Kathleen Crowther

Submitting a mixed-methods research proposal on toy safety this week. If you have any interesting anecdotes or sources about risky toys, I’d be excited to learn more!

#Histmed #Histsci #HSTM #STS

A long and tall stylized dragon inhabiting an initial "I" in a medieval manuscript. It is tan with blue head, wings, and feet, on a gold leaf background. He looks displeased at his presence in the book.

Gorgeous opening page of a text in a thirteenth-century medieval manuscript of Isaac Israeli's Liber Urinarum, or Book of Urines. The opening initial is in gold leaf, with a dragon inside the letter, and the rest of the opening title is in large, oddly scattered letters in alternating red and blue. At the bottom of the page is a stylized comet in red and blue extending from the letter "U" at the start of the first chapter.

Little dragons love inhabiting initials of medieval manuscripts. However, this one just found his book is about pee.

Opening of Isaac Israeli, Book of Urines, translated by Constantine the African, in Erfurt/Gotha MS Amplonian Q 207: "Incipit liber urinarum Ysahac"

#medhist #histmed #manuscript

Join Our Team! The editing collective at Nursing Clio is seeking three new staff members: one Book Reviews Editor and two new Editors! Nursing Clio is a volunteer-run, open access, collaborative blog project that…

Nursing Clio is looking for new editors! My time at NC has been truly life changing, both personally & professionally. Join us! We're looking for essay editors & someone to help us do more book reviews and author interviews. Details here: nursingclio.org/about/staff/... #histmed #dishist

Thanks to @stephenaj.bsky.social's fabulous article (still available at link below) I have had a look at this equally fabulous interactive astrolabe alexboxer.com/astrolabe/. It's a really useful tool for understanding what the instrument does and a lot of fun to play with! #histsci #astronomy

Please register for the HSS meeting @NOLA & come meet Ashton Wesner 🐟Sam Muka 🪸 Rebecca Woods 🐒 Aleksandar Shopov 🐫 and + discuss their research on animal mobilities and why such histories of science matter. Thanks to Sonia Wigh, co-organizer of this roundtable with the Osiris editors! #histsci

Drumroll please🥁🥁
For announcement of the SSHM Roy Porter Essay Prize 2024/5 winning essay!
Congratulations to Charlotte Stobart, studying at University of Manchester @manchstm.bsky.social
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#histmed #histSTM @rebeccawynter.bsky.social

Prizes 2024/5 ROY PORTER STUDENT ESSAY PRIZE COMPETITION The deadline for this year’s competition has now passed. Do look again in the autumn for the 2025/6 competition entry form (the deadline for …

Following announcement of the Roy Porter Essay Competition winner, two entrants have also been awarded Commended for their essays:
Congratulations to Elena Danieli (Università di Bologna and Université Paris Cité) and Zhilin Chu (University of Cambridge)
#histmed @rebeccawynter.bsky.social
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Venetians know something about oligarchy.

this is so sad, I use this ALL the time.

About this Collection | Chronicling America | Digital Collections | Library of Congress Search America's Historic Newspaper Pages through 1963 Please Note: The Library of Congress has transitioned the longstanding Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers website to this new digi...

Some sad confirmation from @bcgl.bsky.social while I was at UW last week—the National Digital Newspaper Program—which builds Chronicling America—has been shut down

Historical newspapers are probably the archival material most used by the general public—for genealogy, local history—it’s such a loss

Bear all of this in mind when someone starts parroting in your direction all the utopian and progressive-buzzword-laden talk about AI’s potentials. I’m looking at you, fellow academics.

RFK’s ideas about “wellness farms” for young people are eugenic and unconstitutional Before he became Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted an idea about sending young people with substance abuse and other mental health issues to “we…

“The lesson to learn from this history is that confining young people with disability is not only ineffective and eugenic, it is also unconstitutional and unjust.” Read @drkyliesmith.bsky.social latest article for Nursing Clio here ⬇️ nursingclio.org/2025/05/08/r...

Under Texas’ Abortion Ban, Where a Woman Lives Can Determine Her Risk of Developing Sepsis While the rates of dangerous infections spiked across the state after it banned abortion in 2021, women in Houston fared far worse than those in Dallas, according to ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind ana...

NEW: The rate of sepsis in Houston surged 63% after Texas banned abortion.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where hospital leaders empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, it rose just 29%.

The artes and humanityes are also a kynde of wildernesse space to be preserved

A flyer for a book called Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South

Got some pre order flyers printed for the @uncpress.bsky.social stand at #aahm2025 !!

Disability and Sanctity in the Middle Ages This volume significantly expands current understandings of both disability and sanctity in the Middle Ages. Across the collection, heterogeneous constructions, and experiences, of disability and holi...

PLS REPOST: "The collection is a powerful rebuttal to the notion of the integral relationship of disability—medieval and otherwise—with sin, stigma, and shame. So doing, it recentres medieval disability history as a lived history that merits exploration and celebration."
www.aup.nl/en/book/9789...

Illustration of a little girl playing with a motorized wringer washer from the National Safety Council’s Family Safety magazine (1967). The image appears in Alexander Parry, “Making Homemakers Responsible for Safety: Housework, Laundry Equipment, and the Unequal Burdens of Accident Prevention, c. 1910–80,” Technology and Culture 66.2 (2025): 411-447

Have you ever been burned by an iron?

Received a shock from a power cord?

Pulled your sleeve out of a motorized wringer?

Check out my article on the history of home laundry safety on Project Muse!

#histmed #histstm #histsci #STS

This is a good and frequently very funny review of @drbeldavis.bsky.social's book "Conceiving Histories," likely of interest to historians of medicine and women's history scholars. 📗 #earlymodern #histmed

Book cover of Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe by Robert G. Morrison

Between 1450-1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean.With Merchants of Knowledge, Robert Morrison is the first to track the network of scholars who mediated exchanges in astronomy, astrology, Qabbalah, & philosophy

www.sup.org/books/middle...

Call For Pitches: The Losses “But you could go work for the government! Or museums—maybe a non-profit?” Grad students and adjuncts leaving academic history in the United States have often gotten the above advice from well-meaning...

A reminder that we are open for pitches for this roundtable on the ways that federal cuts to funding have impacted historians working off the tenure track.

If you’re interested in reading about the complexity of variation underpinning the latest scientific research on sex development, these are useful. TLDR: ‘The truth is, your biological sex isn’t carved in stone, but a living system with the potential for change.’

(Quotation from the final link.)

The La Sfera Project - Donate On April 2, 2025, the Sfera Project PIs received notice that the federal government was terminating the $118,000 grant the Project was awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in August 20...

Many of you know I've been working on the La sfera project with scores of friends for about 5 years. We were thrilled to receive support to bring it to a larger public, and crushed when we lost it when it was nearly 70% complete. We are now seeking donations to finish it
www.sferaproject.org/donate

This is a great project. If you're looking for a small but concrete way to offset the plundering of the NEH, here's a good one. #medievalsky

Associate Professor in History, 1000-1500 at University of Oxford Looking for a new job opportunity in academia? Check out this job opening for a Associate Professor in History, 1000-1500 on jobs.ac.uk!

New job at Oxford - do please share widely!

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMS153/a...

This is high art

Just when grants to study this are being terminated. Story by @aniloza.bsky.social

After April Fools’ Day purge, U.S. health agencies spiral into chaos “Outrageous” cuts claim leaders of five NIH institutes, as well as offices throughout FDA and CDC

The magnitude of this damage is incalculable. #NIH #CDC www.science.org/content/arti...

Oak Gall Ink As part of a series of experiential learning projects, I will be preparing and using a variety of historic materials. The objective here is less about perfecting these historic methods (in terms of…

bryonycoombs.com/2025/04/06/o...

The Humanities as Canary: Understanding this Crisis Now - The Scholarly Kitchen The Humanities have always been the canary in the coal mine of the full knowledge industry. What information can help us understand this crisis and its implications?

"It has come for science because it was never just about the Humanities, but about how we assess American progress through infrastructures of new knowledge and its application." scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/04/02/t...