okay it’s the first of August, teaching finished a week ago, I have stuff to do and a semester to recover from — going to try my very best to rest, read, think, write, move and stay off here until September ✨
Sarah Pyke
@sarahpyke.bsky.social
teaching children's and YA literature at the University of Münster london.ac.uk/seized-books | #QueerBibliography researching and writing various things close reading forever
really want to know how much of the Amnesty UK retraction is to do with the actual briefing and how much to do with internal Amnesty politics and the wider structure (policy-setting secretariat versus rich national section)
on Wednesday I wrapped up the fifteenth week of teaching this semester, yesterday I took a very long train ride to a small French town, bonnes vacances à tous
Our second piece is out! A reflection by @jenniegouck.bsky.social & me on the online conference we organised in Feb, Thinking of the Children: Book Bans, Censorship and Literature for Young People (belated, huge thanks to our presenters & 370+ registered participants!) muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
![Screenshot from a short article. The first part reads:
Won't Somebody Think of the Children?
by JENNIFER GOUCK and SARAH PYKE
In January 2025, just four days into the new Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced that they had ended the so-called “book ban hoax.” Eleven pending civil rights complaints related to book bans in public schools were dismissed and the position of book ban coordinator—a role created by the Biden administration to address intellectual freedom violations in schools and federally funded institutions—was eliminated.
But book banning is not a hoax. It’s all too real. As writer and activist Kelly Jensen reminds us:
The young people [in the United
States] who will be entering college in the 2026–2027 school year were in the eighth grade when book banning began its latest national increase. For young people in some states…, this means they’ve never had access to a wide swath of books on topics like racism, gender, puberty, or sexuality that their peers in other states have.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:74rl7nhl643l4expcziiheax/bafkreihi4nfheuuthu7e4xx4cavoawjsulcg3vtdgzetx3xwwg4mx7eq7q)
Do I know anyone who has submitted a DFG Network bid (successfully or otherwise) and who would be willing to share materials?
We’re delighted to announce that Professor Leah Price has been appointed to the Professorship of Bibliography and Modern Book History.
Professor Leah Price appointed as Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History
english.web.ox.ac.uk
It’s so awkward for knowledge workers, to be corralled into the undignified and crucial position of being like “but have you considered UNknowing”
祖思薪 Eugenia Zuroski@zugenia.bsky.social · 2w ago“AI” is just the latest fascist attempt to eliminate the unknown
adjacent follow-up question: do YOU know (or are you part of), a DFG Network that is doing great things? drop the link below please!!
Sarah Pyke@sarahpyke.bsky.social · 2w agoDo I know anyone who has submitted a DFG Network bid (successfully or otherwise) and who would be willing to share materials?
Obsessed with these early modern memento mori woodcuts specifically for printers. Leave setting thy page, spent is thine age! 💀
Do I know anyone who has submitted a DFG Network bid (successfully or otherwise) and who would be willing to share materials?
I have quite a good L7-related story if anyone wants to hear it. In the early '90s my Brazilian friend and I were pulled over by police on the road between São Paulo and Rio, and made to follow them down a dirt track to a hut where, according to my friend, we would be bribed, killed and worse 1/4
Best or favourite end-of-semester reflection questions for students? I don't have input into the mandatory standard evaluations but I can ask my own... ...most memorable aspect of the class? ...favourite reading? ...one thing they'll take forward in their own practice?
holiday reading: 🔘M. John Harrison, The End of Everything 🔘Gwendoline Riley, The Palm House 🔘Both 🔘Other
at the bottom of the nest with the gum out of the tree to keep them from being blown out by the wind which often turns them upside-down without injury
1825: Went today to see Artis found him busy over his antiquitys & Fossils he told me a curious thing about the manner in which the Golden crested wren builds her nest he says it is the only english bird that suspends its nest which it hangs on three twigs of the fir branch & it glews the eggs...
MENTALITY HOW CAN YOU ASK ABOUT MENTALITY THIS IS PURE MENTALITY
“Absolutely brilliant performance. Not football-wise. But just spirit”
📯
Digital Scholarship @ British Library@bldigischol.bsky.social · 4w agoEThOS platform restored! 'Following restoration work, all metadata records previously available on EThOS have now been restored, along with an additional 14,000 records added since the service was taken offline' - more to come www.bl.uk/stories/news...
opportunity, came-out in a short gleam of sunshine just before an heavy shower, between 9 & 4 in the afternoon, & settled on the balm of Gilead-fir. When an hive was fixed over them they went into it of themselves.
1777: Dark & cold, rain, rain, rain, gleams of sun, vast clouds. Stopped down the vines. Bees cluster round the mouth of one hive, but cannot swarm. Bees must be starved soon, having no weather fit for gathering honey no sun, or dry days. A swarm of bees, which had waited many days for an...
LOL at Lydgate claiming the founder of Cambridge was some dude named Cantabro