Emily Shaver Kay (she/her)

Absolutely thrilled that mine is among the @waterstones.bsky.social Best History Books of 2025 🎉🎉🎉 @hodderbooks.bsky.social

apropos james watson’s death i had an idle thought today about how stupid race/iq stuff sounds. “buh if your skin is darker you are biologically less smart” is a thing only a dumbass can believe

Board of postcards that describe what public historians are advocating for in their letters and appeals to elected representatives. Examples include: a living wage, LGBTQ+ history, national parks, NPS staff, IMLS and NEH.

QR codes with tips for writing an advocacy letter and stickers.

Write an #advocacy letter to your Representative! The #NCPH2025 attendees are keenly aware of what’s at stake in the realm of #PublicHistory right now. Send a pre-stamped postcard for the cause and boost morale with a cute cat sticker at the Advocacy Committee Exhibit Hall booth (up thru 5pm, 3/29).

Interested in an MA in Public History? Where better to study than in Belfast! Want to hear more? Sign up now to join our information webinar this Monday at 5pm BST (noon EST)
www.qub.ac.uk/Study/AHSS/w...

Hey! Are you a #museum or material culture nerd in Atlantic Canada? There's a three-day conference with some promising sessions coming up in May at Dal... check it out, share with friends, etc.

www.eventbrite.ca/e/material-c...

#CdnHist #PublicHistory

🚨 BIG ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨

I started something new: Scholar.DIY — a public benefit company to help scholars turn research into meaningful digital storytelling. 1/6

Who can relate?

From the intro of my forthcoming book (May 2025): *Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea*: "Maritime escape was a long, slow-moving, and unstoppable oceanic wave of resistance, bigger and more powerful than we have ever known."
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566407...

Picture of a view from a high-story window looking out onto snow-covered roofs at a university.

first day back in office after the holidays and the weather outside makes me want to go back to bed with hot cocoa ❄️🥶☕️

Every dad gift ideas list is like: Scotch rocks, socks that are also a knife, bacon wallet, hammer subscription

friend: let’s watch a christmas movie

me: [putting lord of the rings on]

friend: i said a christmas movie

me: there’s elves

How a simple math error sparked a panic about black plastic kitchen utensils A study warned that people were being exposed to a toxic chemical from kitchen utensils. But the researchers misstated the safe daily limit

Hey, so it turns out that paper on black plastic was a bit blown out of proportion by a simple math error.

nationalpost.com/news/canada/...

I love living in a college town after students leave for breaks. It feels delightfully spooky working on campus when it’s a ghost town. 👻

handwritten register of women voters

The Mary Eliza Project is a collaborative public humanities initiative that uses historic records to illuminate diverse women’s political engagement in Boston. We focus on the historical moment of 1920. 🧵

Book cover of Holding It Together surrounded by images of objects associated with the work often done by women and the phrase "Need A Gift for the Woman Who Does Everything?" With endorsements from Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jennifer Breheny Wallace, and Ai-jen Poo.

Need a gift for the woman who DOES everything?

Holding It Together is a gift of recognition and a gift of ungaslighting--showing her that if she's burned out, it's because billionaires and their cronies maintain the illusion of a DIY society by forcing her to work overtime and underpaid.

#booksky

More good news: the book will be entirely open access 🔓📖 (free digital download) thanks to a Dutch Research Council grant 🪄 📚

A cultural history of love in the early modern age; book cover, detail from Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride

A book I edited is finally out! The Bloomsbury Cultural History of Love in the Early Modern Age. It has brilliant contributors and illustrations - and yes, I gave the Frenchman the last word on love

the library should host a monthly 'how to cook an egg' night where adults and children alike are provided a quiet, judgment free space to learn to properly cook an egg. this would do society a lot of good

This Day in Labor History: December 10, 1976. Undocumented workers in Chicago leather plants voted to unionize, leading to battle for them to have access to U.S. labor rights. Their employer soon had some of them deported for unionizing. But the Supreme Court intervened for the workers for once!

The book Smart Blonde by Dolly Parton on a blue library trolley

We don't have an elf on the shelf but we do have a

Ever wondered why walking around museums is weirdly tiring? At normal speed our legs act like pendulums, swinging forward from the hip & saving us a huge amount of energy. In "museum shuffle" our muscles must do ALL the work of constant readjustment. So cake in the cafe is scientifically justified 🥳

I'm once again asking for a show where a librarian, a bookseller, and a carpenter travel around helping people manage their out-of-control book collections. Discuss their sentimental value, their rarity, their histories, then build amazing book nooks and shelves and little libraries to organize them

Click to Visit #ASafeChoice Network

REALLY IMPORTANT UPDATE PLEASE SHARE

#ASafeChoice physicians WILL prescribe medication abortion via telehealth FOR WOMEN WHO ANTICIPATE NEEDING THIS MEDICATION.

REPEAT: You do NOT need to be currently pregnant to get this prescription.

In an era of potentially draconian abortion bans, take note!

Like Tom Holland's Lip Sync battle, we repost this every time it comes across the TL.

Everybody’s getting their jokes off but The Daily Mail somehow made the funniest video

Engels on 'Social Murder' When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we call that deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call this deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or the bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live - forces them ... to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence - knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual ... Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845 [1967]), p. 126 (Panther Press)

The idea of “social murder” is super useful, and we need to get comfortable using it. Engels is the best, man - reading him feels like finally acknowledging the obvious reality everyone wants you to ignore

The other day I was pitching our Gilded Age course to undergrads:

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a nation where the wealthy had insane power and ordinary people were reoeatedly crushed by them until they lashed out in anger?”

ok just trying to get my head around "stopping at a starbucks before you carry out your assassination plot"