Hardly on here anymore, but if anyone is near Princeton and interested in book history, you MUST check out the absolutely amazing new exhibition Forms & Function: The Splendors of Global Book Making curated by Martin Heijdra at Firestone Library through 12/7 📖📜 library.princeton.edu/formsandfunc...

Help me find a wonderful new colleague for our department! Specialty in religions of South Asia or Southeast Asia. #religiousStudies #tenuretrackjobs jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...

🏹🏹🏹 Slightly late #ManuscriptMonday. Illustrated Tales of Heike, 17th century, Princeton University Library. dpul.princeton.edu/eastasian/ca...

New issue of the Journal of Japanese Studies is out! Highlights include articles on kanpu masatsu, war photography, empire paranoia, Italian-Japanese children's lit, Seidensticker’s style, and a bonus piece on Black Rain and ritual. Don’t miss it!

The tragedy - and true horror - of many witch trials was that the impersonal machinery of the law took them inexorably forward, even if judges and lawyers (and even the public at large) were unconvinced. But the image popular media presents us with is one of mounting hysteria (cf. Miller’s Crucible)

A simple idea: faculty should be represented in the search for UVa’s next president: www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

The Japanese Journal of Religious Studies @jjrs-nirc.bsky.social ✨50th anniv issue✨ abt past, present, & future of 🇯🇵 religious studies is out! 🙏Paul Swanson, Hayashi Makoto, Kawahashi Noriko, Keller Kimbrough, Emi Foulk Bushelle, @orionklautau.bsky.social @jolyonbt.bsky.social @aikerots.bsky.social

Our Department is hiring in early Christianity. It's an assistant professor (tenure-track position). Spread the word! puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Fascinating to see Usa today market itself as the birthplace of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism, a very different view from that in Grapard, who describes an obliteration of syncretism in the wake of Meiji ideologues and their reforms.

For the first time since the Princeton Geniza Project began in 1986, we have published our metadata collated from over 30,000 Geniza documents and the People, Places, and histories of the Middle East and premodern Jewish communities found therein! zenodo.org/records/1583...

Is there a collective noun for popes? 😉 #ManuscriptMonday BL Cotton MS Nero D VII; The Benefactors' Book of St Albans Abbey (‘the Golden Book of St Albans’); 1380-c 1540; England (St Albans)

A 13th-century-AD depiction of the 'pagan' Irish kingship ceremony, by priest and historian Gerald of Wales. He claimed the king bathed in the blood of a mare before sharing the meat with his courtiers 1/2 #ManuscriptMonday #MedievalMonday #Archaeology 🏺 📷 @britishlibrary.bsky.social / CC0 1.0

Shared for #ManuscriptMonday

Shared for #ManuscriptMonday

This week's #ManuscriptMonday is this cool miniature replica of the illustrated hell scrolls that I bought at the Kyoto National Museum last week (next to an air conditioner remote for scale). You can get your own copy here for less than 6,000 yen! www.kyotobenrido.com/view/item/00...

New journal issue edited by Sujung Kim focusing on Buddhist talismans: ijbtc.dongguk.edu

So, if humanities produce good job outcomes, humanities have a secure ROI that bring in more than they cost, and STEM now has an even lower ROI due to grant cuts…. shouldn’t we invest more in humanities where less $$ goes a longer way? Apparently not. We should ask why not. /9

Western Medieval Manuscripts (and fragments) @keiouniversity.bsky.social (Japan)! Enjoy a few spare minutes and browse this remarkable collection! Something for everyone's taste and interest! dcollections.lib.keio.ac.jp/en/western-m...

Sometimes, when things get tough, you just need a Buddhist statue to come to life and give you a piggyback ride. Shakadō Engi, 16th c. Currently on display at the Kyoto National Museum and well worth it! www.kyohaku.go.jp/jp/exhibitio...

Excited to announce that after a lot of editorial work our volume "Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE - 300 CE" is out now. @jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social @illdottore.bsky.social academic.oup.com/book/60683

Good news if you like history, manuscripts, or nice books! 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah' is now available at *greatly* reduced shipping costs via @theul.bsky.social (UK) and Amazon (worldwide) from this link: linktr.ee/nposegay. There's also a free sample file there with the entire first chapter.

I feel like I haven’t posted enough Book Stuff on here lately, so here’s another amazing thing from the Château de Chantilly: a book of hours manuscript with a trompe l'oeil border of sewn-on metal pilgrim badges next to a book with ACTUAL sewn-on metal pilgrim badges 🤩

For Marine Day in Japan, a #ManuscriptMonday of the 13th-century Illustrated Biographies of the Kegon School's Patriarchs 華厳宗祖師絵伝, which tells the story of a young Chinese woman who falls in love with a Korean monk. She throws herself into the sea and becomes a dragon who protects the returning ship

By far the best summary I’ve read on the election.

For #MedievalMonday / #ManuscriptMonday : Detail from Maastricht Book of Hours (BL Stowe MS17), f36r: #elephant & castle (howdah) driven by #monkey Liège-Maastricht area, c.1300-25 @medmilmedicine.bsky.social another one for your elephant collection 😂 commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ma...

For Marine Day in Japan, a #ManuscriptMonday of the 13th-century Illustrated Biographies of the Kegon School's Patriarchs 華厳宗祖師絵伝, which tells the story of a young Chinese woman who falls in love with a Korean monk. She throws herself into the sea and becomes a dragon who protects the returning ship

On top of everything else, Japan's right-wing populist Sanseitō party wants to destroy anime and manga by turning it into propaganda: "The Ministry of Culture shall ensure that manga, anime, and games are developed in a healthy way as a form of culture, rather than based upon their economic value."

I'm quoted a bunch in this SCMP piece released before polls closed on the Upper House race now being counted in Japan. This is a crucial point for the governing Liberal Democratic Party / Komeito coalition. www.scmp.com/week-asia/po...

The terrible things that are happening right now were predictable AND PREDICTED in well regarded texts that had no impact.

The same administrators who decry safe spaces and claim to protect free speech surround themselves with security and call the cops on students at the drop of a hat. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Genjipoems.org is such an amazing resource www.bu.edu/articles/202...

The liberal arts is in decline not because it is not in demand, or because it is not useful in life, but rather because a group of powerful figures have decided it does not fit with their vision of the world. We should fear that world. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

Wisdom of Solomon, initial D(iligite): King Solomon sits and writes on a long scroll. #ManuscriptMonday Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 752; Bible; End of 12th or beginning of 13th century; England; f.260r @bodleianlibraries.bsky.social

Just got back from Hokkaidō, which inspired me to look up Ainu manuscripts for #ManuscriptMonday. Here's Stepan Krasheninnikov's 1738 "A Glossary: Latine-Ainu-Chukchi-Koryak-Itelmen," an early record of the Ainu language. For more on early manuscripts, see: eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitst...

Thrilled to announce a new volume I've co-edited with Benjamin Brose: Inner Worlds: Individuals and Interiority in Chinese Religious Life. It’s out now from Brill and you can find it here: brill.com/edcollbook/t... ✨ #NewBooks #ReligiousStudies #BuddhistStudies

Unexpected cancellation gave me some time this #ManuscriptMonday to take a look at another #GenjiKashū #源氏物語和歌集 MS, this one in the unusual form of poetry playing cards (uta-karuta 歌カルタ). The box inscription reads "Genji uta karuta" 源氏歌かる多, with each of the 2 card stacks in a thick paper wrapper...

Just got back from Hokkaidō, which inspired me to look up Ainu manuscripts for #ManuscriptMonday. Here's Stepan Krasheninnikov's 1738 "A Glossary: Latine-Ainu-Chukchi-Koryak-Itelmen," an early record of the Ainu language. For more on early manuscripts, see: eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitst...

Anyone have opinions about the best approaches to digitizing movable books? Pop ups, flap, etc. Thinking about these things

Sarah Charles' stall at the @imc-leeds.bsky.social medieval fair was an added bonus today. It was wonderful to see all the materials for making manuscripts. I had never seen oak galls before #IMC2025 #manuscripts

Interesting article in The New Yorker about scents being all the rage in the museum world these days. Shōsōin: The Show gave visitors the chance to smell ~8th-century Ranjatai 蘭奢待, a piece of agarwood, which is probably the most famous incense in the history of Japan and still extant in the Shōsōin.

I spend a lot of time looking at & teaching about parchment recycled in the early modern era, not just in bookbindings but any place where a piece of durable parchment might be of use, like this clothing pattern cut from a saga manuscript (Magnússon Institute 122 b fol.): handrit.is/manuscript/v...

This post inspired me. I wish we had more medieval art threads here! So I’ll be a part of the solution with one on this amazing silver incense globe from the Shōsōin. shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/en-US/treasu...

Oh no! The coolest part, which was the video, did not seem to upload. Here it is again:

This post inspired me. I wish we had more medieval art threads here! So I’ll be a part of the solution with one on this amazing silver incense globe from the Shōsōin. shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/en-US/treasu...

Here, see? I teach medieval art. It's great. You'd prefer to read threads like this than another screed about "AI."

Veni, vidi, vici. It was awesome🤩🤩🤩

Shosoin THE SHOW brings the treasures of the Japanese Imperial storehouse of Todaiji temple, kept in the same building since the 8th century CE, to Osaka until 24 August and Tokyo from 20 September to 9 November, through digital imagery and music. japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/culture/art/...