liz polcha

I'm really enjoying the process and service to Caribbean studies oriented discussions at the Bridging Caribbean Literature and DH panel at the West Indian Lit conference

Women's History Illuminated Women's History and the National Historic Landmarks Program

@skpawlicki.bsky.social was, until the Trump administration canceled the program, working as a Mellon fellow for the National Parks Service. She created the most incredible women's history programming, and now, she's recreated it entirely separately: storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/...

Machine learning is a neat tool, but clearly companies are desperate to give “AI” credit for what human scholars accomplish in part because companies have bet the farm on the idea that human ingenuity is expendable. This historian is extraordinary and deserves the real credit.

I’m trying to understand why universities think students would be interested in paying $$$$ and going into debt for chatgpt edu, a thing they can use for free

The reason a hillbilly scholarship kid like me got a great public education at William & Mary was because they invested in teachers, not bullshit computer magic. I guess that has changed.

Opinion | Mourn, or Else

"Our power isn’t in making one of the choices that are presented to us. Our power is in shaping the choices available to us." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

I guess the difference now is that the costumed luddites are destroying their own phones

This is amazing!! The costumes alone

I went to an anti-tech rally, where Gen Z dressed as gnomes and smashed iPhones. Here's what I learned. A growing constellation of groups, mostly led by young people, are advocating for reduced reliance on technology. I went to a rally to learn more.

Dressing as gnomes and smashing iPhones: the new digital humanities pedagogy

2 Professors Teach About AI Using Print Book Faculty members help students practice close reading and analysis with a physical book, building life skills and social connection.

Lots of attention will likely be paid to the need to explain core textual elements like epigraphs, quotes, and indexes to undergrads. A need definitely exacerbated by recent literacy data trends but also a long overdue point of emphasis in college instruction. www.insidehighered.com/news/student...

some of my favorite former NEH employees have channeled their collective grant-making wisdom into an opportunity for funders. thrilled to see it! hire them. 💫

Excited to be co-editing a special issue of @dhquarterly.bsky.social on Artificial Intelligence for Digital Humanities: Research problems and critical approaches
dhq.digitalhumanities.org/news/news.html

We're inviting abstracts now - please feel free to reach out with any questions!

Please spread the word—The Scholars’ Workshop in Early African American Print at AAS Jan. 12-15, 2026. A writing workshop and intro to archives for junior scholars working on the dissertation or first book. Fully funded. Apply by Oct. 15 2025. PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD

YouTube video by The White House Phillis Wheatley

I'm curious if early Americanists have watched the AI white nationalist propaganda rendition of Phillis Wheatley put out by the "Founders Museum," or is it simply a cursed digital object that we are all avoiding? youtu.be/te-A0hZ_BNI?...

Five months ago today, National Endowment for the Humanities staff arrived at work and discovered panicked emails & calls from grantees whose obligated funds were "cancelled" in the dead of night by #DOGE.

Less than 24 hrs later, the majority of us were put on leave, and a week later, fired. #NEH.

As historians of technology are pointing out, this is how automation has worked out in the past, too.

The solution is unionization/collective action. If people work together (if!), editing can become a very, very expensive service.

Philly’s first-in-the-nation experiment giving cash to struggling renters is working, researchers say Families that got cash rental assistance were less likely to be evicted, experience homelessness, and report having serious problems with their homes, according to a study of the PHLHousing+ program.

For the past three years, the city has been giving cash to some struggling renters, no strings attached.

The first-in-the-nation experiment has been even more successful than researchers studying its impact expected.

A reminder that PhD students are also teachers. It'll be much harder to run undergraduate programs too with this change.

My cynical prediction is that Philly 250th anniversary of 17** next year is going to be AI white supremacy founders parade, the M*ms for Lib**** event at the museum of the American Revolution was a little preview

The White House Proposes Weird A.I. Paintings as the Future of Patriotic Education | Artnet News The Founders Museum is a project of PragerU, now installed in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Here's what it looks like.

I watched through all the White House's "Founders Museum" A.I.-animated paintings teaching U.S. Revolutionary history, installed in D.C in partnership right-wing YouTube content farm #PragerU. news.artnet.com/art-world/wh...

The Philly SEPTA cuts are dire. As someone who works at a university, I’m wondering if AAUP chapters & unions will need to organize rideshare carpools just so faculty & staff can get to work this fall (among other organizing ofc)

This is urgent, rent is due in a week. A Black trans academic has been put thru a cruel process for months now in response to her pro-Pal activity, and yesterday she was notified she will not receive pay for the next two months. She needs our support to cover her immediate needs of meds and housing.

introduction to digital humanities class poster for fall 2025 Drexel University, with images of a floppy disc, a cd, a VHS tape, and a gameboy

My Intro to DH class this fall at Drexel is 🤓jam packed🤓 with class trips to archives. We will be doing more hands-on exercises with non-digital media, including an assignment where the students check out (from me) a discman or walkman, and explore the CD or tape collection at the Free Library

this website feels like a social media dead zone with lots of bots and seeing the same 3 posters over and over, it is like the ghost of academic twitter. I'm wondering if social media will be totally obliterated by AI in a few years, it already feels like an endless stream of bots talking to bots

helpful thread here of job resources

my fellow PA-ians, pleaaaase hit up your friends/fam/exes/whomever who live in areas where their senators especially need to be pressured about supporting SEPTA funding— that’s N East Philly, Bucks County, & Montgomery County

🚂 ⬇️

A friend is organizing this campaign for Sandra Delvalle’s legal fees, please consider donating and/or sharing - cases like these where women are brutally punished for defending themselves against their abusers are part of a larger system that criminalizes survivors of gendered violence

I like to repost this every couple of months as a reminder. Tressie is being proven more and more right with each passing day.

Legal Support Fund for Sandra Delvalle Sandra Delvalle is a young PA mother who was faced with the choice between defending herself from her abusive partner or risking her life at his hands. She chose to defend herself. Now she’s facing de...

📣please donate and/or share this campaign to defend a criminalized survivor, Sandra Delvalle, a young Puerto Rican mother who was convicted of third-degree murder after fatally defending herself against her long-time abuser 📣

gogetfunding.com/legal-suppor...

Mine is “not only…but also” 🥴 among other gendered & defensive writing tics where I over-state my argument