Laura Ludtke
@ladyelectric.bsky.social
Light, politics, aesthetics, & gender in the city, w/ hist of sci/tech. Co-host LitSciPod. Canadian in Oxford (ish). Come for the typos, stay for the wit.
Samaritans Report a 40% increase in calls from the Trans Community since April 2025. I telephoned the Samaritans n 1969, in 1971, in 1974, and in 1978 I am still here because of those calls. Call the Samaritans, anytime for free any, from any phone, on 116 123 www.samaritans.org/news/samarit...
Samaritans responds to EHRC guidance after 40% rise in calls following Supreme Court ruling
Samaritans responds to EHRC guidance after 40% rise in calls following Supreme Court ruling
samaritans.org
On the basic issue, the guidance is dangerous and deeply reactionary. It supports the idea that you can't have a single sex service which includes trans people and extends that, needlessly, to toilets.
The news today about the updated EHRC policy is horrific and inhumane. Now we are in a position of having to consider how to support students, colleagues, and friends who must use or access spaces without super loos or all-gender facilities. This policy is bigoted and misogynistic. #notinmyname
Laura Ludtke@ladyelectric.bsky.social · 3mo agoI live in but do not work at Reading and have friends, colleagues, and former students impacted by these inhumane policies. Please share this letter widely and consider how you can support those affected, including calling on the University to meet the demands @drjogrady.bsky.social sets out.
Today @drjogrady.bsky.social wrote to the University of Reading. Trans staff and students are being forced into formal grievances just to find out why policies that affect their daily lives exist. That is not legal compliance. It is institutional opacity. We’re calling on Reading to act.
I live in but do not work at Reading and have friends, colleagues, and former students impacted by these inhumane policies. Please share this letter widely and consider how you can support those affected, including calling on the University to meet the demands @drjogrady.bsky.social sets out.
University and College Union (UCU)@ucu.org.uk · 3mo agoToday @drjogrady.bsky.social wrote to the University of Reading. Trans staff and students are being forced into formal grievances just to find out why policies that affect their daily lives exist. That is not legal compliance. It is institutional opacity. We’re calling on Reading to act.
“Downsizing higher education in the name of corporate efficiency squanders the collective expertise and experience in which immense public resources have been invested. This manufactured crisis, however, is far from inevitable.” Read more: moneyontheleft.org/2025/01/16/u...
UK Universities in Crisis? Time to Transform Higher Ed Finance
by Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson Universities in the UK are in crisis. Job cuts in the sector are reaching ‘cataclysmic’ levels, with an estimated 10,000 already lost and many more at risk. Just da…
moneyontheleft.org
Oh, wow!
Deidre Lynch@drbibliomane.bsky.social · 2y agoToday I learned about the 🇨🇦 artist Sandra Sawatzky and the epic-scaled embroidered tapestry she has created, emulating the Bayeux tapestry, to chronicle the history of fossil fuel extraction. #needlework, #SubversiveStitch www.theblackgoldtapestry.com
Sharing is caring.
Premee Mohamed@premeemohamed.com · 2y agoAnyway, happy Friday everyone! Buy my books (obvs) so I can feed the cat, but also, if you want to read something free about a SEA MONSTRE and a CROTCHETY WIZARD and her UNWANTED APPRENTICE (I mean who doesn't) I have something for you! :D strangehorizons.com/fiction/by-s...
This reads like something out of an AS Byatt novel. www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/p...
‘Hiccoughs’ and ‘Angelica’: Two newly discovered poems by Virginia Woolf
Two poems by Virginia Woolf have resurfaced. I found them tucked in the back of a folder of letters to her niece Angelica Bell in the Harry Ransom Center
the-tls.co.uk
“I regard the report the MLA Executive Council published on Dec 16 to explain their suppression of the BDS resolution…as a betrayal of the professional class whom the MLA claims to serve and represent.” A must-read by @mattseybold.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theameri...
What The MLA Is...
The organization has chosen an interpretation of fiduciary responsibility beyond the wildest hopes of Chicago School economists.
open.substack.com
I don't know who needs to know this, but @archive.org has thousands of knitting & crafting books you can "check out" & sometimes download. E.g., as a machine knitter (amongst other things), I have found an amazing trove of very helpful out-of-print books. 🙏 Check it out! 🧶
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
archive.org
Day 21 without internet at home and it turns out I am not great at rationing my mobile data. Not when things are happening in the world, there are cat and house updates to send, teaching to prepare, scholarly admin to dispatch, and writing/research, etc.
Look, I’ve no doubt Trump wants to play hardball with Canada in trade negotiations and that we’re in for hurt. But the annexation talk is a negotiating tactic, same as him insisting that we have nothing the US needs. It is meant to rattle Canadian leadership, which is in flux right now.
We're pleased to announce a deadline extension for the 'Modernism and Data' Special Issue! The new deadline is January 20th. See below for the CFP: modernistreviewcouk.wordpress.com/2024/09/27/m...
Modernism and Data Special Issue: Call for Papers
27 September 2024 “A New World of Information”: Modernism and Data Modernism has a problem with data. Within adjacent fields—Victorian, Post45, and Black studies—there has been a proliferation of a…
modernistreviewcouk.wordpress.com
how does public health influence the creation of public landscapes? our latest blogpost recaps on the ideas and collections explored during the 2024 Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading (FOLAR) conference, held here in November merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2025/01...
Landscapes of Public Health - The Museum of English Rural Life
Learn how public health impacts the design of public spaces, as explored in the 2024 symposium of FOLAR, held at The MERL.
merl.reading.ac.uk
I won’t have internet at my new place until 24 January and have somehow managed to use 80% of my monthly phone data (renews on the 2nd of each month) on *checks browser history* DIY videos. Send reinforcements.
Just in time for Christmas: news that my essay, “Reading (in) Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear”, published in the May 2024 issue of Novel is one the most-read of the year! Free to access until 31 January!
A companion to our history lists, here's a list of books, chapters, and articles published in 2024 in lit studies by scholars working off the tenure track. Compiled by @rcolesworthy.bsky.social and @hartmann-villalta.bsky.social.
2024 Literary Studies Book and Journal Article List
A companion list for lit studies scholars.
contingentmagazine.org
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! In other words, spending today’s classes doing reverse outlines with students.
For publishers' series, SUNY, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century.
Here's a list of journals, scholarly societies, and book series devoted to 19th-c. Britain. If you're aware of others that should be added, please let me know. www.victorianresearch.org/journals.htm...
VRW: Journal Guide
victorianresearch.org
Since I’ve reached 1K followers over here (quicker than I gathered my curated list of friends, colleagues, and strangers in the other place) I wanted to say a warm hello and welcome. I’m not ignoring you, but am treading lightly on all social platforms to focus on my writing academic projects.
One of our amazing Georgetown English students bringing heat in the New York Times: “to employers in business fields and beyond: if you want employees who excel at thinking, hire a humanities major.” 💜
King Algamemnon@adamrothman.bsky.social · 2y agoTfw a student at your uni writes a letter to the editor defending the humanities. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/o...
Five writers of whom I’ve read 5+ books Ali Smith Virginia Woolf George Orwell Arnold Bennett Sara Ahmed
Minx Marple@minxmarple.bsky.social · 2y agoFive writers of whom I’ve read 5+ books Roland Barthes Roberto Calasso Gabrielle Wittkop Anne Carson Lavinia Greenlaw
How are you all archiving and closing out your accounts at the other place?
