Managing Pandemics in Early Modern Germany, edited by Peter Hess, is out now with Berghahn books, and I've just learned that the introduction (which I wrote) is free to read on the website! www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HessMa...
Context: this speech is from SIR THOMAS MORE, a history written, as near as scholars can tell, in the early 1600s by 6 or 7 people including Dekker, Heywood, Chettle, Shakespeare, and Munday.
It was never performed, because Jacobean England was a police state and it was banned by the censor.
Gramsci once observed "the old is dying and the new struggles to be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear," and I'm not sure there would be any better encapsulation of our society's comorbidities than this headline.
A colorized image from 1588 showing dancing people, a musican, and a few very big dabbers.
Just giant dabbers flying around while people are dancing. I am unsure what they are celebrating, but giant ink-balls were used in #earlymodern printing offices in the last step before printing. Such dabbers consist of pieces of leather filled with wool or hair and a wooden handle. #bookhistory
Writing a prospectus is like pulling a tooth, but much like pulling a tooth I'll be glad to be rid of the ache
One of the pedagogical discussions we've been having in my department is that AI use correlates with real or perceived gaps in students' education, I don't think it's a huge leap to look at the other real or perceived gaps in the social fabric that AI is deployed to fill
look at how little effort it takes for someone on the conservative grievance circuit to destroy a life
millions of college kids have half assed an assignment at the last minute, you eat the F and move on
but the effort to push trans people out of public life will use whatever it can get
This was entirely about purging a trans instructor from the school and they succeeded. It was aided by a lot of dumb liberals taking it at face value arguing the minutia of grading rubrics while ignoring the obvious bad faith efforts behind this.
Grades posted as I finish my first semester of teaching, I'm ready to hibernate til spring
Optimistic that some of you may get to hear me talk about Erasmus and his traumatic experience with the wars of Julius II!
Nothing better than looking at a CfP and realizing the perfect paper for the conference has been sitting in my Google Drive since the first year of grad school
Happy to announce the Enlightenment Workshop Programme 2025-26!
This year convened by Nicholas Cronk and Jacob Chatterjee (New College).
Come for a packed November!
www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/home/researc...
📚 What if the most dangerous book of the 16th century… was a list?
In 1568, Liège printed the Index of Forbidden Books: Luther, Calvin, Rabelais, even Erasmus partly banned.
This rare copy is now open access via #DONum ⤵️
👉 hdl.handle.net/2268.1/4550
The most incredible library in the world, @bodleian.ox.ac.uk opened to OTD 1602, through the energy, money & commitment of Sir Thomas Bodley. It began with 5k books, & now more than 22m, with 2m+reader visits a year, & multi-million online users across the globe. Privilged to be its 25th librarian!
Funding available for 2 PhDs on the Inventing Futures project at Durham Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. One focuses on early modern gendered violence, the other on utopia. It's a fantastic project with a fabulous team behind it! Come and join!
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPD428/f...
[Exit King.]
An illustration from a Dutch 18th-century manual showing a man demonstrating the use of gag knives, arrows, and swords
Halloween costume ideas from Simon Witgeest's 1739 book of magic tricks, Het verbeetert en vermeerdert natuurlyk toverboek, of 't Nieuw speel-tooneel der konsten... archive.org/details/hetv...
lol
One month left to apply for our travel fund! Are you doing research in #earlymodern #bookhistory or print culture? The Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and Plantin-Moretus Museum offer a Nottebohm Fellowship.
Apply before Oct. 1st!
Details: consciencebibliotheek.be/en/fellowshi...
Anyway, happy Monday! The Dean is shutting down my department - Religion & Culture, the only 1 of is kind in the country & home to the innovative Major in Humanities for Public Service. There is no immediate budgetary or political pressure for this decision
Awful news, I'm so sorry to hear this
Very exciting: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography published a cluster of new entries on women stationers. See the intro by Valerie Wayne: www.oxforddnb.com/newsitem/906...
ODNB entries are so helpful in identifying women from traces on printed material. So happy to see this work ❤️
The University of Glasgow’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies is offering a PhD scholarship on “Robert Burns & the Environment” – part of a new research strand on Burns, the Environment & Sustainable Cultural Heritage
DEADLINE 18 AUGUST
#C18th #Romanticism
www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...
My alma mater remains a world class institution in the study of capitulation masked as Randian self-determination
"Historians who work on any topical area in the field are encouraged to apply, as are scholars who study connections between medieval Europe and other regions, such as the Mediterranean, Byzantium, North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe." Application review begins Oct. 1st. #medievalsky
‘Petrarch, who carried his pocket-sized Augustine up the mountain, would have loved both our travel grants and our handheld devices.’
Anthony Grafton on Renaissance libraries: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
UN chief António Guterres says the world is on the brink of climate breakthrough. More than nine in 10 renewable power projects commissioned in 2024 were less expensive than their fossil fuel equivalent. Solar was 41% cheaper on average and land wind 53% cheaper. buff.ly/EWOfRu6
#ShareGoodNewsToo
How to become a printer's apprentice in 1743. A boy is led by Carmenta, a Roman goddess who created the alphabet, up steps of a temple where the goddess Typographia awaits. Each step represents a skill that must be mastered, such as reading, writing, foreign languages, declensions, conjugation. 1/2
