This spring, Grad Fellows across humanities disciplines applied methods such as scanning, modeling, and mapping to their research questions. Their findings? Working with data and computational methods rarely unfolded the way they expected, the labor uncovering “strange and beautiful” discoveries.

I gave the twins each a cookie after dinner as a treat and one of them shouted “a biscuit!” and… I don’t even know man…

Is there a community of DH folks who are hanging out in the space of transformers, GOFAI, and knowledge graphs, minimal computing who want to make things together? What happened to interpretable ai and slow research design?

I do think, as nakedly awful as their recent behavior is, it's an own goal in this respect they're behaving in such a comically corrupt manner that "we have to pack the supreme court" is becoming a mainstream position in normie dem circles, and none of their actions will save Rs in november

Roger Taney Court-looking assholes

crazy that under the precedent set by callais, a lily-white congressional delegation formed by "partisan" gerrymandering in a plurality black state passes constitutional muster, while any majority-minority district is constitutionally suspect

Rarely am I as disappointed as I am when I bite into what I think is cilantro only to discover it is parsley

Love this for me for the multiple international flights I have to take into Newark over the next few months 😬

Once again: German universities were the envy of the world before the Nazis rose to power and took an ideological wrecking ball to the entire enterprise. If you want to know how long it took for German universities to recover… they haven’t.

When my wife and I had been dating for a few years, probably around ‘09/‘10, we went to a tiny ren fest near New Haven, CT. There was a performer calling himself Jacques Ze Whipper, young but super talented. Last week, 16+ years later, We took our daughters to the NJ ren fest and there he was.

The twins are watching My Little Pony for the first time ever. Fortunately I’ve already got the lore down pat thanks to @pattonoswalt.bsky.social

A beautiful day to watch some bee friends hover over allium!

Did the administration successfully bury their horrific change to green card procedures by releasing it Friday afternoon before Memorial Day? People who have followed every rule should not have their lives upturned for months or years. Where is the continued pressure?

Colleagues from all over the world, please think about the combination DH2027 in Ireland + CCLS 2027 in the Netherlands. They're only a few days apart. @uniofgalway.bsky.social @rug.nl

Please check out & share this incredible new digital humanities archive w/ interactive map, the Black Church Burning Project. blackchurchburningproject.org It exists to identify & document every Black church & congregation that was burned, bombed, or otherwise attacked during the Civil Rights era.

Daughter: “Daddy can we watch tv?” Me: “No, not tonight” Daughter: “Awwwww :(… Daddy can you play a game with me?” Me: “Sure!” “Ok! Go sit on the couch! … Now take this remote… press the big red button!… what?? It is for the game!” Seems like someone thinks I am extremely gullible

This is wild. It’s often pretty easy to suss out a short list based on public info, but access to who the committee is leaning toward?? No way this isn’t going to lead to discord in the department.

Interested in Computational Literary Studies? Then it might be worth following #ccls2026 today and tomorrow, folks! #ComputationalLiteraryStudies

This is an amazing opportunity to come work with us at Princeton!

“I write with dismay, grief and sorrow for the permanent closure of MIT Libraries Barker, Dewey and Rotch, and termination of library staff in those libraries. For MIT to be closing three of its four major libraries..." fnl.mit.edu/may-june-202...

This is obviously very bad news and what I'm about to say is not at all the point. BUT, the buildings pictured here have always given me strong "what if we dropped a mini-CSAIL (MIT) in front of a mini-Klein Biology Tower (Yale)" vibes.

By no means a site I would routinely visit, but I remember discovering the Angelfire hosted blog "Ted the caver" on some message board or another as a freshman in college back in 2001. And it made an IMPRESSION on me. Still viewable courtesy of the wayback machine: web.archive.org/web/20021205...

Friends! Allow me to introduce you to one particular variant of the scholar-beauty novels of China (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caizi_j...): the 19th-century wuxia novels (like Wen K’ang's THE GALLANT MAID) in which the martial artist is the woman and the beauty-in-need-of-rescuing is the male scholar.

The times that a trans student has come out to me as a part of their self-discovery are sacred to me at a time when little else is. This is an abominable and unenforceable fascist tactic.

Let me add that I think it's simply morally wrong for the State to murder people.

I literally used to go with my dad to K-State’s livestock auctions!

I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.

There was a black bear spotted on campus before dawn today, and the university's blast email helpfully suggests yelling, banging pots and pans, or an airhorn to scare it away. Fortunately I never leave home without my 3qt saucepan and large metal spoons, so I am in no danger at all.

Horrible news out of Sheffield

I work with a lot of "old" books, but I guess I don't have much of a nose for the physical age of paper. While clearly old, this book (held in Special Collections at Princeton) just doesn't look 430+ years old to me.

Whenever I get peer reviews back, my first inclination is to read them super quickly while glancing askance at the computer, like they are a rabid wolverine that will bite me if I make eye-contact. Which is, of course, a super healthy and completely normal reaction to a fundamental part of my job.

The "return on investment" with tenured faculty is having accomplished experts who are experienced teachers there to teach the students. It's sort of a basic point about colleges, you'd think the people on a board of trustees would get that.

I chose UNC-Chapel Hill in large part because it had a top-rated history program with excellent faculty at an incredibly cheap price (even for an out of state student). That's the ROI

Ranging from computational text analysis to the development of language technologies and digital reconstructions of historical places, meet our four inaugural CDH Affiliate Labs! Affiliation recognizes rigorous, innovative work at the intersection of humanities and computation at @princeton.edu.

ACH 2026 election results are in! Congratulations to Co-VPs/Presidents Elect Mandy Regan & Brandon Walsh, and new Executive Council members Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Samantha Blickhan, Rachel Starry, and Laura Braunstein. buff.ly/7dg8Ctb

"An expert gut check" is one of the best things about peer review, and the assumption of good faith is important, so as Scott says here it is not really suited for fraud detection. But sometimes these gut checks spur the forensic work that does detect fraud.

Teruko Ugaya Craig died last week. She was “just a translator,” married to the late Albert Morton Craig, professor of Japanese history who taught at Harvard University for forty years. But I’d wager her scholarship has shaped this field far more than her husband’s. I know she has for me.

In our new article, Zach Butler guides us on how to set up a local IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) image server to ensure uninterrupted access to manuscript images for research. Read more on our website! 🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/05/12/r...

I always find these lists fascinating, and also sometimes a wee-bit insulting! I am finding it hard to not take it personally that the University of Kansas calls K-State a peer institution but K-State does not return the favor! WTF my dudes!

Trump Unwittingly Breaks Chinese Taboo Against Napping Facedown In Soup Bowl

Including three things is so engrained in my idea of good writing that I routinely write "Thing A, Thing B, and [needs third thing]" when I can't think of a third thing! Drilled into me in grade school (or at the latest high school)! There needs to be a third thing!

this truly is the thing that makes the united states exceptional, and right wingers hate it so much they want to destroy it

I walked into my office this morning to a lovely note from a student, and it will go alongside the others I've gotten over the years. Teaching can be tough at times and it can be easy to fixate on bad reviews, but these serve as reminders of why we do this.

It's delightful that Endymion Wilkinson's authorial voice carries over from Chinese History: A Manual to his description of his personal library. chinabooksreview.com/2026/05/12/e...

Someone should write something more about this because this myth that people are just using models for info retrieval and code generation keeps coming back, fueled by our own discomfort and company reports that omit or downplay erotic usages of chatbots.

Love to send a semi important email and notice too late that I signed it "Pual"

Incredible news!

Huge sale at Princeton University Press. Thousands of titles (including my White Flight) are now half-price. Check it out: press.princeton.edu