James Kennaway
@jgkennaway.bsky.social
Historian of medicine etc. at the University of Groningen.
My monograph “Only a Scratch”: British Military Surgery and the Romance of Pain, 1750–1914" has gone into production with Cambridge University Press. It looks at the cult of heroic fortitude in surgery and at the related racial theories about what sort of person could "take it."
Am teaching a course on Pain & the humanities this yr, and I can't stop thinking about this 1950 experiment conducted in New York hospitals and Cornell University hospital, where physicians burned the hands of women in labor (IN LABOR) to create a measure for pain/study pain thresholds. #histmed
I want to throw up now
Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 5mo agoAm teaching a course on Pain & the humanities this yr, and I can't stop thinking about this 1950 experiment conducted in New York hospitals and Cornell University hospital, where physicians burned the hands of women in labor (IN LABOR) to create a measure for pain/study pain thresholds. #histmed
I've got a chapter in this: www.campus.de/buecher-camp.... I wrote about the history of the idea of music as a form of programming for the psyche.
Die Macht des Psychotechnischen, ein Buch von Bernd Bösel, Julia Weber - Campus Verlag
Bernd Bösel, Julia Weber: Die Macht des Psychotechnischen - Band I Zur Erschließung eines transdiziplinären Forschungsfeldes
campus.de
I'll be talking about "mind control" in Aachen next week. khk.rwth-aachen.de/event/worksh...
Workshop “Cultures of Credence: Mind Control and Other Fringe Epistemologies”
khk.rwth-aachen.de
Post-doc position in Boundaries of Drinking project: 2 years, full time, research only. Closing date 1 September 2025. #academicjobs iaepan.edu.pl/konkurs-na-s...
Wellcome-funded 'Between Deception and Dissent' project is recruiting a postdoc working at the interface of medical STS and socio-legal studies, supervised by Martyn Pickersgill @ Edinburgh #STS www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNY639/r...
The diary of 'Lady Hillingham' c. 1912, no location given, cited by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy in The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny 1972, which is (almost) entirely responsible for the 'close your eyes and think of England' line, though I did discover an earlier, 1940s, example.
Victorian sex factoids
lesleyahall.net
Some books are here for only a short time after which they outlive their usefulness. Sadly, there are no copies of How To Deprogram Your Valley Girl on MARINet or LINK+, so future generations may be doomed to repeat history. Fortunately, there are over 6.5 million other items to choose from.
Excited to share the *incredible* cover for the Church Committee Report! The first version of the 1975 report on illegal surveillance & the national security state ever published by a mainstream press. Abridged/introduced by @brianhochman.bsky.social and I. Published by W.W. Norton January 2026.
The first time I ever heard the Beach Boys as an adult, was on Hugh Grant's Desert Island Discs. Took me about twenty seconds before I started crying. Listen out for the recorders. And the cut-out to the brothers singing on their own. www.youtube.com/watch?v=71LU...
Sloop John B (Mono)
YouTube video by The Beach Boys - Topic
youtube.com
This is a tale of how the search for the death ray led to something less deadly, but equally useful. In the 1930s, the air minister offered £1,000 to the inventor, "‘who could demonstrate the killing of a sheep at a range of 100 yards" using radio waves. 🧵
Dans l’Europe des Lumières, Mary Ann Davies, 9 ans à peine, fait sensation. Ce n’est pas seulement son talent qui intrigue, mais aussi l’instrument étrange qu’elle fait "chanter" : un harmonica de verre inventé par… Benjamin Franklin. ➡️ https://l.franceculture.fr/xSd
I wrote this the day before the Unbound thing broke and we found out they’d taken our money. Now it seems to be about that too.
Joel Morris@gralefrit.bsky.social · last yr.How the tech capitalists treat us like saloon sex robots. I’ve made the connection, now I can’t unsee it. joelmorris.substack.com/p/are-we-the...
How the tech capitalists treat us like saloon sex robots. I’ve made the connection, now I can’t unsee it. joelmorris.substack.com/p/are-we-the...
Who am I to say no to taxidermied deer heads formerly owned by David Lynch? www.juliensauctions.com/en/auctions/...
The David Lynch Collection
A rare look behind the red curtain of one of the most influential artists of our time: Julien’s & TCM Presents: The David Lynch Collection. Almost...
juliensauctions.com
This has *never* been the way successful technology develops. Not at the beginning of the nineteenth-century technological revolution, and not now. I’m currently developing a book pitch on this …..
Bill Kristol@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · last yr.By the way: Is it true the key to tech success has been to “move fast and break things?” My sense is that’s not the way Google et al work; rather, they spend lots on R&D and are persistent in the face of setbacks. And successful start ups I know today are nimble and adaptive—but not reckless.
sshm.org/notices/ Vacancy: Social History of Medicine journal is seeking a Co-Editor. Please consider applying!
Notices
Vacancy: Co-Editor for Social History of Medicine Social History of Medicine (SHM) seeks a new co-editor to join Dr Elma Brenner (co-editor), Professor Flurin Condrau (co-editor), Dr Janet Greenlee…
sshm.org
🚨 New on Substack, this fine guest post by @benaustwick.bsky.social on the Amsterdam School: Expressionism and Experimentation ... municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-amster...
The Amsterdam School: Expressionism and Experimentation
Municipal Dreams travels abroad for the first time this week, thanks to this fascinating account by Ben Austwick of pioneering social housing in Amsterdam.
municipaldreams.substack.com
A post-it on which someone wrote "Say no to generative AI art. Buy art from real degenerates."
Fletchgod Apocalypse@michaelrfletcher.bsky.social · last yr.
“This debt …should be at the forefront of our minds this Memorial Day….We are being asked not to charge into a hail of …artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats.” Historian and former Harvard president Drew Faust. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/26/o...
Opinion | We Are Not Being Asked to Run Into Cannon Fire. We Just Need to Speak Up.
nytimes.com
"Electronic Concert Not Very Amusing" -Boston Globe, February 27 1966
CFP: Masculinities, Militaries, and Mass Violence in Transition https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-153382 Potsdam, 22.01.2026-23.01.2026, Prof. Isabelle Deflers / PD Dr. Anke Fischer-Kattner, University of the Bundeswehr Munich; Prof. Christa Hämmerle, University of Vienna; Prof. Karen …
hsozkult.de
Wound Nationalism: ‘Culture Wars’ and the Politics of ‘The People’ - text of Prof. Joanna Bourke's Alan Graham Memorial Lecture, Trinity Coll., Dublin, 25/04/2025 #skystorians 🗃️#politics www.joannabourke.com/post/wound-n...
Wound Nationalism: ‘Culture Wars’ and the Politics of ‘The People’
(This is the spoken version of the Alan Graham Memorial Lecture, that I gave at the conference ‘We The People’, Irish Association for American Studies, Trinity College Dublin, 25 April 2025. It is not...
joannabourke.com
Congratulations to Leendert van der Miesen on the publication of his new book "Marin Mersenne and the Study of Harmony: From Sound to Music"! www.aup.nl/en/book/9789... It is the 7th volume to be published in the @amsterdamupress.bsky.social book series Scientiae Studies, www.aup.nl/en/series/sc...
