James Russell

A joyful event - the city of Mesa is opening a new library today! This is a hope-giving investment in literature and learning to celebrate. There is an accompanying farmers market too. Yeah for the humanities!

#SundayReads — @DemetraVg on Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, one of the strangest and most influential books of the quattrocento, at once a story of lost love and a fever dream of antiquity: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/hypnerotomachia-poliphili-and-the-architecture-of-dreams

I wrote my PhD on the Hypnerotomachia I can relate to

A recipe for creating the elixir from Raymond Lull #alchemy #LindaHall

The skeletons are shown most frequently, so here is the nervous system from the 1453 first edition of Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica at the Linda Hall Library.

A poem by John Dee in the 1623 2nd edition of Robert Record’s “Ground of Arts”, a guide to arithmetic.

“One cannot at the same time affirm and negate”, taken from the chapter “On Rhetoric” in Martianus Capella’s “On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury” at the Linda Hall Library

Illuminated initial capital in the 1472 Jensen edition of Pliny’s Natural History at the Linda Hall Library

1515 first Aldine printed edition of Lucretius’ De rerum natura at the Linda Hall Library

I’m excited to start a fellowship at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, working on alchemy.

I’m glad to share that I will be traveling to Kansas City this week as one of the fellows of the Linda Hall Library.

www.lindahall.org/research/lin...

Happy Juneteenth! Do you know about pioneering Black Shakespearean Ira Aldridge? Born in NY in 1807, he acted with the African Grove Theatre, but with limited US opportunities, he moved abroad and found great success. This 1852 German playbill notes his starring role in Macbeth.

I just had my first visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library. The warm welcome and excellent research support were wonderful. Many thanks to the great team at the Library.

Is in DC for the Summer Teachers Institute of the American Bar Association.

This is an excellent paper.

'We teach our students to see the things that are
human, to appreciate the unexpected, and to see
the variation that breaks the pattern rather than
repeats it.'

The value of education is precisely opposite to the outputs of LLMs.

Letterpress marginal "No." with a hand drawn manicure below.

Talk to the hand

So it turns out that there is a Proto-Shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham (a major medieval and contemporary site of pilgrimage in the UK) at an Episcopal church in Sheboygan, WI!

At Green Acre in Maine for the conference of the Corinne True Center for Baha’i History. Tomorrow I’ll be presenting a paper on Medievalism in the Baha’i sacred Writings and historiography.

A fantastic time at the #RenaissanceSocietyofAmerica conference in Boston, presenting with Dr. James Russel! Already looking forward to next year's conference in San Francisco.
And a special thanks to @routledgehistory.bsky.social for exhibiting my book at the Conference Book Exhibition!

YouTube video by Foolish Fish Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (BLP Hardcover & Paperback) [Esoteric Book Review]

Join me for a closer look at the new BLP editions (HC, PB) of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
youtu.be/v6bkU1Mg9BI

I am thrilled to say my book on the Hypnerotomachia has gone to paperback and is available in Waterstones and on Amazon:

Routledge: shorturl.at/LJL50

Amazon: shorturl.at/rN2F3

Waterstones: shorturl.at/iFOch

#Routledge #paperback #Hypnerotomachia #ItalianRenaissance #PhilosophicalDreamNarratives

Art Break: Cracking a Medieval Code | Getty Events Attempt to decode the unknown alphabet and mysterious drawings of this centuries-old enigmatic manuscript with our experts.

Join me, Beth Morrison, and 700 #Voynich fans for this Zoom conversation on June 13: www.getty.edu/calendar/art...

Thank you for listening to the episode! I send you all my encouragement for taking on reading the Hypnerotomachia. It is a marvelously rewarding text whose abundance always offers more to discover. If I can help with anything in your reading process please let me know.

I Dream of Ceræ: The Second Annual Conference, April 2025 Just over a fortnight ago, over the last weekend of April, the second annual Ceræ conference was conducted online with attendees and presenters from sixteen countries across eleven different timezones! Repeating our unique format from last year with a continuous single-stream over 32 hours, our presenters not only came from a multitude of institutions, but also represented the spectrum of career stage from distinguished professor to junior graduate student, and everyone in between.

Our conference ended 2 weeks ago, but registered participants can now view the recordings on our website. Read our review for more dreamy details.

Didn't have time to register and attend? You can still register with a reduced rate of $10 AUD until the end of June.

#medievalsky #earlymodernsky

James Russell on the Hypnerotomachia in Esoteric Tradition Podcast Episode · Oddcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP) · 05/07/2025 · 41m

I’m grateful for the opportunity to be interviewed on the Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast about the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

On my way to the Renaissance Society of America conference in Boston

I’m glad that my paper on references to the Middle Ages in the Baha’i Writings and historiography has been accepted to the Green Acre Baha’i Studies conference this June corinnetruecenter.org/james-russel...

We're particularly interested in works in progress, burgeoning research questions, quirky archival finds that you're not sure what to do with, or broad methodological questions that others might have also encountered. This is a space for informal discussion rather than finished and polished talks!

I'm organising a series of flash talks on 26th March for Print Exchanges: a global research network for anyone working on early(ish) print culture, broadly conceived. If you'd like to join the network, come to the event, or share your work do get in touch at printexchanges@gmail.com

photo of paperback of Julius Caesar sitting on wood stage floor. The book odd read with the image of a lion, the spqr crest, the Roman Capitol and six hands with bloody knives.

Happy UK publication day to the first of many amazing New Oxford Shakespeare plays! Here’s Julius Caesar (with my intro) pictured @shakespearesglobe.bsky.social! Thanks to @oldfortunatus.bsky.social for her brilliant work as general editor and to Sarah Neville for her precise editing of the text.