Brian Ulrich

I remember when I was that student, and respect them =) The grading time is worth it if they take the feedback

Was someone posting about unenthusiastic students earlier? I my 200-level history research methods course with a minimum-10-page paper, I have a 37-pager and a 27-pager among 13 students

Medieval Pilgrimage - Arc Humanities Press This book offers a fresh, approachable look at medieval pilgrimage in the Christian West, the first of its kind in over twenty years and the first to take ac...

A cool new book on Medieval European #Pilgrimage is now out with @archumanities.bsky.social and 25% off for the rest of the year with order code ARC! #medievalsky

www.arc-humanities.org/978180270224...

Last week the @historians.org Council decided to deny its members the opportunity to vote on two resolutions—one in solidarity with Gaza and one condemning the sustained assault on “core principles of education” in the US and abroad—at the organization’s conference next month. 1/ 🗃️

To Root Out Wokeness in the Course Catalog, This Texas University Is Turning to AI “The AI was upset with my use of the phrase ‘women's rights movement.’”

“School officials have created a Microsoft Copilot prompt to review course descriptions with an eye toward avoiding ‘advocacy-oriented or prescriptive terms.’”

Terms: “dismantling, decolonizing, interrogating, challenging, centering, combating, liberation, resistance, activism, justice oriented”

Critical thinking, including how to gather, evaluate, and draw conclusions from evidence, was already a rare and vanishing skill before the rise of Chatbots and the attack on the humanities…

Tenured US professor fired over pro-Palestinian protests contests dismissal Sang Hea Kil is first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to the protests

So at SJSU, one professor assaulted a student and faced a temporary suspension, and Dr. Sang Hea Kil attends campus protests and gets fired?

There is no justification for this. SJSU is a unionized public university. These are battles we really can't concede.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

60-150,000 people. Jesus Christ.

Ship Library on Instagram: "While you all work diligently to complete your final assignments, have you ever considered what it was like to find books in the library before the computer? With the incre... 14 likes, 0 comments - shiplibrary on December 3, 2025: "While you all work diligently to complete your final assignments, have you ever considered what it was like to find books in the library before...

If you want to feel old, read my university library's post telling students about card catalogs in days of yore

Our office has clients caught up in this. Hearing from colleagues nationwide about people having their naturalization oath ceremonies canceled. Some of the affected people aren't even subject to the travel ban due to other acquired citizenship, but they are still being caught up.

“Israeli settlers’ attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have reached a historic high. Victims, Israeli activists and human rights groups argue that, contrary to Israel’s claims that these acts are carried out by a few…individuals, a state-supported system enables and protects those responsible.”

Thanks Google AI for the helpful summary of Greg Gause’s Foreign Affairs article “The Price of Order.”

Happy get a fundraising email from every organization that you have ever interacted with in your life day

Apparently in the Texas Tech system, any content which references heterosexual relations must be pre-approved? (because heterosexuality is a sexual orientation, and everything involving sexual orientation must be reviewed?)

my colleague Candace Buckner! her dissertation:

cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/diss...

This @archumanities.bsky.social book is 25% off with order code ARC25 for the rest of the year!

MEM Book Prize

"Black Knights compellingly re-frames Arabic epic within a broader global history of race, thus prompting medievalists [...] to reconsider how racial formations, heroic imaginaries, and epic narrative structures intersect across time and space."

Sah-weet.

www.middleeastmedievalists.com/book-prize/

When I saw this as someone in a different field, a name jumped into my head that was apparently correct

Our #StAndrewsDay sale is live!

We're sharing the celebrations with you by offering 50% off all published and pre-order books over the weekend!

Enjoy!
https://edin.ac/32O7hNr

Arabs in the Early Islamic Empire Arabs in the Early Islamic Empire

This weekend is @edinburghup.bsky.social's St. Andrew's Day sale, when everything is 50% off! This includes my dense monograph about the integration of the tribally organized al-Azd's integration into the state structures of the early caliphate, including some material on the conquest of Sind

I have occasionally whimsically described myself as "acquiring lore"

This newly released study- which alas costs $120 for the print and electronic editions both- looks incredibly interesting and very much up my proverbial alley:

The book isn't that new, and don't discount how prosperous the Gulf was by premodern standards

In addition to the actual Filipino cuisine, a Filipino was involved in the creation of #Dubai #chocolate

Fake sources using my name keep cropping up.

Here, a former senior military official from Romania, Corneliu Pivariu, cites me in an article for Diplomat Magazine: diplomatmagazine.eu/2025/11/25/s...

It's entirely made up, presumably by his AI ghost writer. I haven’t written for Carnegie in years.

Ooh!

700 Years of Persian Manuscripts Now Digitized & Free Online Too often those in power lump thousands of years of Middle Eastern religion and culture into monolithic entities to be feared or persecuted. But at least one government institution is doing exactly th...

700 Years of Persian Manuscripts Now Digitized & Free Online

The Prophet’s mihrab, with the “Perfumed Column” immediately behind it, in the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina

News to me, but apparently this article is out now in #openaccess!

I study the perfuming and ritualization of spaces associated with the memory of the Prophet Muhammad in early Islamic Medina. Part of a special issue on Scents in Medieval Material Culture

www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1...

Asked a student how he was doing and he responded "Living the dream one nightmare at a time"
If that doesnt capture the absurdity and dread of this moment

Out now in Oxford Bibliographies in Classics: My biblio on "Jews in the Roman empire." My goal was to invite classicists/ancient historians into the rich world of rabbinic literature, which can transform (if we let it) how we talk about the Roman empire

www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/docu...