Seven years ago we were spending Christmas in Edinburgh. It was one of the best Christmases ever.

The majority of archival material out there has NOT been digitized. So if you really want to figure something out, odds are that you have to go to an archive and dig. Historians are trained to dig.

Yep. I’m sure that was the right news call and not at all something embarrassing and weird

He’s doing his Christmas dreaming

I do think this is true. I'm often guilty myself of underplaying what the work I do looks like or how much time and effort it takes. Research isn't 'just reading' or a question of sucking up summaries others have created. It's knowledge creation. So let me go through the process with an example 1/

Stop making me agree with George W Bush and Bill Kristol: The 2026 Challenge

"Babies in the randomized, controlled trial will or will not receive the vaccine at birth... "It is a breach of scientific ethics to withhold an intervention that has been proven safe and effective." www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Neither is herpes, but I’ll keep doing my work without either.

Man, that computer programmer really needs a bloody hobby.

Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.

I think our failure to explain what this means also has fed into the perception that we “just read old books,” as if it’s a hobby that doesn’t require expertise

What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.

“60 Minutes” abruptly dropped a segment about Trump deportees sent to a megaprison in El Salvador Sunday — two hours before it was set to air

Bari Weiss-washing

These are the times that try kids’ soles—of their onesies.

He still hasn’t shown up?

In the summer of 1950 most US newspapers ran an AP story about how race had become the main issue in the upcoming Georgia governor's race. Segregationist Herman Tallmadge, governor from '47 to '55 and then a Senator until 1981 made a name for himself by refusing to "apologize for being a white man."

🧑‍🌾 SPOTTED in Jackson County, Wisconsin…

how many times have we seen a revolution in an entire field in the humanities based on a new reading of an old theorist that treats aspects of their work that used to be left out of summaries entirely as their primary contribution?

Wow. Last used ~1934, inherent contempt would in effect bring Bondi to trial in the House & by majority vote empower the House to put her in jail. Far more effective than other options (criminal referral to her own DOJ or endless civil litigation), it'd be a huge bipartsan stand against the Admin.

For years I’ve used this activity, created by @rpanchasi.bsky.social, that asks students to reconstruct an entire monograph from the endnotes. It’s a fun and brilliant way to show them that citations are entire scholarly conversations in themselves.

I wrote about the conservative quest to restore the "true" Constitution, the Antebellum Constitution, shorn of the egalitarian nonsense in the Reconstruction Amendments, a document that replaces equality with a society of dominators and the dominated. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Read @boghuma.bsky.social’s piece on RFK Jr’s HBV vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau. bktitanji.substack.com/p/how-unethi...

I'd like to see Jefferson identify a camera and a tv.

Delighted to see William Godwin's superb novel, Caleb Williams, trending. #18C #CalebWilliams #Godwin

I never really launched my first book. So what do you wish you knew about book launches? What works well? What ought you avoid?

My number one reading tip for students: follow the footnotes.

I tell my students explicitly to NOT do this and then I explain why - full of hallucinations, stolen material, mischaracterizations.

Trump set to expand immigration crackdown in 2026 despite brewing backlash reut.rs/3MMG44O

This is a terrible, shocking story... they won't believe her but certificate or hospital records evidencing she was born in the US - ICE Says U.S. Citizen’s Birth Certificate Is Fake After Arresting Her: Attorneys www.huffpost.com/entry/us-cit...

Links to two stories @josephcox.bsky.social wrote on the new facial recognition tool. www.404media.co/ice-is-using... www.404media.co/how-a-us-cit...

At some point, we need a series of essays arguing for the value of literary analysis in Med Ed, not just creative writing.

I'm very excited to announce the launch of the #18thC Ecologies Network! Co-convened by myself & @calsutherland.bsky.social at @cecs-york.bsky.social , ECEN is a hub for researchers interested in the many diverse ecologies of the period 🌱 Find out more: hzj520.wixsite.com/eighteenth-c...

"the novel has all of this technology we don’t use anymore. there has been a wholesale deaccessioning of narrative technology from the novel as a form" instead: scale, mediation, Lukacs, 3rd person, full Dickens, full Morrison - all the IMMEDIACY keywords countercraft.substack.com/p/processing...

Pretty clear Tulane are just outmatched

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular. pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

Now there is an effective metaphor.

Same, Greg. And if you're an educator at any level, I hope you're as concerned as me about the rapid de-skilling and de-intellectualizing of our young people for the benefit of the bottomlessly greedy fascist tech oligarchs. Resist. Refuse. Abolish.

The New Year sees the start of a new non-clinical elective on care ethics and nineteenth-century literature, including Mansfield Park, Oliver Twist, and Jane Eyre. umtc.catalog.prod.coursedog.com/courses/8280...

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

There’s room for somebody on the left to wrap themselves in the flag a little & make a point that the right’s rejection of America as a creedal nation—and their ad hoc, ahistorical effort to make it an ethnonationalist project instead—is distinctly *unamerican,* a rejection of the national project.

My syllabi are written in accessible, humanizing language, include reams of technically unnecessary but useful info (e.g., where to find counseling services), and are the first assigned reading to show that policy documents take moral and political stances. This policy would torpedo ALL of that.

streaming secret of mana! www.twitch.tv/jbouienyt

Hello! I write a newsletter. It comes out in 12 hours. It is free. Would you like to sign up to get it? You would? Nice! Thanks. Here’s a link. howtoreadthisch.art

Let them eat Kennedy Centers.

Rise like Grinches Ye are many They are few

Not in a box. Not with a fox. I do not want it, Sam Am I. I do not want your gen AI.

The UNC system just released its final policy on mandatory syllabi disclosure, stating that syllabi are university (not faculty) IP and certain course info must be posted on new, publicly searchable databases before every semester. A thread about what's changed from the draft I reported on earlier:

We won’t have Elise Stefanik to kick around anymore.