PSA to prospective PhD students: Don't use LLMs to write e-mails to faculty you want to work with (or if you do, you better have done a good job making it not-obvious that you used an LLM).

For all of you who work on the best kind of history (Early Modern East Asia), there's a tenure-track job at Brown this year: apply.interfolio.com/190380

One more fun bit that appears repeatedly in Qing interrogations of Russian border crossers is that they're always asked what people in Russia are saying about the "return of the Torghuts," to which the answer is always "nobody's talking about that"

David Porter@dcporter.bsky.social · 4d ago

Other fun conversations from Qing talking to Russians crossing the frontier: "we heard that previously your woman khan led troops against her husband. Do you know if that's true?"

Realized I slightly misread what was happening while reading in the archives - it's not that their noses would get cut, but that their noses are already sliced and the Qing suspects they're guilty of a more serious crime and won't believe Russia cut their noses over some nonsense about # of fingers

David Porter@dcporter.bsky.social · 4d ago

Qing officials ask for some more explanation - they say, well we hold up two fingers to do our prostration and the Russian state wants us to use three and they'll cut our nose off if they find out we're still secretly using two

Other fun conversations from Qing talking to Russians crossing the frontier: "we heard that previously your woman khan led troops against her husband. Do you know if that's true?"

David Porter@dcporter.bsky.social · 4d ago

Archive amusement of the day - family of Old Believers has left Russia for the Qing empire, supposedly because they think they'll be able to live in peace/practice freely there

Archive amusement of the day - family of Old Believers has left Russia for the Qing empire, supposedly because they think they'll be able to live in peace/practice freely there

And China. Not having democracy isn't an escape from this phenomenon

Calliope@calliope5431.bsky.social · last wk.

More to the point, this is happening in *non-white* countries as well: Japan, Turkey, and India have huge far-right nativist blocs. So it's not merely white supremacy or nostalgia for the days when the West ruled. Nor is it happening purely in developed post-material countries.

Some academics seem to be committed to proving that conservative enemies of academia are entirely right about it. I still think they aren't and that most scholars just want to ignore this shit to stay out of trouble, but that there are professional academics defending obvious plagiarism is shocking

Alan Lester@alanlester.bsky.social · last wk.

Disgusted with @thetimes for presenting this non-story. If it has to be covered at all it should be framed as Discredited Racist Smears Black Cambridge Professor in Sustained Campaign to Undermine Him. Arday quoted & cited sources appropriately. www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

If you think there are lots of white academics with extensive plagiarism in their work (there may well be!), then identify it so that they can be subject to appropriate criticism. But this is the lamest possible defense of what Arday did, which no honest academic would consider acceptable

Robert Chapman@drrobertchapman.bsky.social · 2w ago

The right wing press is attacking Jason Arday, afaik britain's only Black autistic professor, for plagiarism in his PhD. There is evidence of copying passages which should be corrected; but I think this is very common, its just that nobody notices or complains if you're white. Solidarity with Jason.

Had a very fun conversation with the Chaguan writer, who I think did a quite good job with the article. It's funny to see a long discussion reduced down to a single brief quote, though I think I was helpful to the piece in other ways - like alerting him to the Qing history project fiasco.

Kevin Kind@kwkind.bsky.social · 2w ago

Cool to see @dcporter.bsky.social quote in this piece.

There's also the fact that PhD students have to learn enough to be able to do the work. Even in the UK's system with no coursework, most PhD students need to spend a lot of time reading past scholarship, learning or improving various kinds of methods/technical skills, etc

Will Lowe@conjugateprior.org · 2w ago

The work for a PhD can often be done in 18 months. Unfortunately those 18 months are not usually spread over 18 months.

With Chris Atwood in charge of AAS and Tobie Meyer-Fong in charge of the AHA, I feel in great proximity to (minor, mostly ceremonial) power. I'm just going to take this as everyone recognizing the exceptional merits of my field (in the form of two of its most deserving and distinguished members)!

Kelly Hammond@kellyahammond.bsky.social · 3w ago

Congrats to Tobie Meyer-Fong, who just got elected to be the new President of the American Historical Association. She's a bad-ass Qing historian, and I'm proud to know her! www.historians.org/perspectives...

I'm heading to Beijing from Jul 23 to Aug 2 for some archival research. If we're mutuals (or I otherwise know you/you're in my field) and you'll be around+interested in meeting up, get in touch!

Not to question the fact that the pre-modern is often marginalized in History departments, but this particular claim isn't true. The Baxter prize alternates every year between pre-modern (any time before 1815, including 1000-1500) and modern, post-1815 www.historians.org/award-grant/...

Herbert Baxter Adams Prize in European History – AHA

The AHA offers the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize annually for a distinguished book published in English in the field of European history.

historians.org

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 3w ago

I was looking at the AHA's book prizes, and if you work on Europe between 1000 and 1500, you're SoL. What's especially fascinating is that British History starts in 1485 and European Cultural History starts in 1500.

I agree entirely that whatever led to Greenidge's prize being rescinded/returned (note that when Charles Armstrong lost his Fairbank Prize, it was framed as him "returning" it because, the AHA claimed, "there is no established procedure" to rescind a prize) needs to be explained.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 3w ago

The best course would be a clear explanation of why the AHA decided to rescind the prize and why Greenidge no longer works at Tufts. This case has massive stakes beyond the particulars at a moment when the Right is aggressively trying to shut down critical humanistic scholarship & teaching.

It’s important to remember that the vast majority of humanistic / historical scholarship is done to a high scholarly standard and is just as legitimate as STEM scholarship in so far as it has been peer reviewed. There is no general crisis of low standards in historical or humanistic scholarship. 🗃️

Yeah, if it's something from the Glenn review, it's that the letters (or maybe the diary quotation) that Glenn said didn't exist in the cited locations actually didn't exist at all. No university is firing a tenured prof because their citations were sloppy (nor is the AHA rescinding a book prize)

Anthony Michael Kreis@anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 4w ago

“But Glenn asserted in her review that the University of Michigan did not possess the letters in its archive, despite the book’s claims that they were kept there.” My gut says this thread got pulled and caused her problems. Otherwise, we’re just talking about sloppy work and not sanctionsble work.

Now that funding is confirmed, Montrealers can look forward to a 7 part talk series I'm putting together for the upcoming (2026-2027) academic year on "Frontiers of Late Imperial China"

the IC is a dirtbag campist stain on the DSA, and while the org has taken laudable steps to diminish their influence in recent years, their clique seems to retain enough influence that the DSA can't find it in themselves to give them the full underbussing it deserves.

It's in political effect a very minor addition to the cycle, but four members of the Court endorsing Wurman's position turns him into a superstar of the legal academy - he's the guy who turned an absurd racist conspiracy into a mainstream legal position held by four justices

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · last mo.

The way the law works right now is that the insane, authoritarian president demands massive increases to his power, his simpering enablers in the legal academy manufacture arguments supporting him, and then the Supreme Court adopts them as law, claiming scholarly legal debate exists on the matter.

Saddened to hear of the passing of the Sinologist Victor Mair, a linguistic genius the likes our field will not see again for a long time. I first got to know him via his incredible blog, Language Log, fresh out of college and was beyond-the-moon happy when he reposted my writing there, but

Edward w@edwardw2.bsky.social · last mo.

just heard on twitter that Victor Mair, the sinologist has died. x.com/AndrewSethMe...

China, a place where "the average man has better access to stable female partners"? A disturbed misogynist, and a pretty poorly informed one at that

Tom McKay@catturd2.bsky.social · last mo.

it's not exactly surprising that michael tracey read an incel mass shooter's manifesto against sluts and thought "wow, this guy has some good ideas!"

Great new article by Xue Zhang in Late Imperial China getting at the actual role played by low-mid ranking "secretaries" 中書 in the Qing Grand Secretariat 內閣 - really helpful for understanding how the Qing central administration actually functioned and the career paths of men who worked in it

I am proud to share the website my students and I collaborated on this term showcasing UCLA's Ainu-related collections! ✨ Together we researched holdings of the library, Special Collections, and Fowler Museum to document and enhance catalog information on their materials. peopleofthenorth.github.io

It's pretty far from my area of expertise, but the evidence presented here seems damning and though I've seen defenders of Slobodian assert that Magness has stripped context that would vindicate Slobodian's characterizations, I've yet to see any of them actually supply that context

Ben Golub@bengolub.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It seems this news hasn't reached this platform yet, but Phil Magness has some striking notes on how @quinnslobodian.com quotes sources, which I'll simply reproduce here 1/

MIT closing three of its four libraries is shocking and appalling and underscores that the source of so much of the crisis in higher education comes not from attacks from the far right or the collapse of public trust, but rather from the university administrative class itself.

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“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...

I'm 38 and there have always been lots of Davids my age so I think this is off by a decade

Andrew Elder@awelder.bsky.social · 3mo ago

My daughter said there are no Davids under 45 and I haven't found any counter to that yet

The really scary thing is that if other sub-fields are anything like mine, 2025-2026 is going to look even more dire

American Historical Association@historians.org · 3mo ago

The AHA’s report on academic hiring in history for the 2024–25 cycle is now available. Read more in #AHAPerspectives.

Guess nobody told any of the Qing emperors... (but seriously, this is the quality of analysis of Chinese politics being produced by the Council on Foreign Relations and laundered as fact by the New York Times???)

Reading a fiction book rn which is *so* obnoxiously didactic bc the author is *so* anxious you might draw the wrong political conclusion that it's making me anti-woke. Catch me on the Tim pool podcast