Essaka Joshua

Tomorrow in Intro to Medical Humanities we’re reading parts of @essaka.bsky.social’s Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature, including the chapter on Frankenstein. Can’t wait to hear what my students think about monstrosity and shifting boundaries of selfhood

Image of 'The Empress' by Pamela Coleman Smith - figure with long hair, crown of stars, holding sceptre-like object. Two trees (pines?) made up of dots on right-hand side. Text: Weird Modernisms, BAMS/MSA 26, 1-4 July 2026, Loughborough University, UK

pls RT, modernists - CFP now out for 'Weird Modernisms', the collaborative conference between @modernistudies.bsky.social and @moderniststudies.bsky.social !

July 2026, Loughborough University.

www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M...

News from the Victorian Society | How to object to the harmful plans to partially demolish and inappropriately redevelop Liverpool Street Station News about How to object to the harmful plans to partially demolish and inappropriately redevelop Liverpool Street Station from the The Victorian Society - news.

Network Rail and ACME's latest plans are on the planning portal at the City of London. The only way to combat this is to object by the 4th July on that planning portal. Our easy Guide to writing your own objection is here: bit.ly/3ZQRkk8 #heritage

Cover of the 2025 John Clare Society Journal, featuring painting of a bee flying through blue flowers by Charlotte Strawbridge.

John Clare Society Journal 44 (2025) has gone to print - landing on doormats before JC's birthday on 13 July.
Features cover art by @cstrawbridgeart.bsky.social, poem by Mark Fiddes, original critical work by Robert Heyes, Catherine McNally, Emlyn David, Sam Hickford & Em Challinor, & reviews galore

Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1830s Cambridge Core - English Literature 1830-1900 - Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1830s

The 1830s, ed. John Gardner and David Stewart is now out. I have an essay on madness in it. If you’re in Cambridge on 24 July you can catch the book launch. www.cambridge.org/core/books/n...

If you must, Pilot Precise V7 Rolling Ball (Fine) leaves a nice drag that looks fountain pen-ish.

URGENT: Save the NEH I just took action to oppose the elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities! Join me and take action here.

ACTION ALERT: Save the NEH

On March 31, 2025, @humanitiesall.bsky.social learned that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is targeting @nehgov.bsky.social. Let your Members of Congress know that you support the NEH and its programs!

URGENT: Save the NEH I just took action to oppose the elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities! Join me and take action here.

Advocacy alert: @humanitiesall.bsky.social has learned that DOGE is targeting the NEH "with the aim of substantially reducing its staff, cutting the agency’s grant programs, and rescinding grants that have already been awarded." Tell your officials you support the NEH: p2a.co/DdtlGIT

Frankenstein —Artists Breaking Limits & Expectations—returns to Chicago Shakespeare Theater with a punk-inspired re-telling of Frankenstein.

www.chicagoshakes.com/productions/...

Teaching and Research Fellow in Black British History at The University of Edinburgh Recruiting now: Teaching and Research Fellow in Black British History on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board

Teaching and Research Fellow in Black British History- The University of Edinburgh - College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences - School of History, Classics and Archaeology/History #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLU474/t...

Her father ran a theological college, so you’ll love this!

Chapters from a life : Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 1844-1911 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive 3 p. \U+fffd\., 278 p. 20 cm

I’m reading the Internet Library 1st edition. It has photos. archive.org/details/chap...

Currently enjoying Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s Chapters from a Life (1897). As a family memoir from within a religious community, it’s definitely up there with Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907). It’s so subtle, and so beautifully written.

The deadline for the Annual USC Comparative Lit conference focusing on Fin-de-Siècle Modernisms is January 3. Please circulate the CFP and consider submitting: sc.edu/study/colleg...

Reminder! Jan 15 approaches …

Delighted that, together with Bangor University Archives, we’ve been awarded Welsh Government funding to digitise Jamaica papers within the Penrhyn estate archive:

www.bangor.ac.uk/iswe/news/ba...

It would be whack-a-mole, I’m afraid.

Good grief!!!

It happens SO often that I have a parallel existence as a guy named Josh.

Essaka, J. (2020). physical Disability in British Romantic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yay, someone quoted me. Boo, they reversed my name. It’s right there on the cover. Shouldn’t be this hard.

Chartist trial records examination of william davies of blackwood and morgan james of pillgwenlly This document contains some of the papers relating to the trial of John Frost and others at Monmouthshire Assizes, 1839-40. specifically the evidence of two local Chartists, William Davies of Blackwoo...

Newport Central Library now has some of its archives online: including Chartist trial records (issuu.com/lion7/docs/c...)

She uses it in another work, so I think she meant it. Maybe it’s regional?

It’s new to me, too, at least I’d never noticed it before…

The moral nurture of a tall daughter can no more be administered by a mother whose time is absorbed by crowds abroad…

Does anyone know what a “tall daughter” is? Is that a grown-up daughter, or one who is not short, or something else?

Wading through Hannah More’s Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (1799). Blimey, that woman needed an editor, and a sense of irony. Particularly love the rant about women who think they can write.

The front cover of The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism & Race, edited by Manu Chander. The cover picture is of Kehinde Wiley’s Prelude. In the art work a Black youth in a long overcoat is viewed from behind, and replaces the central figure in Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting of a solitary figure looking out across misty mountain tops.

The first page of chapter 6, Disability & Race by Essaka Joshua

A big thank you to @profchander.bsky.social for including my essay on “ Disability & Race” in a vol much needed in the ‘80s, when I was an undergrad. Thanks, too, to St Hugh’s Oxford, for letting me air my work as the Lady Ademola lecture. Lady Ademola is an inspiration.

The first page of my essay, "The Crip Foundations of Romantic Medicine"

The cover page to The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race

Much gratitude to @profchander.bsky.social for inviting me to be part of this collection I wish I had had as an undergrad. This is a love letter to the folks working at the intersections of race and disability who we need now more than ever.

Call for Papers: Disability Performance Histories A Special Section of Theatre History Studies Volume 46 (2026) Co-Editors Call for Papers: Disability Performance Histories A Special Section of Theatre History Studies Volume 46 (2026) Co-Editors

Submissions for our special section of Theatre History Studies, "Disability Performance Histories," due January 1!

Submit! Circulate! Tell Your Friends! Email us if you have any questions!

www.academia.edu/115737170/Ca...

This year’s Haggerty Prize will award a peer-reviewed article published between 1/1/22 and 12/31/24. $500 cash prize! Please submit your work or nominate others. Deadline is 1/1/25. And please repost to spread the word. Info at link. #c18 #ASECS #LGBTQ

19th C classics as “I survived…” books….

Oliver Twist: I Survived Victorian England with No Parents and No Money.

Dracula: I Survived being a Transylvanian Count’s Real Estate Solicitor….