just a peaceful day writing (anxiously slamming reload on Michigan primary results)

Delighted to put together this curated collection for French Historical Studies, enhancing our recent INCARCERATION special issue with these fantastic articles from the archive – all deal with issues of race and the carceral in French history @sfhs.bsky.social 🗃️ @hfrancewebsite.bsky.social

The latest HLQ is here, with articles in art history, literature, disability studies, and the blue humanities. There are pastors, captives, painters, healers, actors, sailors, poets, liars, polar bears, and parrots. It's big-tent #earlymodern studies, and it's #nuntastic. muse.jhu.edu/issue/57325

Article proofs: without books, had to text a friend to ask on what page of her book she says "seepages." I'd already googled her name and the word, and got only an article in which I use the word and cite her on another less oozy topic.

Re- upping my What Are You Reading? to recommend Mathelinda Nabugodi’s Shelley with Benjamin - my personal favourite of the BARS 1st Book Prize Books - smart, funny, personal, political

Shelley with Benjamin

*Yet what surprises me most of all at this time is that what I have written consists, as it were, almost entirely of quotations. – Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. – ...

uclpress.co.uk

Dr Andrew McInnes@drbeard79.bsky.social · 2d ago

It was super fun to be interviewed by @ksaacomm.bsky.social for ‘What Are You Reading?’ - I got to talk about being on the panel for the @bars.bsky.social First Book Prize as well as shout outs to @zugenia.bsky.social & @nathankhensley.bsky.social PLUS my undying love for Lee Child’s Reacher books

Good editorial from the FT saying our new PM must take a strategic approach to universities www.ft.com/content/1419...

It seems that when I'm up here in the hot hills I end up reading econarratives expressing anxiety about change, who knows why: let me recommend the latest, Pauline Peyrade, Les Habitantes (Minuit 2026): a really careful narration of many forms of life and also a human plot woven in -

Great to see Osterley House, National Trust engage again with the long legacy of the East India Company and its material cultures in Hounslow. Exciting to see another exhibition on this theme: Journeys: Wedding Shawls, Baghs and Phulkaris from the Karun Thakar Collection, open until 1 November. 1/4

Karun Thakar brings British Asians into Osterley House with National Trust exhibition

Exhibition of shawls invites visitors to rediscover estate's India links

easterneye.biz

No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...

Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation

PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...

theonion.com

Philosophers, spread the word! The next Special Issue of The Philosophical Quarterly will be 'Philosophy and Climate Change' - Guest Editor Stephen Gardiner, call for papers here: academic.oup.com/pq/pages/cal...

‘The 𝘚𝘤𝘰𝘵𝘴 𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘪𝘳 novels have history in their very bones, as land, skies, seasons, peewits drop away in the modern city with its modern ways of doing things, from fields to factories, “near-slavery” to wage slavery.’ Jenny Turner on Lewis Grassic Gibbon. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Jenny Turner · Hated and Loved in a Breath: On Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Gibbon’s new and self-created version of the modernist sentence mixes Scots and English to resemble ‘a meandering,...

lrb.co.uk

I see there’s a fuss about the AAUP endorsing Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Dem primary, a first for them: as someone who taught him in my first year as assistant professor, his freshman year, I’d also endorse him, but hope Michiganders will find their own reasons to support this amazing candidate

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

"c'est pas que je m'en fiche, c'est que je suis...fainéante" I just heard myself saying out loud. Re window cleaning, but really could be so many, many things.

It's depressing that this moved me so much, but did. First time I've heard a politician praise a group of immigrants, without caveat, for a long while.

Farrukh@implausibleblog.bsky.social · last wk.

Andy Burnham, "To me, carers should be the best paid people in society, not the worst" "Many people from other countries have been caring for my dad" Andy Burnham praises migrants to the UK who care for our elderly, a stark contrast to Keir-island-of-strangers-Starmer

Just out: Giulio Pertile shows how early modern poetry about the creation of the world reconceptualized human creation as well. It's an insighful look at the relation between religion and poetics, with particular attention to human's impact on the planet. And it has a fabulous cover!

The Prime Minister of Spain: “This climate emergency is exceeding every threshold and scale that scientists have long warned all of Spain and Europe about.” This is the realistic climate discourse the world needs. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/w...

Man Crying: NOOOOOOOO!!!

ALT: Man Crying: NOOOOOOOO!!!

static.klipy.com

France Culture@franceculture.fr · last wk.

Trois pulvérisations, un repas associé, et le DEET, le répulsif le plus utilisé au monde, cesse d’effrayer : les chercheurs observent un comportement digne d’un apprentissage pavlovien chez les moustiques. ➡️ https://l.franceculture.fr/1XX

Incendies : « Ce qui brûle aujourd’hui n’est pas seulement une forêt mais une manière d’habiter le territoire qui n’est plus possible »

Incendies : « Ce qui brûle aujourd’hui n’est pas seulement une forêt mais une manière d’habiter le territoire qui n’est plus possible »

La philosophe Cynthia Fleury et le maire (PS) de Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, Stéphane Delpeyrat-Vincent, estiment, dans une tribune au « Monde », que face aux feux hors normes qui s’abattent sur la France et à la crise climatique, la préparation pourrait devenir plus qu’une adaptation technique, mais un acte de démocratie.

lemonde.fr

Applications open: Camargo Fellowship for artists, scholars and thinkers, Cassis, France camargofoundation.org/en/residenci...

As of late this afternoon in the Cévennes we can smell the smoke from the Gironde, 500km away. We had a message from the mairie telling us that’s what it is, “pour vous rassurer.” Put me down as unreassured.

It's true! Working with brilliant thinkers and writers like @electrostani.bsky.social is the best part of my job. ✨ If you're on sabbatical this fall, consider partnering with a developmental editor (like me :)). I'd love to talk with you about how I can help you move your project forward.

Amardeep Singh@electrostani.bsky.social · 2w ago

I do want to give a special shout-out to @halperta.bsky.social who worked with me as a developmental editor. Hannah's feedback and conversation were key in helping me figure out what this book should be *about*. If you're working on a book, consider working with Hannah! halperta.com/categories/m...

Look what arrived! I just dived in, but 🔥!! "Attempting to understand the history of the French Empire primarily from an institutional perspective distorts how empires actually functioned in the early modern world." 👏 Very readable, so ambitious, and brilliant! @brettrushforth.bsky.social

Give the riverains their rive! www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Almost 75% of England’s riverbanks ‘off limits’ to public, figures show

Campaigners urge government to introduce right of access to water, particularly as heatwaves become more common

theguardian.com

It is the writing promotion letters part of the summer, and oof, some places are so, so punitively chary with their promotions. (Comment on the candidate's record on equalities? I'll comment on YOURS, mate)

✨ KCL is offering a fully-funded MPhil/PhD in French via the Sévigné Scholarship 🖋️. Details here: www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgr...

French Research | King's College London

MPhil/PhD Research in French at King's College London.

kcl.ac.uk

Died (alas!) on this day in 1601, in Vienna, Joris Hoefnagel. Originally from Antwerp. Draftsman, miniaturist, designer. Here, from his Four Elements of 1570s, some very fine owls. They fly at night.

Please share! A rare PhD studentship @kingshistory.bsky.social *fully* funded by @slaveryinwar.bsky.social to work with myself and Maeve Ryan, supported by a broader community of experts in Caribbean history, transatlantic slavery, and the history of war. www.kcl.ac.uk/study/fundin... 🗃️

AHRC Studentship: Slavery and the Seven Years’ War within and across the Caribbean Archipelago | King's College London

The Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War (CRSW) is pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded AHRC doctoral studentship, to be jointly supervised across History and War Studies

kcl.ac.uk

Jo White is seriously bad news for anyone who cares about justice in migration. Her views are very right-wing communitarian, makes Mahmood look liberal. Pretty clear now that the Burnham government will be significantly worse than Starmer for immigrants.

Colin Yeo@colinyeo.bsky.social · 2w ago

Sounds like it is Anna Turley as Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum and Jo White as Minister for Migration and Citizenship. Turley was formerly chair of the Labour Party. White was chair of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs.

The Airline coach service from Oxford to Heathrow and Gatwick is to be sped up, in a timetable rewrite which its operators attribute to the city’s congestion charge reducing traffic. 13 new coaches are entering service this year with laptop trays, USB charging points and aeroplane-like map displays.