Ellis Light

One of our featured reviews for this issue -- free to access!

I'm so excited to see this article appear in an upcoming special issue of RQ!

We are thrilled to announce that the Summer 2025 issue of Renaissance Quarterly (vol. 78.2) has been published online. Take a look: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #RenTwitter #earlymodern #Renaissance @universitypress.cambridge.org

ugh, I'm so sorry - I am all too familiar with the grueling march to that subway near the uni. here's to cooler days, better landlords, and accessible spaces in the near future!

have you tried the NYPL main branch (the rose reading room)? it's in midtown (ugh) but I used to get so much good work done there and recently visited again for the first time in forever

I was talking about this regarding academic book reviews earlier today! The journal I work at doesn't publish rebuttals to negative reviews, but if we did they'd be so interesting to read. I always loved reading (for example) Wilde's responses to his negative critics.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Medieval History we’ve asked eight distinguished historians each to use an article from the journal’s first five years as a jumping off point to discuss historiographical trends. @tandfresearch.bsky.social

The NYT decided to kick trans people in the teeth the day after Skrmetti. They wrote a hit piece blaming trans people for their own oppression and attacked the people who have fought hardest to stop this effort to eradicate us.

They turned to Brianna Wu to further their narrative.

The NYT was cited in the Supreme Court ruling used to strip trans people of healthcare. This is EXACTLY WHY the “just asking questions” crowd of centrist edgelord journalists are dangerous. They launder transphobia through faux neutral “debate” and act like it’s intellectual curiosity

Check out the new issue of RQ! There's the Bennett Lecture from @rsaorg.bsky.social 2024, PLUS articles on Muslim war narratives, race and blushing in Renaissance art, multilingual migrants, and tombs as treasure.
Cover image is Lautaro, a Mapuche leader of Indigenous resistance against the Spanish.

Remember to call or write to Stephan Bunker, Wayne Farrin, Dani O'Halloran, and David Rollins to thank them for supporting trans kids in Maine!

anyone who’s done sustained historical research will recognize the feeling that it just takes soooo long. SO much longer than you’d think when starting

the idea that there’s some magic bullet that resolves this work so you can just churn it out faster is antithetical to the core ethos of the method

medievalist here, thank you for your service to the cause of bringing chaucer's naughty words back into the modern parlance

Lost in this 4,500 word article is the opaque recognition that LLMs are the tech sector's solution to human labor cost.

This is not an issue of labor (we have it) or value (we pay for it), it's an imposed concern about productivity from an economic point of view (it's expensive!).

keep running into people saying they will stay on facebook no matter what because to do otherwise is to "let them take away our voices" and I just ... don't think we need to trust corporate platforms with our voices. especially when said platforms just see said voices as content to be mined for $$$

I’ve noticed an uptick in dismissals of the concerns of teachers about AI. Some say that it’s *their* job to find a way to evaluate work that AI can’t replicate. I would just ask that you talk to real teachers and really listen. I’d also suggest reading a bit about writing and the brain.

May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth: Letters of the lost Franklin Arctic expedition Published in The Mariner's Mirror (Vol. 111, No. 2, 2025)

The horrors persist, but today I am excited to see that my review of "May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth" was published in the Mariner's Mirror. It was a joy to review this incredible collection of Franklin letters.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Bestiary illustration of bees, showing 3 lines of bees flying into 3 skeppas.

Happy #WorldBeeDay 🐝

These are the industrious #AberdeenBestiary bees. They are going into hives known as skeps (from the Anglo Saxon, skeppa, for basket). These are made from woven straw or other plant fibre and require the beekeeper to have great skill to harvest the honey and not harm the bees.

Clara Peeters’s Still Lifes Are Even Better Than the Real Thing In her paintings, the 17th-century Dutch painter captured a pure, crystalline moment of time with unnerving verisimilitude.

A good article on Clara Peeters:

ACLS, AHA, & MLA Seek Injunction to Prevent Dismantling of NEH - AHA American Council of Learned Societies, American Historical Association, and Modern Language Association File Motion for a Preliminary Injunction of Dismantling of National Endowment for the Humanities...

The @acls1919.bsky.social, AHA, & @modernlanguage.bsky.social filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin the unlawful dismantling of the NEH: "Congress believed NEH to be essential to the functioning of our democracy, & the public interest would be served by honoring that determination."

The twelve-ish remaining days of University of California Press books at 40% off! Spring Sale.

💙📚 🧪 🗃 #anthropology #sociology

Get more from Surprised Eel Maps on Patreon Custom Maps, Artwork, and History

Have you ever wondered where the maps you see come from?

Well! I draw maps for a living, and on my Patreon page, I walking through the hows and whys of different mapping projects.

It’s free, so take a look! And sign up for a free membership to learn even more!

www.patreon.com/SurprisedEel...

#MedievalSky And everybody else who needs to know this: the journal Arthuriana has just published #OpenAccess this study about the illustrations in the sole surviving medieval copy of the story of *Silence*: muse.jhu.edu/pub/91/artic... If you've never heard of this amazing story, dive in now!

I am so charmed by the ALCHEMY.

📣 The RSA San Francisco 2026 Calls for Papers submission form is now open! Submit your CfPs by August 15 to organize sessions for our Annual Meeting being held February 19–21, 2026. The Public Index of Calls for Papers is also online: www.rsa.org/news/701177/... #RenSA26 #RenTwitter #earlymodern

If you are stopped by Trump's ICE goons, or any other kind of cops:

I INVOKE MY RIGHTS TO SILENCE AND COUNSEL AND WILL NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS WITHOUT MY ATTORNEY PRESENT.

Memorize it.

And don't let ICE in without a JUDICIAL warrant. No, administrative warrants don't count.

Loss of classics library at Montclair State reflects larger fears over humanities The battle to save Montclair’s classics library symbolizes an older one — higher education’s struggle to save the humanities.

Closing the Classics Library to make room for what will really be administrative offices (regardless of what it’s called).

Montclair students have been trying to save it.

www.northjersey.com/story/news/e...

Stash of issues of "Renaissance Studies" laid out in a fan (because we are a big fan of it!)

As Renaissance Studies approaches its 40th anniversary, we discovered that some of our Special Issues from earlier decades were lost! Having 'rediscovered' such riches, we are re-issuing a series of them and new volumes will be appearing every month in 2025!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal...

“I have my students use generative AI to —“ and now I have checked out and no longer care about whatever you’re saying 👍