Swati Moitra

I adore Frank Cottrill-Boyce

Yeah, reviewers are a genuine issue, this I understand. I would have appreciated a clarification after five months, I think.

Maybe I should wait another week and email the editor through normal email. I contacted them through the same system as well.

A little over five months. Is that unreasonable?

I have a genuine question. Is it okay to withdraw a piece of it has been under review for an unreasonable timeframe, with no response from the journal? And what according to you is a reasonable timeframe for response?

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

The “compact” for higher ed is an unserious document written by unserious people from a position of spectacular ignorance. No one should take it seriously. Sadly, my bosses are taking it seriously.

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

The poster for the movie Last Days showing the actor playing John Allen Chau looking beatifically up into the light while green ocean water swirls around him. The general effect is one of him as a saint. To the right of the poster, a North Sentinelese man rows himself in a boat. The text reads Based on a True Story, Last Days,

So, not content with John Allen Chau forcing his obnoxious, law-breaking and likely disease-ridden self into the midst of the North Sentinelese and getting himself killed, now there is a movie making a saint of this man?

Colonizers gonna colonize, I suppose.

It's not rude to write to a journal after five months, right? Peer review systems are under immense stress, I know.

Sunday's Mic Drop

In Samarqand, we’re staying at a small hotel which used to be the house of a local Bukharan Jewish merchant & healer. It has a prayer room that is stunning & covered with all sorts of amazing symbols. It’s a wonderful bonus I did not imagine we’ll get in this trip.

A very adorable tabby cat showing us her backside while she walks across the bathroom counter she doesn't care she isn't supposed to be on

Portrait of a Cat who is Not Supposed to be on the Counter 2025 #Caturday

A giant mudskipper at Sungei Buloh Wetlands, Singapore.
Such comical looking creatures 😄

Instagramming colonialism in Surabaya - New Mandala On what’s lost when the Dutch East Indies is recalled as a time of picturesque sophistication

Interesting post on @newmandala.bsky.social www.newmandala.org/instagrammin...

I wish rich people could figure out that helping others makes your brain feel good and they could do that instead of being deeply evil

All I know of hate is that it will never beat the love out of me.

Andrea Gibson has died.

Myself, aunty: Mira Nair's son is he? Mmhmm good for him, his mum is great

Computers used to scream every time they connected to the Internet. They knew. They tried to warn us. We did not listen.

TIL that Terry Eagleton dedicated 'On Evil' to Henry Kissinger.

Carnegie Mellon’s Department of English is thrilled to announce an exciting new PhD program in Computational Cultural Studies. We will begin to accept applications this Fall with an inaugural cohort to begin in 2026.
www.cmu.edu/dietrich/eng...

The poplar trees in Leh remind me so much of my childhood in Moscow - poplar ‘snow’ everywhere.

Screen shot of my table of contents: The Racialization of Print By Joseph Rezek, Boston University Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press (under contract) For peer review only, do not cite or circulate without permission. Introduction: Print's Racialization over the longue durée Chapter 1. The Europeanization of Print in the Early Anglophone Atlantic Chapter 2. Nominal White Authorship at the end of the Seventeenth Century Chapter 3. Race, Gender, and Genius in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 4. Phillis Wheatley and Her Books Chapter 5. Haiti's Media Revolution Chapter 6. Native American Print Sovereignty, 1826-1837 Chapter 7. The Specimen Logic of Print in the Nineteenth Century Bibliography Word Count: 142,647

I just submitted my book for peer review. After 15 years of thinking, researching, and writing, and, as I keep saying, an NEH this year to finish up. I’m furious about the gutting of that institution, which makes so much knowledge possible. I hope this book eventually lives up to that honor.

White headline text on a pink background announcing new fellowship opportunity in Hispanic Ephemera

Image of 19th century document, written in Spanish, on a pink background. “Broadside proclamation by the viceroy communicating a Royal Order from José de Gálvez, (Mexico, 1780). Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego”

Pink text on a white background with details about the Hispanic Ephemera fellowship

White text on pink background with instructions to go to bibsocamer.org for more information

We're thrilled to announce a new fellowship opportunity: The BSA-Pine Tree Foundation Fellowship in Hispanic Ephemera! This $3,000 fellowship supports the bibliographical study of printed Spanish-language ephemeral items printed prior to 1850. More info on the BSA website.

Nepal.

Is it possible for western academics to maybe not photograph the slides prepared by young south Asian research scholars at their first large conference, or is it too much to ask?

In recent years, as PhD programmes became indescribably tough to get into, as the academic environment became more and more hostile, we told our students to leave for greener pastures.

Where now?

What can India’s emerging gig worker unions teach us about labour organising & welfare in the digital age?

Thrilled about this new open-access paper with @islandexpress
in @compchange.bsky.social

Read: doi.org/10.1177/1024...

It's packed with ideas. A thread of it's key interventions:

modems screaming at us in the 90s was a warning and we didn't take it

The India Forum's May 2025 issue is out. A range of interesting articles for you to read! Read and share what you like, and keep supporting independent journalism. Oh, and ask others to follow us too.

www.theindiaforum.in/issues/may-2...

Endometriosis is a horrific condition that, quite apart from putting women in appalling, often constant pain and horrendous bleeding, can leave us infertile.

This is a national scandal.