Kristie Patricia Flannery

@thehistoriann.bsky.social

Historian of the global Spanish empire living and working on Wurundjeri country. Author of Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World (2024).

If you're a writer that's currently thinking "What am I doing with my life? How did I get here?" just know that Peter Benchley partly wrote the novel JAWS in a converted chicken coop at his in-laws' house.

“Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.” — A. Whitney Griswold

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Folds: If we’ve been told our whole lives that we can’t spend money on the arts because they’re not important—then why was taking over the Kennedy Center and the arts the first thing they did? It is extremely important. It’s the bedrock of self-expression.

“Eliminating federal funding for the humanities saves next to no money, but it will cost … something precious: one of the few federal institutions whose whole purpose is to foster community and thoughtful discussion across the polarities that increasingly divide … us” www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/o...

Opinion | Why DOGE Slashed the National Endowment for the Humanities

Eliminating federal funding for the humanities saves next to no money, but it will cost the American people something precious.

nytimes.com

In 2022, historian Dr Kristie Flannery @thehistoriann.bsky.social received a Humanities Travelling Fellowship to access rare documents in Spain and the Philippines. Her research considers the influence of slavery, and the wider Spanish empire, on the Asia-Pacific region today: bit.ly/4kSyRN7

Slavery in the Philippines may have influenced Australian history

Slavery and practices of unfree labour changed the political economy and culture of the Philippines—and may have influenced Australia.

bit.ly