In 2021, @luciaakard.bsky.social and I ran Medieval Consent: A Symposium. We are so happy to release the co-edited Special Issue! scholarworks.wmich.edu/mff/vol61/is...

@aliceraw.bsky.social and I ran our Medieval Consent symposium way back in 2021 and I'm so happy to announce that a special issue of the papers is now out! You can read it open access, too. scholarworks.wmich.edu/mff/vol61/is...

My book has a release date (15 Oct) and page on the publisher's website now: uolpress.co.uk/book/prostit... 🎉🎉🎉

'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3

My most anticipated book of the year!

Here she comes #booknews @lollardfish.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

honestly bring back shame into teaching bc our students need the motivation...no I won't tell you how to find the book I linked on the reading list...or how to use google...you ought to be so full of shame that you don't understand that you are motivated to figure it out.

@chrislhayes.bsky.social: “A 37-year-old American citizen, the mother of a young child is dead tonight. She was shot in the face by an agent of the federal government, and that government has spent the day telling despicable lies about her.”

Call for Papers! Fissures: Gender and Political Crisis #medievalsky #Fissures2026

Inbox— next cover of the New Yorker: “Mayor Mamdani,” by Edel Rodriguez

Latest from me: on what Liverpool says about the housing crisis, and the uneasy state of politics www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

you don't understand. as someone who isn't inherently good at art, stealing paintings from the museum is the *only* way i'm able to express myself creatively. i wouldn't be able to paint beautiful portraits. but by breaking into a museum and stealing the paintings, now i am

@manongarcia.bsky.social @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social “It’s not because they’re dumb. It’s because there’s something about what it is for them to be a man, and to be entitled to women’s bodies, that makes them, I think, at least some of them, deeply convinced that they haven’t done anything wrong.”

How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.

Oh, I was also double-paying into the system by paying into NI through my paychecks and also paying an immigration surcharge to access health care, while having an state-issued immigrant ID card which said 'NO ACCESS TO PUBLIC FUNDS'

The point was never to have workable rules: the point was to have rules that could be enforced selectively and cruelly and leave all trans people in uncertainty and danger. Cf. the same approach to immigrants - allow yourself to target who you like and assure 'the good ones' that 'it'll be fine'

When can we admit that it was weird to have a zoom event to announce that Chaucer wasn't a rapist. like. now that it's been a few years can we admit that was Not Good and that the evidence is still not as "clear" as was presented?

justice for the survivors

daily reminder that immigrants pay twice for the NHS and don't have access to public funds!

My main professional organization, @medievalacademy.bsky.social, has just pub'd a statement about the use of AI in its journal. Basically, DON'T! "AI tools cannot take ethical or legal responsibility for their output or enter into legal agreements." www.medievalacademy.org/page/AIPolicy #MedievalSky

external monitor? no thanks, I prefer to do my transcribing hunched over my macbook on the couch, like god intended.

Seriously, fuck off. I say that with all due gravity.

For a medieval monastic chronicler, a headline to die for

Why isn’t bell hooks’s writing around men and love not seen as a progressive text on how men can get laid, i.e., form healthy romantic relationships with people in their lives?

Not so fun fact: in the Middle Ages people hated procuresses. I knew this, and wrote about it with @lollardfish.bsky.social for @slate.com slate.com/news-and-pol... Another not so fun fact I learned this summer. While there was a lot of hatred of procuresses they sometimes pardoned them.

Over the weekend I drew these two subway maps for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and shared them. A lot of you asked about purchasing them, and now you can! You can buy one or both (as digital files or as prints) at my brand new Etsy shop: surprisedeelmaps.etsy.com

never not insane that Oxford colleges that have endowments in the hundreds of millions of pounds continue to pay lecturers salaries that are near impossible to live on in one of the most expensive cities in the UK.

4. Every other discipline thinks they can do history but they often cannot

Thrilled to announce that for the next three years I'll be a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at @york.ac.uk! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/post...

How are immigrants to blame for poor public services when a) we pay an NHS surcharge that's like 1k a year or more b) pay for the NHS again in our taxes and c) many of us are not allowed any public funds

Today, Starmer said he’d “take back control of our borders” and claimed that soaring immigration had done “incalculable damage” to our country. No. That damage is done by the ruinous dishonesty of our politicians and the hatred whipped up by their ugly anti-immigrant rhetoric. Shame on you, Starmer.

on the one hand soooo lovely to be told by students that my class is their favorite. on the other, sooooo depressing that it's unlikely I'll get to do this job I'm clearly really good at into the future.

me when asked what jobs I'm applying for

Carris Harris's Obscene Pedagogies is so good it genuinely makes me weep at points. One of those books that I will be reading for years and years to come

absolutely wild to me that the government has not seemed to factor in the massively disabling pandemic we had just a few years ago in their discussion of why the number of benefits claimants has increased so much

every class I teach: I'll make a gender historian out of you [sung to the tune of I'll Make a Man Out of You from Disney's Mulan]

I am begging scholars of medieval British law to explain their terms more clearly. Students do not know what eg an eyre court is and it is not readily apparent to them! or frankly to scholars coming from any other field trying to engage with your work

I prefer my government to not accidentally cancel Ebola prevention. Just me though.

excited bc I get to lecture on my favorite weird horrendous perfect little sources tomorrow - letters of remission

Calling researchers in Queer & Trans Histories ⚧️🌈 This #LGBTplusHM25 we want your proposals for our new series. Ed. by the UK’s first permanently endowed professor in LGBTQ+ History, Matt Cook, @psimonetto.bsky.social & Jennifer V Evans. Find more info here: https://buff.ly/4hoB1lo

It was a trial for the ages, with deep implications for France.

One of the telling characteristics of the AI-gen’d student essays I’ve seen is their insipid both-sidesism, fully assimilating the noncommittal banalities that tech corps demand from employees, and hovering sufficiently in a colorless nowhere of opinion where one is neither right nor wrong.

Please tell your kids, every damn day if necessary, that chatGPT is not a goddamn search engine and you shouldn’t believe a word it says. Tell the adults too, but it’s especially imperative to inoculate kids against this

One seminar paper to give, one Christmas party, 4 classes, and then DONE for the semester!!

The cfp is out for #GMS2025, join us! The wonderful theme is gender, charity & care: medievalgender.co.uk/2025-canterb...

sooo funny to me when ppl ask, aghast, what job I'll do if I have to leave academia. like, idk, I'll wait tables? work in a shop? all I know is that I've had a job every year since I was 13, leaving academia wouldn't change that.

Calling #medievalsky! I have a question regarding surnames: Thomas Gerson was the only son of Jean Gerson's sister, Marion. Given that Gerson is not the name from Thomas' father, but in fact his maternal family name, is this a conscious choice? I assumed paternal surnames were most commonly adopted?

I went to the BL Medieval Women exhibit last weekend and it was phenomenal and emotional. I got to see so many MSS that I routinely teach and research with.