Maria Snyder

"The book without a name. If you don't want to buy it, that's fine." #bookhistory folks, this was a marketing thing and actually published in 1720 Germany.

The worst is when you see a news story you want to read and it turns out to be video. It’s like being excited to try a new restaurant and discovering they won’t let you cut up and eat the food yourself—you’ve got to sit and wait while they spoonfeed you bites for an hour. Torturous and infantilizing

The Misuses of the University - Public Books Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?

Reflecting on this as I read @francoisfurst.bsky.social's excellent, pointed, ever wry, ultimately mournful reflection on how leadership inc boards can profoundly misunderstand or misdirect a university. This is a JHU problem; this is not just a JHU problem. www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-...

3 AM with the radio lectures on Blaise Pascal by French critic Antoine Compagnon, someone who calls himself “a child of the democratization of culture.” Intended as radio shows, it builds on Pascal’s dialectic with Montaigne to bring the epicurean spirit of the essayist back into the order of faith

A very small carving of a small bird, similar to a sparrow, perched on a small branch. The bird is shown in three quarter profile, and is carved in a golden brown wood. A small black looks out. The claws are visible on the branch. The branch is a more chocolate colour, and goes across the shot. It is being held by a thumb and finger, with a grey background.

Work in progress, of a miniature carved bird. Carved in boxwood, with a walnut branch.

#birdart #carving #woodcarving #woodworking #miniature #miniaturecarving #bird #sculpture #tiny #handmade #handcrafted

Alternately: if a piece of text is important, print it and the source information in large font on paper and distribute it to the audience, instead of displaying paragraphs of 14-point font on a screen 25 feet away.

Thread of some services/software I'm using instead of various billionaire-owned surveillance/fascist/"A.i." trash products:

For my newsletters, @buttondown.com. Does the job! Great customer service - usually get personalized responses within 24 hours. (Never gonna join Substack.)

In other cow-related war food news...

Cheese pioneer Léon Bel ("Ba! ba! ba! Ba baby...") was in the French army in WW1. "Valkyrie" was the truck he drove along the Voie Sacrée daily to surply Verdun.

He painted a cow on its side:

"La Vache Qui Rit"

Anyway that's how Laughing Cow cheese was born.

Hedgehogs rolling on grapes to take to their young for food

BL Royal MS 12 F XIII; 'the Rochester Bestiary; 13th century; f.45r

High School English and the Making of American Readers Abstract. The high school English classroom is the most influential literary institution in the United States, and the most overlooked by literary scholars

Thanks for reading + sharing! If you can’t access the article for whatever reason, let me know and I’d be happy to share a PDF with you! 7/7
academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

It also tracks the rise and fall of the concept of “theme” in university English departments, and theme’s central place in the high school curriculum. 4/7
academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

The article reads The Catcher in the Rye in the context of the Cold War and its obsession with “character development,” an obsession that not only transformed high school English but led to the foundation of the Advanced Placement program. 3/7
academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

This essay examines the literary canon of US secondary schools alongside the co-curricular institutions—from the AP to CliffsNotes and the Common Core—that have most shaped the high school classroom since WWII. 2/7
academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

Xander's project is among the most exciting works-in-progress I know about. It's such a brilliant idea and I love following along as he goes.

I have a big new essay out that argues that Erich Auerbach is the crucial figure for historicist reading in lit studies today + argues that the epistemology of such reading depends on the profoundly humanist criterion "sufficient passion" muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

2 pink camellia blossoms surrounded by green leaves

Spring is coming - when I left for the archive this morning at 7:35 a.m., the sun was already shining, and I saw the first camellia blossoms in a garden near the National Archives at Kew, London ☀️🌺🌺

His parents are Cleopatra and Winston Churchill.

Say hello to Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, who now lives at the Cincinatti Zoo.

“I’ve reviewed over 50 sticky toffee puddings” is an incredibly powerful way to begin a video

Any of my Internet acquaintances familiar with author Edgar Parker (1925-1982)?

I'm sitting here with a copy of his "Rogue's Gallery" (Pantheon, 1969), trying to write a summary.

The illustrations look like charcoal sketches of taxidermied animals mixed with a gentleman's fashion magazine.

Two light brown bunnies sit and lounge on a shiny tiled floor.

Thank you for that reply and the wonderful pictures!

And what is their call? Because around here, they most definitely say chickadee-dee-dee. Well, sometimes they do.

Not far from here:

Chickadee in winter:

Faculty interested in undergraduate #translation, here's great opportunity, offered May 31-June 4, 2026, by those wonderful people in Iowa City, @Brian James Baer and Aron Aji:

I curate the history series at public media's trade journal Current. We're looking for pieces on the history of NPR, PBS and its affiliates, with some space to imagine public media's future. We accept academic articles repurposed for wide readership. Plus, we pay. Please circulate!

For those wishing a deeper dive into questions of #museum labels and how to reach the busy and distracted public.

A few seconds in which to capture or lose their interest--a lifetime of experience and wisdom behind the few words they will see

British police have killed fewer people in the last 100 years than American police kill in an average month.

Policing in America is an ongoing tragedy.