Jon Dell Isola

What is an Academic Field? Some Positive Reflections Hello! I received my PhD in Medieval History in May 2025 and am using my expertise to educate interested people in the Middle Ages and the process of creating history. Subscribing as either a free or ...

Things in the academic world (and elsewhere) are pretty grim currently. I wanted to write something a bit more positive, and personal, about what an academic field can be. Partially inspired by a moment of existential terror when I opened a journal and didn't recognize any of the names. #medievalsky

Was reminded that exactly one year ago today I submitted my PhD dissertation. In a lot of ways it still feels weird to think of myself not as a student but as a full-fledged historian™

Important book for #medievalsky

Its aged very badly, I basically won't rewatch it because it can exist as a piece of nostalgia

tbf I remember shockingly little of the movie besides Yaphet Kotto, but when the intro hits, it hits

Agreed the Moore bonds probably not my favorite, but I love Live and Let Die more than I should

Subscribermaxxing (no AI edition):

To build on this: this is the unspoken rule of the "Stale PhD" that the sooner it is dispensed with, the better. Proximity (or not) to when you got your PhD values "potential" more than success or merit, it quickly becomes a proxy for "stardom" and privilege

me having a post queued up for 1pm today...

What is an Academic Field? Some Positive Reflections Hello! I received my PhD in Medieval History in May 2025 and am using my expertise to educate interested people in the Middle Ages and the process of creating history. Subscribing as either a free or ...

Things in the academic world (and elsewhere) are pretty grim currently. I wanted to write something a bit more positive, and personal, about what an academic field can be. Partially inspired by a moment of existential terror when I opened a journal and didn't recognize any of the names. #medievalsky

For people who still care about this sort of thing, here's James Madison writing from 1793 (6 years after the delegates in Philadelphia signed the Constitution) about why the power to make war was vested in the legislature.

press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/doc...

I really liked this, it brought me back to my polisci days

Important reading for the toothlessness of the War Powers Resolution and the inability of Congress to reign in the executive

My taxes paying for a war I had no say in through my congressional representation, thats democracy in action

Another one for the list

#medievalsky

This entire edifice, across public universities nationwide now, rests on a series of assertions that are outright lies about academia. No one knows the right amount of activism or viewpoint diversity, universities have not abandoned commitments, & we already teach students how, not what, to think.

Coming up next (if it isn't already complete): higher education in the guise of "civics centers" and "intellectual diversity mandates." All bad faith solutions to problems that fundamentally don't exist (there is no indoctrination of students) to prop up outdated/discredited ideas

Something I've been thinking about is how much of this depends on understanding politics in a very constitutional/legalist sense that turns questions of political power into semantic parlor games.

An oblong sheet of written parchment, formerly sealed.

The only surviving original Carolingian "littera formata", like a passport for a priest. Issued in Lucca, now in Pavia. archiviodigitale-icar.cultura.gov.it/it/185/ricer...

This looks really good, maybe I should make book reviews a more regular feature of the newsletter

Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808), The Old Temple, A work made of oil on canvas.

The Old Temple, by Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808)
1787/88

More info: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/57048

#medievalsky

This went crazy in the group chat during lunch time

#medievalsky

Legislation and Christians author: James Corke-Webster Abstract This article challenges the long-established orthodoxy concerning the legal basis of the persecution of Christians under the Roman empire. First, it demonstrates the problems with the current consensus, which holds both that the only extant legal enactment pertinent to the persecution of Christians before Decius is the rescript of Trajan to Pliny, and that Christians were always charged for their name alone. Second, it tests an alternative hypothesis, that Christians could be charged with multiple crimes, as part of the routine litigious culture of the empire, and that this was periodically exacerbated by legal enactments that did not target Christians but could be mobilised against them.

this looks very very interesting!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, the Gunfighter

I really wish I knew how to do short form video in a way that didn't feel deeply inauthentic

Thinking about how memories become generational: I did not live through the Blizzard of '78, but my mom told me stories about it all the time, and each time it reified its place in my own memory. I am sure that I will tell others in the future, along with my experiences in the 2015 winter

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