Hi, all. Teaching oral communication & am including focus on “being a good audience member” covering active listening, how to do Q&A. I would also like to tell what to avoid or anticipate (potentially). If ok & willing to share, please drop your conference panel or Q&A horrors below (no names).

Hi! Our flow chart for deciding if and when to use AI takes this into account. Oops! sidracollaborative.com/2026/01/29/i...

Hello non-fiction writers of the internet! If you or someone you know is feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or could use an outside reader, I still have some availability this spring for writing coaching and editing. ✨ You can learn more about working with me here: halperta.com/categories/e...

Ok hello who can tell me the name of the google doc that I made in 2018 and where I stored it please and thank you.

I had so much fun working on this project (and thinking with the team about our relationship with AI).

Should you use AI for that? Our new post is about how and when to use AI in arts and culture work (and why the answer is almost always no). It comes complete with an AI decision tree for cultural workers to help you make hard choices! sidracollaborative.com/2026/01/29/i...

Put the exhibit up somewhere else in the city. You can read the entire exhibit in this zine created by @literaturegeek.bsky.social - zinebakery.com/bakeshop/cen... The city of Philly should make tons of copies & distribute everywhere esp local schools, libraries etc...

If you want some support & company in responding well to frightening realities, I wrote you a book for that. Stories of models & mentors, questions for reflection, practices for connection & action. www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kate-...

Oh wow: AFGE (federal govt employee union) calls for the ouster of Noem and Miller. www.afge.org/publication/...

If you, like me, also need a little help, a lift, some company, something to feel less alone - this helped. Last week was a really tough one, today is a bit better thanks to these good people…

I am having a really rough morning emotionally and would like more videos and pictures of your dogs - not just any dogs, but your dogs - in the snow.

the aspiring academic to angry weightlifter pipeline is looking pretty active rn

I wrote this in a moment of feeling over the weekend and have been blown away by the thoughtful responses. Resharing because I hope it can be as helpful for others as it was for me.

As w/other work, choices about risk, $ to live on are legit & don't mean you aren't doing good in other ways (@halperta.bsky.social's helpful free zine⬇️). Am appreciating those speaking up directly who can, especially those taking more risk to do so & making it safer for others to do so too.

I have a question about how you all handle despair around your career... because of financial circumstances, because of institutional failures, because of all the crises in the world that demand our attention. How do you do it?

I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc... Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.

I'm thinking, because this question has layers and I haven't always handled the despair well? I can name some of the things that bring me joy in my career: that I get to talk about art with very smart people who also love to talk about art, that I can and do learn endlessly (1/2)

I have a question about how you all handle despair around your career... because of financial circumstances, because of institutional failures, because of all the crises in the world that demand our attention. How do you do it?

for example

Sad to report that scrolling social media this morning did *not* help.

Any good critical writing on the relationship between bibliography and genealogy?

Related to today's Moby-Dick chapters: has anyone posted the infamous Oregon Exploding Whale Incident video here yet? 🐋

"MacArthur Awards $10 Million to Strengthen the Humanities" www.macfound.org/press/press-...

no new pictures, where are you at mentally

no new pictures, where are you at mentally

Cannot stress enough that you can just do stuff. You don't need permission. You can just do stuff because it needs to be done by someone.

How does DH travel outside the academy? What impact and what careers do DH skills enable? CFP for our next excellent (and necessary) book in the DDH series, edited by Jeanelle Horcasitas, @lisaironcutter.bsky.social, and @kallewesterling.bsky.social dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/cfp-dh-...

✨❤️☀️🌊🎨

May I offer you a small painted chicken in these trying times

(solemnly) rest in piss bozo

Delighted to share that my new article "Neither Cuñado nor Cuñadazgo: A Guaraní History of Spanish Colonisation" has just been published in the Bulletin of Latin American Research! 🎉 📄 Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... If you don't have access to the journal, send me a MP.

Noodling letterpress printing some postcards+sending 1 (free) to anyone who wants ('til I run out). You think of some Q/project/goal; card has *very* minimal tarot-y art (a fancy letterform or word?) & the random card I send you points you to an interpretation in VFC's "Academic Tarot" guide (free)

Updating my website and reposting this conversation I had with Dr. Brooke Mai in December about values-aligned careers and working in the humanities. Everything about work is hard these days, but it was a pleasure to grapple with difficult questions with Brooke. substack.com/home/post/p-...

2025 was a year like no other. I'm so grateful to be part of the @sidracollaborative.bsky.social team.

Happy new year, all! Can anyone recommend good critical sources on redacted names/ blanks/ initialism in C18th lit? I'm looking for something about the various purposes of the practice, whether for real names or fictional, and my context is popular fiction in 1790s. TIA! #skystorians #c18th

Good morning! Wood type timeline breather. Part of #Penland's collection that has been used for decades, including by many artists I admire, becoming more beautiful from that use over time.

Y'all, this shouldn't even be a conversation. Never (ever!) publicly shame a grad student on social media! And especially not if you are faculty!!

@proghist.bsky.social posted our annual call for lesson proposals! We're looking for translators of our Spanish and French. We also welcome proposals for original lessons on new topics not yet covered by our journal. Please reach out to me at [email protected] with any questions!

Ten years ago today, I was working on a dissertation chapter about how we redefine what we think is "real" based on how different technologies copy and distort historical records. You can read an article based on that work here (scroll down for an OA link): halperta.com/scholarship/...

It's on sale for half price. www.akpress.org/read-this-wh...

The two young people bagging my groceries yesterday asked me what I thought about AI. "I hate it," one said, "but my professors force me to use it." "In my public health class," the other reported, " all the assignments were AI-based." She went on: "I didn't learn anything at all."

Started reading through The Campus Crisis Toolkit and even in the intro I love where it's going. This turn towards practical advice for people on the front lines of the university omnicrisis - specifically name checking staff and students too! - is a wonderful to see. Looking forward to teaching it!

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

Adjuncting is so weird because departments recruit people with exceptional profiles and then don't pay well and then treat you really badly.

Have I mentioned I work with the most amazing people 😍

Ok look we know that meritocracy does not exist. Academic performance is primarily an indicator of wealth and security. Hiring committees use all kinds of problematic proxies for value. STILL when you fail to succeed it hurts as if the meritocracy existed and you just weren't good enough.

This has reminded me of an ugly time. I was in grad school at the U of Minnesota in 2008 when the financial crisis hit. Prior to that the norm in the dept I was in (history) had been that people could stay in grad school on assistantships until they finished the degree but the university introduced

Curator of African American Experience Collections. Great job opening at KU Libraries/Spencer Research Library - @kulibraries.bsky.social I'm chairing this search. First review starts January 19. Please spread the word!

🎉 Today I defended my dissertation and passed with summa cum laude. The title is "Dependent Lives In and Beyond Archives: Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Early Modern Bridgetown, Barbados (1654-1800)." The abstract is below, and I hope to publish it soon.

Hi friends, in case you missed it, I am offering some writing and editing services in the new year. If you are feeling stuck on your academic writing project I might be able to help. ✨ halperta.com/categories/e...