Ruth Scobie
@ruthscobie.bsky.social
Mostly eighteenth-century; she/her. Writing a book: NOVELS AND THE RISE OF CELEBRITY, which is not about the rise of the novel
Whole thread of Benjamin Zephaniah poems for #NationalPoetryDay
Jane@localnotail.bsky.social · 2y ago"We Refugees" by Benjamin Zephaniah We can all be refugees Sometimes it only takes a day Sometimes it only takes a handshake Or a paper that is signed ... We can all be refugees Nobody is safe All it takes is a mad leader Or no rain to bring forth food
I heard an astrophysicist say this about astroparticle physics on Saturday night! (yes it was pretty much the only bit of his lecture I could follow, no that's not the point)
Joseph Rezek@rezekjoe.bsky.social · 4w agoMathematicians out here saying it is not the proof that matters, but the human understanding of the proof. We are all humanists now.
This is a WILD essay by the brilliant Felicity James on writing and reading essays in the age of AI
The Wild Essay, Or, the Essayist responds to the University Policy on Generative Artificial Intelligence in Learning, Teaching and Assessment
This is a guide to the essay in the age of AI, when we need it more than ever. How should we encourage our students to read when co-pilot is on hand to read for them? Beset on all sides by summary ...
tandfonline.com
This week, a wildfire has torn through Dunwich Heath in Suffolk, leaving the entire nature reserve devastated. An area of around 210 football pitches has been affected with rare habitats and wildlife lost in a matter of hours.
The sword dangling over my head had lowered a touch over night. Still not close enough that I was freaking out but I could sense its movement.
My Gran, 100 years old today: first in her family to go to university, tennis sensation, this afternoon queen of an enormous noisy family tea party 🥳
Had a chance at my day job to climb the scaffolding round the Radcliffe Observatory Tower. A treat for lovers of 1790s Coade stone and dusty Oxford vistas
our jimmy was telling us a story about when he used to work for waterstones Aberdeen
Am I getting a migraine or is the AI-powered BL playbills database lightly deranged
Btw, despite it being wildly unclear if any Robinson debate is still going ahead, there's still an anti-fascist demonstration planned for next Wednesday (17th) at the Oxford Union - the local Raise the Colours flag-fetishists are gathering, so we need people out there
At the London-Paris Romanticism seminar on May 8th with Tim Heimlich, discussing our new books on Wales and Empire in the Romantic era (the 'Wales Novel', Cook's voyages, Welsh settler colonialism, Celtic racialization, etc.) Would love to see some of you there! londonparisromantic.com?p=5165
Haunted by a slide from the online Health & Safety training I did last week, that just declared, a propos of very little and with no follow up: PEOPLE ARE NOT NATURALLY COMPLIANT
TIL that JM Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, PG Wodehouse, Jerome K Jerome and AA Milne were all in the same dubiously named cricket team, and they were famously rubbish en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allahak...
Allahakbarries - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
OK but there is at least a case to be made that Pride and Prejudice is totally set during the French Revolution?
David H. Montgomery@dhmontgomery.com · 10mo ago5/ But I didn't just poll about Les Mis! For context (and curiosity), I also asked Americans about 23 other books that might plausibly be set in the French Revolution, or in the Civil War or WWII. Les Mis aside, people who've read those books generally did pretty well, despite me being tricksy:
![A split bar chart of YouGov polling data with the headline: "Do Americans know when historical fiction novels were set? What about people who've read those books?."
The chart has the sub-headline: "As far as you know, are the following books set during [World War II / the American Civil War/ The French Revolution]? (% of those saying "yes" or "no" who say "yes")Books that are actually set in each time period are in bold.."
The chart has the note: "Note: Responses of "not sure" are not counted in the results shown. Responses of "no" are not shown."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3pbwguskoq5efzi67w3npq2z/bafkreigjifu2qilon2ztn2nnanvhwgbvetkp4ukn6dhlylftxcnryxpx7e)
Tom Stoppard spoke at an event I worked a decade ago. He insisted on being introduced to all the event staff, even the lanyard-wearing admins like me, and repeated everyone's names back to them while looking into their eyes. Most charming person I've ever met and it's not even close
So delighted that this long-gestated brain child is now out and in the real world. I'll be talking about it at the English Faculty in Cambridge, @cam.ac.uk on Thursday of next week at 5pm. Do please come along if you're in town!
Today is the OFFICIAL publication day for TEXTILE SHAKESPEARE! Please indulge me: I want to say a little (perhaps rather a lot) about it and share my acknowledgements - and a discount code! Appropriately,🧵1/10
Lots of things in the British Museum were stolen and should be returned! Lots of things weren't! Uncritically repeating 'Everything in the British Museum is stolen' reinforces the imperialist narrative that only the British had agency over a passive monolithic Other! Hope this helps
Of course they had to cover up what happened to all the children at Lowood School. They didn't want panic to spread
Slippy@damnslippy.slippy.me · 12mo ago“My name is Jane Eyre. I am 10 years old, and I live with my aunt Mrs. Reed. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.” Yeah, that works.
The general reader can improve their experience of most nineteenth-century novels by assuming that the Angel in the House character is secretly murderous. Jane Eyre (obvs). Esther Summerson. Fanny Price slipping cyanide into the clear soup. JANE FAIRFAX
Rachel Feder@rachelfeder.bsky.social · 12mo agoTell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat
If you are a supporter and reader of @contingent-mag.bsky.social one of the biggest things you can do to help us at the moment is get this CFP to the NTT folks in your life. The fracturing of social media has made it very difficult to get the word out esp. to adjuncts and VAPs.
CFP: A Time of Monsters
The monster has been here all along. It is a historical constant that manifests in wildly different ways across time, place, and culture. Whatever form it takes, the monster claws at categories; it un...
contingentmagazine.org
Mine was an (otherwise unobjectionable) novel set in the nineteenth century in which a professor called a boring task "like folding laundry". 1) Nineteenth-century profs did not do laundry 2) only people with modern washer-driers think *folding* is the worst bit of laundry
Joanne Harris@joannechocolat.bsky.social · last yr.And don't tell yourself: "It's a story. The small details don't really matter." They do. I once read a historical novel set in Victorian London (written, I think, by an American author), in which the detective protagonist presses a 50-pence piece into a grimy urchin's hand. I think about this a lot.
Look at this cat I'm catsitting, he looks like Percy Bysshe Shelley
