A child dying of cancer spent her final days fighting to free her wrongfully detained father from ICE custody.   This comes just weeks after a mother from Maryland was denied the right to be at her son’s side as he died from cancer.   Not one dime for this cruelty. www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/...

Mindboggling that this still needs to be said when the data has been there the whole time

Petag' Tabriz Carpet, Northwest Persia. ca 1920 the design based on 16th cent Safavid 'Vase' carpets, on an unusual green ground

The drunk uncle theory. You don’t argue with the casually homophobic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner to change his mind; you argue so that the closeted cousin at the kids table knows there’s safe people and better possibilities out there

Gonna try to have a celebrity sighting before my Ge’ez class on Wednesday… 😊

I’m a bit of a cynic (shocking) but every so often I remember I’m in a job where I’m paid to read and think and talk to interesting people who sometimes take me to interesting places and feed me. (Last bit is crucial, girl can eat.)

‘We like lists because we don’t want to die’, said Umberto Eco. What drives our deep fascination with lists? PhD researcher Michael Hensley explores the meaning of Ethiopian and Eritrean book lists, offering glimpses into communities that would otherwise be lost: uhh.de/csmc-hensley

There is a fab new book out about the 2022 polychromy exhibition at the Met. It underscores 38 scholars who are the 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 experts in polychromy today. Coming out of polychromy retirement to review _Chroma: Sculpture in Color from Antiquity to Today_ for @hyperallergic.com (edited by Natalie Haddad).

one of the things i'm learning about doing the @americanmedieval.bsky.social podcast is that I kind of record with guests in a fugue state and by the time I have to listen to the edit, i honestly have no idea what happened in the episode so I get to experience everything like a new listener

new episode alert! in this one @profgabriele.com talks with @anotheraspirin.bsky.social about St. Nicholas! basically he became the folk hero (eventually Santa Claus) because he was a rich guy who was nice to people and helped them with his $.... CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT HAPPENING??? pca.st/9sueq4cp

Obviously not ancient aliens, but I would love it if there were a good interpretation of these figurative stele like that object the second figure is holding in his right hand, or why his face is partitioned It may help shine some light on the pre-Christian religions of Ethiopia

Rhetorical question of the moment: "Why should I bother to read something someone else couldn't be bothered to write? futurism.com/artificial-i...

I'm at the airport on my way to the east coast for series of events for Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century! Weds, 2/18: Princeton's McGraw Center Thurs, 2/19: Rutgers English Fri, 2/20: CUNY Grad Center Details and RSVP info threaded below -- hope to see some of you!

I should’ve been an editor (in a way that pays as opposed to the free editing I do now). I love editing others’ work and suck at editing my own. 🙃

they say deaths come in threes, and my family had our third this weekend. fuck cancer, send some thoughts to a kid now without a dad, and if you’re of the inclination, toss a penny to www.cysticfibrosis.org.uk in honour of my cousin.

This is a continuation of certain factions of the United States claiming that this is a Christian nation founded by European Christians (because only Christians exist/have existed in Europe, obviously 🤫). I don't understand why we continue to be surprised by what anyone in this administration says.

Excited for this one 😊

“stuff I don't understand, and more!” should be a more regular thing in headlines and abstracts for many scholars. I love it. #academicchatter

More South Asian epigraphy in Egypt!

I’m still angry that an entire semester on Paradise Lost did not fit my schedule in college. This sounds like the absolute height of intellectual luxury. (I took the entire fall to get through The Brothers Karamazov, but that was not for a class. Still, it was nice to have the time)

Rainy and 45 F (7 C) tonight. Perfect weather for the spotted salamanders to emerge from their burrows in our backyard and cross the lane towards their breeding pool. #herps 1/4

Truly horrifying gutter racism.

a neighbor set up this werewolf for halloween and instead of taking it down they just update it with seasonal outfit changes. now it’s dressed for valentine’s day and holding a sign with a picture of bad bunny and his super bowl slogan. i love him.

Just finished. Stunning book.

The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe is now available in paperback. Plus take advantage of @stanfordpress.bsky.social Valentine’s Day Sale for a few more days. www.sup.org/books/histor... 🗃️ #menasky #ottoman #bosniaandherzegovina #bosnia #muslims #austriahungary

I'd like at add a few things to this. (1) humanists have not been able to convince any political party that curiosity-driven humanities research is a public good that should be funded using tax dollars. Republicans don't believe this, but neither do Democrats.

Megalithic Landscapes of Ethiopia from Prehistory to the Modern Era www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/megalithic...

I have been *waiting* since this past summer to rave about this book, which I read for the HBA Book Prize, so now that the announcement of the winners has gone out, I can tell everyone...go read Iris Moon's _Melancholy Wedgwood_! mitpress.mit.edu/978026254634...

This one! It’s very good 😊

The pet peeve no one wishes to hear is that midwestern towns have got to stop calling one stage in a field an “amphitheater.” Unless it is two theaters pushed together in a large circle in the round, sir, it is a theater.

you should avoid the "cannibal" stuff because it's deeply antisemitic, but it's absolutely worth keeping in mind that it absolutely does also imply that systematic sex trafficking isn't gross enough for you!

A Black-capped Chickadee showcasing winter fashion by donning a snowflake accessory.

Now this is a movie plot!!! Someone understands grad school.

Yes he was handsome. But give some credit to the meticulous attention his wife Anna Murray Douglass paid to his care, his home, & the presentation of his garments. It was Anna, a free woman who he met in Baltimore, who out of her meager savings gave FD the money for his train ride to escape.

The problem with people like this is, ironically, that they're not completely illiterate. This is the exact take that results from having read 1-3 books on a topic rather than 0 or 10. >10 and you start to get a real opinion. <1 and you just don't say anything that sounds remotely plausible at all.

Bahram Visits the White Domed Pavilion (Recto); part of Khamsa of Nizami, Haft Paykar [Seven Portraits] Manuscript https://clevelandart.org/art/2006.146.a

so a fun fact about me is that if you take me out to dinner with a Big Deal Scholar, the chances that I will discuss the fiqh of whether squirting breaks your wudu' are apparently very high... I love myself idc

Happy Valentine’s Day! 💕 Based on a painting of Yael by Artemisia Gentileschi

Lebanese Arabic equivalent: تَلَّت، بيتَلِّت، مْتَلِّت أو مْتَلَّت tallat, bitallit, mtallit/mtallat e.g.: l computer ʕam bitallit raasi mtallit l yowm (I'm lagging; I can't think straight today)

Quite likely my NEH grant (also terminated in April 2025) was one of these.

You guys, this isn’t punishment. It’s effectively reasearch leave.

Mellon currently has the humanities held hostage, and is threatening to kill one humanity an hour unless its demands are met: one million dollars in small, un-marked bills; a helicopter; and guarantee of a five-percent increase in hiring of under-represented scholars over the next ten years.

The Mellon Foundation trained me in the art of the sword; she taught me how to love, and how to kill in the name of second-wave feminism. The Mellon Foundation taught me the Weirding Way; my name became a killing word (my name is "Intersectionality").

I actually turned down a Mellon fellowship when I was finishing my PhD because I didn’t have a well-ventilated space to burn the American flag they sent me every day for that purpose. So glad someone finally uncovered this abuse of power.

Mellon funded my first postdoc. My work consisted of annotating copies of Fanon's Wretched of the Earth; each morning a fresh copy arrived in the mail; every evening a courier removed it, and by decoding my markings Mellon learned the secrets of Left Straussianism.

I’m currently funded by Mellon. Every night my backers leave a little liberalization pill on my pillow, I take it, and then arise each morning to further chill the humanities discourse. So glad someone finally uncovered this abuse of power.

Happy birthday, Frederick Douglass! @douglassday.bsky.social celebrations start at 11 pm CT / 12 pm ET in the History Department here at Iowa. Come on over! douglassday.org

My students have been studying Aztec codices for weeks and learning about the gods and the migration from Aztlan and different ways of history telling. This section culminated in them painting/drawing the codex of their own migrations to our university.