'Speaking at the British Academy’s Shape conference in London on 4 March, Tickell said that students who want to study modern foreign languages in the Midlands will only be able to start courses at two institutions: Birmingham and the University of Warwick.' 1/3
Well, this happens when you close down your language departments.
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper: And so the Shortest Day came and the year died / And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world / Came people singing, dancing, / To drive the dark away. / They lighted candles in the winter trees; / They hung their homes with evergreen; / They burned beseeching fires all night long / To keep the year alive. / And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake / They shouted, reveling. / Through all the frosty ages you can hear them / Echoing behind us—listen! / All the long echoes, sing the same delight, / This Shortest Day, / As promise wakens in the sleeping land: / They carol, feast, give thanks, / And dearly love their friends, / And hope for peace. / And now so do we, here, now, / This year and every year. / Welcome, Yule!
A poem for Winter Solstice: "The Shortest Day" by Susan Cooper, author The Dark is Rising and numerous other luminous books.
The image is from www.thelostland.com. The poem is © Susan Cooper.
The University of Nottingham has announced the suspension of all Modern Languages and Cultures (MLC) programmes from September 2026.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
We all know the difficulty the HE sector is in. But let’s work together to come up with solutions. The nuclear option damages our students & the reputation of our institutions. @ucflangs.bsky.social & @artsandhums.bsky.social
are supporting colleagues www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Well this is awful news: tinyurl.com/yr65mjkx
'All modern language and music courses are being suspended for new students at the University of Nottingham.'
Nottingham friends: please be assured that we will join you in protesting against this decision in the strongest possible terms. Solidarity.
T o celebrate the forthcoming print publication of our Encyclopaedia and Palgrave’s 25th anniversary this year, four chapters are free-to-view throughout October. blogs.surrey.ac.uk/medievalwome...
Quote from a story on changes at the U of Chicago that notes they are "pausing" doctoral eduction in Classics, Comp Lit, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Romance languages and literatures, and South Asian Studies.
Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use
Couverture du livre "Femmes de Révolution" (Seuil, 2025)
(Minute autopromo #2)
Si vous vous demandez comment occuper votre ado politisé.e ou vous-même pendant les vacances, que lire à la plage ou ailleurs, (re)découvrez ces histoires de révolutionnairEs, de Théroigne de Méricourt pendant la Révolution française aux collectifs féministes contemporains.
Petition to stop cuts to Modern Languages at Bangor University.
chng.it/pY54kCGbmD
Horrendous!
I read the ill-informed opinion piece to which this responds with dismay (especially since the author works in a humanities discipline also impacted by severe cuts across the sector). This is a thoughtful and necessary rebuttal:
Hard-hitting and reflective piece. It would be a public service to higher education in the UK and internationally if @timeshighered.bsky.social made it free to read, even if only for 24 hours.
Kudos to the authors: Anonymous, Martin Mills (Aberdeen), Nick Megoran (Newcastle) & Les Back (Glasgow).
Read now:
Cardiff’s closure of modern languages will tongue-tie its humanities
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/card...
@emmacayley.bsky.social
The Arts and Humanities Alliance have written an open letter to Bridget Philippson, Secretary of State for Education, on the recently announced cuts across the sector. We are concerned that these measures disproportionately affect our disciplines and call for an urgent government review.
Cardiff University has announced it will axe its teaching of modern languages and merge four of its schools, cutting staff numbers by 50%.
Please sign and share this petition in support of the wonderful School of Modern Languages at Cardiff!
www.change.org/p/save-mlang...
Please help us to save Modern Languages at Cardiff University:
chng.it/Hmtvvdtptg
This is real. I just turned it off. They track you everywhere, because they can.
😕 Here we go again. timeshighereducation.com/news/deeply-...
📢 Follow us for updates about the ongoing situation at UEA. #SaveUEA #UCU
🦋 Please share this post with followers, to let them we're now also on Bluesky.
💪 UEA UCU Branch Meeting this morning at 10am. Check your inboxes for full details.
Sad news of more cuts in languages, this time at Northumbria.
Thought-provoking rebuttal, particularly the final words. It's always worth reminding students that they are creative & intelligent, that our job is to help them accentuate that, & that the "hype cycle" around "AI" will rob them of that opportunity (as well as, you know, boiling the oceans)
I love Quiet Posters — can be pretty easy to miss friends or other infrequent posters in the following firehose, this does a great job of plucking them out for you. bsky.app/profile/did:...
I really enjoyed the first episode of 'Wolf Hall: the Mirror and the Light', but thanks to watching too much Cbeebies these days, I can't hear Mark Rylance's voice without thinking of Flop.
"The dissolution of the monasteries... it's a Bing thing!"
I might have to swing by one of your classes this week!
You guys, my kid just discovered a *whole book* of poems in French that, when read in French, sound like mother goose rhymes in English (but said with a heavy French accent). They are grammatical in French! 😵💫 The one below is Humpty Dumpty. This is depraved and wonderful. I love/hate it.
📢New report on Modern Languages Closures & Restructurings
A recent survey conducted by Wendy Ayres Bennett, policy advisor for UCFL, provides evidence of worrying signs across the HE sector & the pressing need for support & curriculum innovation
university-council-for-languages.org/2024/07/08/r...
I’ve come to abandon the use case for LLMs to summarize text because the summaries usually miss vital parts and are disappointing when I look closer. Australian government now has proof this is the case.
Another proof that LLMs have more limitations we need to understand.
I just did, as an experiment, a google scholar search on an important well-covered topic. It put an undergrad honors thesis as the #1 response. It's fine thesis (on a quick skim), but there are hundreds, thousands, of peer reviewed books and articles on this topic.
