to the tech on principle'.

Not the point of this fascinating article, but it remains darkly ironic to me that the Humanities have fallen backwards into being the safe financial bet of degrees

Schrödinger's academic humanities: Both so irrelevant in the modern world that no one wants to take our classes, and so powerful that we can singlehandedly convert our students to cultural Marxism.

Many HE roles are competitive even in seasons of relative stability, and still, it is disappointing each time to receive polite and impersonal rejection. It's not a particularly good feeling when the email clarifies no opportunity for feedback due to the large number of applicants, either.

FANTASTIC post here from Lucy- check it out!

If I'm allowed to shift before/after the mid-19thC... Northanger Abbey??? The Age of Innocence? This Earth Of Mankind? Toer's as a standalone absolutely FLOORED me.

"Archives are not inert historical collections. They always stand in an active, dialogic, relation to the questions which the presents puts to the past; and the present always puts its questions differently from one generation to another." Stuart Hall, "Constituting an archive"

That Guardian article about AI tanking the graduate job market has an interesting comment from a recruitment consultant saying that the ability to read, write, and form an analysis without using the internet are now "elite skills." Wouldn't it be great if we had degree subjects that teach just that?

Good lectures are good! Humanities professors have expertise, because they’ve trained for many years, + their slowly-acquired thus *real* knowledge is compelling, relevant, even sometimes life-changing! This should all be lavishly funded bc access to truth is @ the basis of a free & just society

I am pleasingly on track to be on time to the opening of #anzsa2025 in Brisbane, after about 25hrs transit from London ( #bsa2025 ) via Singapore. I’m anticipating a jet lagged but jovial next few days; ANZSA conferences are some of our best homegrown early modern gatherings 💪

Scowling at you since 1663, dear human reader. #caturday #catcontent

This article is going to turn me into the Joker. Literary style is not a puzzle you solve to get a little information treat 😩😩😩

Everything lives rent free in my head. I have not yet found the proper mechanism to charge rent to the things in my head.

Has anyone written on the auctioning of goods (especially of the dead) in London in the first half of the seventeenth century? Interested in the work of criers, how estates are sold off etc.

Hello from Singapore, en route to the @bsashakespeare.bsky.social conference @york.ac.uk (with a few days to get into the correct time zone, first); I’ll be in the Shakespeare/theory/practice seminar on Friday after lunch, & am excited for much to hear, read, discuss, and learn throughout the week!

How To Be a Writer, #19484: Write 502 words Cut 10,005 words Write 16,000 words Attack and dethrone God Tea

Nor must you forget that when men say popes, kings, and emperors built such and such buildings, it is a mere way of speaking. You look in your history-books…Did they? or, rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen, who have left no names behind them, nothing but their work? -William Morris