@irinadumitrescu
Writer and professor of medieval literature. I'm a columnist at the TLS, sometimes co-host a podcast with Mary Wellesley at the LRB, and am one of the editors of @creativecritical.bsky.social. irinadumitrescu.com
BREAKING: @EuropeanSlpr's new sleeper train from Brussels & Cologne to Zurich, Como & Milan will start 9 September. Tickets go on sale from 17 March with couchettes from €49.99, single/double/triple sleepers also available. 🥳 Press release: mcusercontent.com/5ffbd133c9ab...
Here is Geoffrey Brererton's bio from the Seventeenth-Century Newsletter
Some books are so well done you wish you'd written them yourself. Next best thing is blurbing them!
This is a very smart and thoughtful book, readable and interesting for a scholar who isn't already waist deep in the sources.
Amazing bio of the translator of the Penguin edition of Froissart's Chronicles
"Viele Forschende schreiben mir, dass es ihnen sehr ähnlich geht."
Und dennoch wagen nur wenige den Schritt, sich beruflich neu zu orientieren? Warum ist das so?
Gründe sind vielfältig. Aber sie haben sehr oft mit einem diffusen Angstgefühl zu tun. 1/4
#ichbinhanna #ichbinreyhan #leavingacademia
Lovely to see that Hetta Howes' book on the lives of medieval women is now in paperback!
once your email storage is full you should be allowed to graduate from it. no more emails for you. you’ve seen enough emails. you’re free now
I have noticed this too.
This is why I'm a stickler for process, and why I don't like it even when people with the same political beliefs as me do not follow due process, behave without transparency, etc. It doesn't just undermine trust in authority, but trust in reality.
I was born in a country where a lot of conspiracies *were* true. It does strange things to some people's heads. Anything they want to believe becomes ipso facto believable.
Yeah. All the online talk is of the AI revolution but this might be just as shattering
One effect of the Epstein files is that from now on, no conspiracy will seem too outrageous, too far-fetched.
It's not the key issue now, but I can imagine a few historical timelines where this winds up hurting a lot of people.
Some thoughts on what Duolingo is actually good for:
irinadumitrescu.substack.com/p/how-to-act...
Close Reading Is For Everyone Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant Call for Pitches Based on our previous Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, we are at work on a new version that’s shorter, slimmer, and aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for a new set of contributors who would write excellent, brief, model close readings of texts that high schoolers might know and care about. Think: “The Gettysburg Address,” Macbeth, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but also song lyrics, idioms, or even a visual image. What is your best, most instructive, most exciting, most welcoming example of how a close reading builds a real argument out from a tiny, perhaps overlooked detail? If you’re interested in pitching us, please send us your 250-word close reading of the text you propose. Your close reading should be mappable using our vocabulary of close reading: the five steps of scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation, and global theorizing. (Our close reading of “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the early pages of our introduction is the sort of thing we’re seeking.) If we think we can use yours, we’ll ask you to expand it to a 1,200 word essay in which you explain how your close reading works step by step. We seek close readings both of texts that are canonical and also ones that aren’t. And so we invite contributors both from the discipline of literary studies, and other disciplines across the university, and the public humanities beyond it. Send your pitches—please include your name and contact info—to daniel.sinykin@emory.edu and jwinant@reed.edu by March 15.
CALL FOR PITCHES
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.
We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.
Details below!
Timely
&
Necessary
Thank you!
I'm so sorry they are going through this. Anywhere "genius" is talked about is particularly prone, I think
I wrote all of these drawing on my experience in higher education, but the emails and DMs I've received over the years show the patterns of behavior are widespread. So does any day's news.
Big thanks to @timeshighered.bsky.social for allowing these pieces to be free to read.
And perhaps most appropriate, especially for those of us who feel too "innocent" to be accused of being toxic ourselves, is my @timeshighered.bsky.social piece on the people who enable abusers:
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/are-...
Just as relevant, alas, given current events, is my follow-up for @timeshighered.bsky.social on toxic hypocrisy:
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/stru...
It has been pointed out to me that this would be a good time for me to reshare my @timeshighered.bsky.social piece on succeeding in academia through upward toxicity. Applicable to other parts of life as well.
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ten-...
This piece poses some great questions:
"Can a culture be said to be narcissist, not just in the superficial sense of that word? That is, can a culture think the way a narcissist does?".
And I love how they are answered in a way that affirms our capacity to refuse the bullshit
fyi mine and @lollardfish.bsky.social's THE BRIGHT AGES is on sale as an ebook for only $4.99!
bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
Thank you for reading, Mark.
I wrote some things about narcissism and creativity. With a lot of anger. And no small amount of hope.
open.substack.com/pub/irinadum...
I keep thinking again, in light of the latest Epstein files dump, about how MeToo “went too far.”
The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria, invites applicants for the position of Rector. This is an exceptional opportunity to lead a renowned institution dedicated to the humanities and social sciences.
www.iwm.at/news/the-iwm...
Yay, so happy about this! Watch this space and prepare by reading the Romanian authors we've published at @corylusbooks.bsky.social
Same! Are you excited about the Frankfurt announcement?
