Ellis Light

Trans Histories of the Medieval Book - Arc Humanities Press Archival collections are political spaces: the decisions that govern whose histories are preserved, when, and by whom are not neutral. They reflect the commu...

It's true: I wrote a book. And what's more, the book is done and soon you'll be able to own a copy. And what's more more, if you want a hard copy you can order one for 50% off now, with the code SAR50. And if you want it digitally, it'll be open access!

www.arc-humanities.org/978180270163...

Read bad art. Write bad art. Critique bad art.

A glorious profusion of flowers sitting on a stone ledge, in the right edge of which is the artist's signature. According to the text on the museum object page, "Luscious white and orange lilies, peonies, cabbage roses, and striated tulips compete for attention in a sumptuous display. Glistening dewdrops on the petals suggest that the blossoms are freshly cut. Indeed, their scent continues to attract hovering insects."

With 3 major art shows on C17th-18th women, is the Autumn of Early Modern #WomenArtists!

Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750
nmwa.org/exhibitions/...

Michaelina Wautier-Painter
www.khm.at/en/exhibitio...

Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer
www.mfa.org/exhibition/r...

Detail of a manicure and a little face gesturing towards the handwritten text of a manuscript in gothic script written on parchment. The man depicted seems angry. The manicure has a sleeve

A manicule with a stretched sleeve drawn in red in the margins pointing towards a text in Gothic script written on parchment

A manicule used to highlight a rubricated section title in a medieval manuscript written in gothic script on parchment

A very large vaguely drawn manicule pointing towards text in gothic script written on parchment

☞☞ Hands-on reading ☜☜

The manicules in #rarebooks are fantastically diverse. Some are tiny & discreet, others take up half the margin; some have flowing sleeves, or even little faces.

They’re glimpses into the personality of readers/scribes highlighting passages worth reading.
#bookhistory 💙📚📜

Seriously brilliant scholarship here by Or Vallah, A. Jorge Aguilera-López, Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, and Domenico Laurenza. Also, 75 book reviews for your perusal!

The new issue of Renaissance Quarterly is *fantastic* & in it you'll find:
- Disabled artistic expression of Hendrick Goltzius (whose hand self-portrait is the cover of this issue)
- *Incredible* drama between 16th-century shipbuilders
- Visual poetry about Thomas Becket
- VOLCANOES!

Go read it!

📣 We are delighted to announce that the Fall 2025 issue of Renaissance Quarterly (vol. 78.3) has been published online. You can view it here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #RenTwitter #earlymodern #Renaissance @universitypress.cambridge.org

Call for papers for Leeds International Medieval Congress, 'Reading Repetition: Non-Linear Temporalities and Layered Meaning in the Middle Ages and Beyond'

Hello everyone! Sharing a cfp for the International Medieval Congress at Leeds next summer, organised by Gummies Marie Besson and Brooklyn Arnot. Check it out!

Bram Stoker 1847-1912 A PENGUIN SINCE 1979

This frontispiece in my book just made me laugh a lot. Is this Buddhist reincarnation, or some other form of afterlife?

Just over ONE WEEK to go! The deadline for submitting an abstract for the Winter Conference is Friday 12th September! Share the news with your friends and come on down and join us in Norwich 🏰

@ueahistory.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social @chase-dtp.bsky.social

Last step: submit your contact info & list of pirated titles to the lawyers: www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/contact

Next step: If you find your name in the LibGen database, check the work's copyright at publicrecords.copyright.gov. Any work you find listed there is registered & entitled to compensation under the lawsuit. If your work was published within the last 5 years, contact the publisher to register it.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

On the Anthropic piracy settlement & compensation for authors whose work was stolen by their A.I. machine:

Authors -- check if your work was pirated by Anthropic here: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Then you can check the copyright and get compensated as part of the federal lawsuit.

can't agree more.
more print, local print, traditional publishers, self-made, all of it.

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.