Would people like a light-hearted Story from the Archives? In my case, the Bodleian's special collections reading room, which was at the time in the basement of the science library. It is entitled "Why Have You Given Me This Block of Wood?"

Interested in the history of #OldEnglish scholarship? @emgallimore.bsky.social, Thijs Porck and I will be editing a volume on OE in the long 19th century; if you'd like to contribute a chapter, the deadline for abstracts is 1 Sept 2026, first full drafts due Sept 2027. Spread the word! #medievalsky

William Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent talks a bit about Rochester Bridge (he even edits an Old English charter about its upkeep) so I decided to research a bit about the bridge's history. Was not expecting everything I found, so here follows a thread: (1/11)

Overhearing a colleague and a student discussing their favorite Jane Austen novels (P&P and Persuasion) just now, I did NOT shout "Northanger Abbey or GTFO!" from my office because I am a consumate professional.

Whanne þe madness of Marche haþ perced to þe roote

TFW you realize one of the points you planned to make in tomorrow's conference paper is, in fact, entirely wrong. 😒

Hey, looks like my boy William Lambarde has his own Guided Walk now! Wish this had been up last summer: londonguidedwalks.co.uk/william-lamb...

William Lambarde: Exploring His Historical Impact - London Guided Walks

London History Blog - Find out more about London's eclectic history. Read now >>

londonguidedwalks.co.uk

'What a brilliant night! Wills: dry, formal, boring? This was story telling at its best: intriguing, engaging, human!’ In this new blog post, find out what happened when Chris Hoban and his band, The Executors, played to a packed house in Topsham sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... #EarlyModern 🗃️

Early Modernists: I've encountered a symbol in a page signature and don't know how to represent it in a citation. The closest I can find in MS Word is unicode 0260, "Latin small letter g with hook." How would you represent this? Does it have a name?

Early Modernists: Go read Shax Quarterly 76.4 RIGHT NOW. Yes, it's a weird format, but the payoff . . . start it too late and you'll be up past your bedtime.

I'm editing a 16th century text, and can I just say this site is saving me over and over right now! For anyone trying to decipher Greek words in early modern books: textcreationpartnership.org/docs/dox/gre...

Alt text version. Thanks for sharing Harry.

One of my favorite conferences, the Kentucky Philological Association, has opened submissions for the 2026 conference! If you're nearby, consider submitting an abstract--it's wonderfully supportive. Goes double if you are a student. www.thekpa.org

Hey, history and medievalist friends. If you're doing any teaching on maps this semester, I have a couple of digital resources you might find useful. #skystorians 🗃️ 1. Matthew Paris's Map A fully annotated & interactive copy of Paris's c.1250 map of England. 1/3 historiacartarum.org/annotated-cl...

Matthew Paris Annotated Map - Historia Cartarum

A fully annotated and clickable version of Matthew Paris's map of Britain. Clicking on any label gives a translation, transcription, and Wikipedia link.

historiacartarum.org

We are delighted to announce the launch of The Guild of Medievalist Makers (GuMM), a community for academic and academic-adjacent practitioners of creative-critical work. Read more about us and the society on our new website: www.guildmedmak.com

The Guild of Medievalist Makers

guildmedmak.com

Ok fellow nerds, which piece of classical music is the most likely to be an earworm for you? Curious because Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave" has been in my head for four days now.

Long shot, but any vintage mystery fans in my followers who want to talk Patricia Wentworth for a minute?

Well, there's another white shirt lost to my underestimating how much tea was left in my mug.

Really interesting discovery at the Newberry Library, where one of their Nahuatl-language manuscripts turns out to have been made using by far the largest known example of a pre-Columbian Mesoamerica paper technology known as maguey paper: www.newberry.org/news/analysi... #paperhistory

Manuscript is Most Extensive Example of Maguey Paper in Existence

A collection of sermons by sixteenth-century Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagún is rare example from the Nahuas.

newberry.org

Weather radar says there is no snow here at the moment. The view out my window says otherwise.

I cannot hit submit on a grant proposal without a sinking feeling of dread that some dreadful mistake lurks in the application. Just me?

I aired my id. And I completely understand why they could not use my original headline: “Your child does not need a comms strategy.” www.npr.org/2024/07/30/n...

The antithesis of the Olympics: Using AI to write a fan letter

In one of Google’s Olympics ads, a dad uses AI tool Gemini to craft a fan letter from his daughter to an Olympian. But it’s the wrong approach to express admiration in a star athlete – and to instill ...

npr.org

Just dropped off a few boxes of doughnuts for our IT department, some of whom have been there since midnight due to the Cloudstrike debacle.

New blog post: In Defense of Embroidery! Embroidery is routinely used in historical fiction to represent women’s oppression. And I ask, why? And what if it weren’t like that? mimicofmodes.com/2024/05/19/i... #FashionHistory #c18th #c19th

In Defense of Embroidery

Embroidery is routinely used in historical fiction to represent women's oppression. And I ask, why? And what if it weren't like that?

mimicofmodes.com

Hey #medievalsky, if you're at ICMS, Manchester press is giving away display copies! #kzoo2024

This is a structural problem. That means we cannot “teaching and learning” workshop our way out of it. We need systemic change and collective action and we can’t have the solution rely on college professors who were not trained for this kind of work.

Revising article on OE Maxims. I use "haters gonna hate" as an example of a contemporary maxim. Editor asked for a citation, which means I now have a whole footnote about Hall v. Swift and the legally indeterminate status of the phrase's origin (do refer to "Shake It Off" later in article also)

I guess my primary comment about this is that it feels that the pandemic ushered in an era in which faculty are supposed to extend endless compassion to students (fine!) but neither the students nor the conditions of academia extend compassion to us. And that is really, really hard.

Katie Lee@resourcefulsqrl.bsky.social · 2y ago

All the "solutions" proposed in this involve more unpaid work from faculty to manage our own feelings about being overstretched. I don't want a training, a coffee group, or a paid external speaker about about compassion fatigue. I want higher pay, admin support, & actual vacation time.

In the last 3 weeks I have been in a total of 7 states and I am tired.

My student presenting at this year's #SigmaTauDelta (English Hon. Soc) conf is a writing minor and pre-vet major. He was very excited to learn that St Louis has one of the world's best zoos and I have been texted several photos of penguins.