Jianhao has also written a short introduction to his article on the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social blog here: socialhistory.org.uk/shs_exchange...
26.02.2026 14:27 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Jianhao has also written a short introduction to his article on the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social blog here: socialhistory.org.uk/shs_exchange...
26.02.2026 14:27 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Great to see my PhD student @jianhaoxu.bsky.social's first article out in @cultsochistory.bsky.social! It's a fascinating analysis of media reporting of young people's suicides in 1930s China & how young people themselves responded to this www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #histchild #skystorians
26.02.2026 14:26 — 👍 11 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 0
Its Miscellany Monday! Here's one of my old ones! Butler, "Performing Anti-clericalism: Rioting in Church and against Clergymen in Late Medieval England| (2022). Enjoy! legalhistorymiscellany.com/2022/02/18/p...
16.02.2026 15:04 — 👍 9 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Want to impress someone special this Valentines Day? 'Medieval Love Letters' by Myra Stokes and our own Ad Putter has some helpful medieval love letter templates, including 'How to dissuade women from taking the veil' and 'Persuading someone to marry for money'! #medievalsky #skystorians
13.02.2026 15:08 — 👍 19 🔁 11 💬 1 📌 0
🚨 We have heard that the County Archaeologist for Hampshire is being made redundant, with no plans to replace him. 🚨
If you live in Hampshire please write to your MP and Councillors.
If you live elsewhere treasure and support your County Archaeologists, and stand by to protect them. 🏺
Official statement from Bangor University Debating and Political Society, rejecting Reform UK’s demand that they be allowed to address the society.
I’m really proud of Bangor University students today. Very much in the spirit of Penrhyndeudraeth lad Bertrand Russell, when he said that “nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from an association between us”, when invited to debate Oswald Mosley.
10.02.2026 13:18 — 👍 56 🔁 16 💬 1 📌 1
Looking forward to having the formidable @etreharne.bsky.social at @leedsims.bsky.social! The seminar is free and hybrid. There is still time to register if you’re interested!
#medievalsky #manuscriptstudies
coming up soon! I'll be in/ around Boston for a while after this talk so hope to see you all soon! #medievalsky
09.02.2026 17:45 — 👍 19 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0Incantation bowls were also a part of ancient Jewish tradition www.myjewishlearning.com/article/magi...
08.02.2026 15:27 — 👍 39 🔁 10 💬 2 📌 0
The excellent Mass Observation Project is asking people who identify as queer to share with them their normal day, specifically 12 February massobs.org.uk/2026/01/07/w...
02.02.2026 14:34 — 👍 5 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Front page of 'News for Citizens', news sheet published by the Young Women's Christian Association in March 1943. It is a special edition on the Beveridge Report and includes a cartoon showing some of the different categories of people affected by the proposed welfare reforms (wage earners, self-employed, the 'housewife', 'the man of means', the schoolboy and grandfather). The rest of the page provides information about the background to the report and the proposals. From the archives of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), document reference MSS.243/1/9/3/2.
"The first time that the housewife has been considered as a person contributing to the community"
In 1943 the YWCA assessed how the proposals of the Beveridge Report would affect women - in paid and unpaid work.
More sources on Beveridge & the British welfare state at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...
In Medieval Europe ships called cogs revolutionised shipping simply by their size. A cog named Svælget 2 was recently found off the coast of Copenhagen: it’s 28 metres from bow to stern and, preserved under sand, its rigging is still intact. buff.ly/tqiJIJQ
#ShareGoodNewsToo
I really could keep on going - I can't think of a single module I didn't love as an undergrad. 20th century China, medieval England's relationships with Scotland/Wales/Ireland, the emergence of civilisation (I got to write about prehistoric Japan), and maritime archaeology were all deeply enjoyable.
02.02.2026 14:58 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Never mind jobs you had, tell me five classes you took at university.
1. Ancient apocalyptic Abrahamic texts.
2. Making of modern India through nationalist literature.
3. The world of 1001 Arabian Nights.
4. Medieval love, sex, and marriage.
5. The Roman Army in Britain (Vindolanda tablets!).
2026 HSS Dissertation Travel Grant Applications are Open We are excited to announce that applications for the new HSS Dissertation Travel Grant are now open. This grant supports dissertation research activities, with an emphasis on travel to sources, for PhD students in the history of science and technology working on their dissertation proposal or dissertation itself. Graduate student members from any university are eligible to apply. The application includes a two-page, single-spaced research proposal, two-page cv, a short budget detailing anticipated expenses, and a letter of support from a faculty member in the applicant's program. Individual grants may be up to US$2,500. Applications will be open until Tuesday, March 31.
HSS Dissertation Travel Grant to support travel to sources for PhD students in history of science and technology working on their dissertation. Grants may be up to US$2,500. Grad students from any university are eligible
Deadline Tuesday, March 31.
hssonline.org/page/dissert...
#HPS
This trend is giving me life. College is cool, knowledge is great. The liberal arts is rad. Being well rounded is the GOAT.
Fund all colleges and universities. We should be throwing money at them. Make it affordable for all. Let people take underwater basket weaving if they choose.
Saving this for the next time a non-medievalist colleague (always male) tells me proudly that they're doing Federici in a theory course
31.01.2026 16:31 — 👍 36 🔁 10 💬 2 📌 0
A line of women in blue camouflage uniforms and blue berets disembarking at an airport.
#OnThisDay, 31 Jan 2013, women in Paris are officially allowed to wear trousers.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights, lifted the ban as “incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men”.
The 1799 law had been widely ignored.
1/3
Seven-year-old Mary Walker has scoured scientific journals but has yet to find any peer-reviewed evidence that kissing minor injuries makes them “all better”.
31.01.2026 10:01 — 👍 169 🔁 28 💬 4 📌 0
Giving this a boost. Grateful for the suggestions so far and wondering if anyone has additional ideas.
What do we know about interactions between #earlymodern elites and the people who helped manage their property and interests?
“We immediately recognized this as a medicinal preparation used by the famous Roman physician Galen." 🏺🧪💩
29.01.2026 13:51 — 👍 24 🔁 6 💬 5 📌 2
Be sure to check out the History Ledger, an EHS initiative that provides videos/resources to those teaching and studying A-Level economic history courses.
They are free, available on the EHS website and in the EHS - The History Ledger playlist, on the society Youtube channel.
#EHS100
Leaflet issued during the May 1926 General Strike in support of the government: The General Strike. MESSAGE FROM THE PRIME MINISTER. Constitutional Government is being attacked. Let all good Citizens whose livelihood and labour have thus been put in peril bear with fortitude and patience the hardships with which they have been so suddenly confronted. Stand behind the Government, who are doing their part, confident that you will co-operate in the measures they have undertaken to preserve the liberties and privileges of the people of these Islands. The laws of England are the people’s birthright. The laws are in your keeping. You have made Parliament their guardian. The General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin. STANLEY BALDWIN.
Front page of the Daily Graphic, 13 May 1926. It includes photographs of strike breaking activities, including medical students and soldiers moving goods.
The Leeds Citizen, a special strike bulletin published on behalf of the local strike committee. This edition dates from 8 May 1926 and includes the Trades Union Congress' statement that the General Strike was an industrial dispute (rather than a revolutionary challenge to the constitution), information about the local situation, and a report on debates in the House of Commons.
Leaflet issued by the Trades Union Congress during the May 1926 General Strike: TRADES UNION CONGRESS CONSTITUTION NOT CHALLENGED The General Council of the Trades Union Congress does NOT challenge Constitution. It is not seeking to substitute unconstitutional government. Nor is it desirous of undermining our Parliamentary institutions. AN INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE The sole aim of the Council is to secure for the miners a decent standard of life. The Council is engaged in an Industrial dispute. THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS. THE ONLY ISSUE In any settlement, the only issue to be decided will be an industrial issue, not political, not constitutional. Printed and Published by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, 33 Eccleston Square, London, S.W
As the General Strike centenary gets closer, we've been boosting our digitised content!
560 original documents have now been digitised & are free to access, including strike bulletins, radio transcripts, union communications & more... #GeneralStrike100
cdm21047.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/coll...
"Our standing rule is: If one of us brings up using GenAI in any of our work, then it's safe to assume we've been assimilated by The Thing and should be burned alive by Kurt Russell," said a game design consultant in the US.
29.01.2026 23:45 — 👍 8337 🔁 3098 💬 46 📌 161
#DigitalFriday 2. new medieval studies resources on archive.org
bsky.app/profile/stev...
Martin Shuster sdSreptoon1hm9t97235g2u5796glgh0435l6iaf05it1l232lc20cllf4g0 · So apparently on Sunday Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said in a press conference that "we have got children hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside ... many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s gonna write that children’s story about Minnesota.” Then on Monday--one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day--the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted in response that: "Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges." As someone who spent a year at the Museum as a fellow doing research, I feel embarrassed for the institution. First, it is very clear that Walz wasn't drawing an equivalence, he was drawing an analogy. So this kind of response reminds me of the atrocious positions that the ADL has started to carve out, and why it has become mostly a sycophantic joke, now seemingly mostly geared towards currying favor with MAGA.
![Not unrelatedly, I am noticing that a lot of--oftentimes even well-intentioned--people are spending time trying to delineate exactly which historical referent best captures what's going on now, as if we have to pick only one. There is the now well-circulated meme that says: no, ICE isn't the Gestapo, it's actually American--it's slave catchers. But this is a kind of odd distinction: the Nazis were themselves influenced by the Americans (if you're curious read the excellent book by James Whitman, _Hitler's American Model_). Nazis came here and studied American legal systems and statutes ... and remarkably a group of "liberal" Nazis decided that they couldn't make German laws as *extreme* as American ones (and this "liberal" group in fact won the day; German laws weren't as extreme as many of ours). Equally, Nazi jurists and theorists like Carl Schmitt were deeply influenced by American notions of manifest destiny. So the Nazi and American contexts were already fused. The idea of foreign/domestic is already quite complex in this context. (And this is before we even speak of the many actual Nazis that existed here and the many people who materially supported Hitler and the regime).
We can complicate this picture more by noting that Nazism itself, even apart from these American influences, wasn't something that sprouted up out of thin air: it, too, had a(n experimental) history. Many of its barbaric practices and aims were developed and tested on colonial and imperial victims (as I have written elsewhere: there is a direct line from Shark Island concentration camp [called frequently simply "Death Island" where the Germans committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people] to the entire Nazi camp system). Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire drew our attention to this already in the middle of the last century.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ybkylffhwhn2an2ic2lxh76k/bafkreifucubotcz54scclzmnpxlnv6x5olf2zb6ow5xufzdyqbflhuzcn4@jpeg)
Not unrelatedly, I am noticing that a lot of--oftentimes even well-intentioned--people are spending time trying to delineate exactly which historical referent best captures what's going on now, as if we have to pick only one. There is the now well-circulated meme that says: no, ICE isn't the Gestapo, it's actually American--it's slave catchers. But this is a kind of odd distinction: the Nazis were themselves influenced by the Americans (if you're curious read the excellent book by James Whitman, _Hitler's American Model_). Nazis came here and studied American legal systems and statutes ... and remarkably a group of "liberal" Nazis decided that they couldn't make German laws as *extreme* as American ones (and this "liberal" group in fact won the day; German laws weren't as extreme as many of ours). Equally, Nazi jurists and theorists like Carl Schmitt were deeply influenced by American notions of manifest destiny. So the Nazi and American contexts were already fused. The idea of foreign/domestic is already quite complex in this context. (And this is before we even speak of the many actual Nazis that existed here and the many people who materially supported Hitler and the regime). We can complicate this picture more by noting that Nazism itself, even apart from these American influences, wasn't something that sprouted up out of thin air: it, too, had a(n experimental) history. Many of its barbaric practices and aims were developed and tested on colonial and imperial victims (as I have written elsewhere: there is a direct line from Shark Island concentration camp [called frequently simply "Death Island" where the Germans committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people] to the entire Nazi camp system). Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire drew our attention to this already in the middle of the last century.
In noting this, let me be clear that this does not erase or make less relevant the centuries of European antisemitism that fed into the Nazi project. That's the whole point: these are all related phenomena. European antisemitism influenced the way in which European colonialism and imperialism operated against indigenous populations in the Americas. Strikingly, as innovations mounted in "administering" the Americas, antisemitic policies also evolved in Europe. Administrators (oppressors) would sometimes even move from one sphere to the other and back. They were all synergistic (a brilliant examination of some of this is María Elena Martínez's _Genealogical Fictions_). (And one could, btw, also tell an important story about the development of Islamophobia in this very same orbit, since policies stumbled on in the Americas came back to oppress both Jews and Muslims in Europe). This is all to say: Walz's analogy is not at all far fetched. The history of oppression doesn't move in any kind of neat or purely linear fashion. It is oftentimes recursive, shifting, necessarily granular. Neither is it a competitive history. It is, in the words of Michael Rothberg, a *multidirectional* history. Drawing these analogies in fact *helps* us understand all the involved phenomena better. At least this is what "Never Again" has meant and means to me: it does not mean only never again for me or other Jews. And it does not mean never again only something that looks exactly like the Nazi genocide. I think also, btw, that this is what it meant for Otto Frank, who spent time *editing* his daughter's diary so that it could be available to anyone, not only to Jews.
For ultimately the Nazi genocide--any genocide--is a highly mediated phenomenon: it consists of many diffuse events, marshals an immense amount of people and institutions, relies on sometimes conflicting or contradictory cross-sections of society, and, indeed, emerges out of a process that does not neatly, especially as its happening, have a clear beginning, middle, and end, but rather arranges for itself a kind of constellation that harnesses a range of actors, perspectives, and also histories (this is one way to understand how German colonial projects or anti-communism or ableism were no less crucial to Nazism than European antisemitism). The genocidal outcomes emerge from the structural forms society adopts. And all of this without in any way eliding the special role that Jews played in the apocalyptic Nazi worldview.
Please read this extremely thoughtful & careful post on Tim Walz, Anne Frank, & the US Holocaust Memorial Museum from Martin Shuster, philosopher, Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, former Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow, & scholar of genocide, the Holocaust, & authoritarianism:
30.01.2026 01:23 — 👍 987 🔁 475 💬 2 📌 0
My latest magazine article in @epoch-history.bsky.social in which I look at medieval Irish and Welsh literature is out now! #medievalsky #skystorians
www.epoch-magazine.com/post/medieva...
If I'm asked '#Brigid: goddess or saint?' one more time...! Can people not see that's akin to the madonna/whore complex? A real woman founded an inclusive community in Kildare that became a huge institution for many centuries. There's so much to unpack about what we expect from our female icons.
30.01.2026 11:09 — 👍 24 🔁 8 💬 2 📌 1
Happy St Brigid's weekend! To celebrate we bring you a journey through Europe w/Prof. Jean-Michel Picard, UCD. He has unreal stories of hunting down manuscripts (incl. Napoleon & nazis!) & helps us understand the appeal of Brigid in lands far from Kildare! #brigid open.spotify.com/episode/0Bl4...
30.01.2026 11:16 — 👍 69 🔁 32 💬 4 📌 1
Mosley
Tatler's profile of the Mitford family includes the line "Sir Oswald and Diana Mosley, became key figures in Britain’s far-right political movement in the 1930s" but makes no mention of the name of Mosley's party, the British Union of Fascists.
www.tatler.com/gallery/most...