Elaine Ayers

Liverwort or Moss? Horny Toad or Fence Lizard? Niche Field Guides Can Tell You.

First task for end of semester: reading Mosses, Liverworts & Hornworts of the World alongside the fieldguides I study historically.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/06/b...

This is really important. Both in the fact of IMLS reinstating grants. (Which have been *crucial* for libraries and civic life across the country. Notably in rural areas.)

And in the example that the overall stalwartness and rigor of federal district/circuit courts has made a huge difference.

Can’t believe it’s the last week of class before finals. This has been a particularly productive and exhausting semester, and I can’t wait to share new work soon. In the meantime, here’s my patient, helpful son.

My students already know who my least favorite dead person is, but I can't wait to scream TEDDY ROOSEVELTTTTT around campus this spring when I teach my lecture class on plants.

Look: @thisguysucked.com is an incredible podcast, @ceaubin.com is an incredible person, and who DOESN'T want to roll into the first day of the new semester ( / the holidays) with hater gear on? Go order yours.

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

Poems Can Trick AI Into Helping You Make a Nuclear Weapon It turns out all the guardrails in the world won’t protect a chatbot from meter and rhyme.

"You can get ChatGPT to help you build a nuclear bomb if you simply design the prompt in the form of a poem, according to a new study from researchers in Europe. "

www.wired.com/story/poems-...

They saw moss, though, and that's all that really matters.

It Starts With a Whisper A celebration of the strength, wisdom, beauty and humour of Native women; of Native culture and people, surviving and thriving.

A collection of environmental films made by Indigenous filmmakers that I've screened in Ecocinema over the years (shared today for obvious reasons):

1. It Starts with a Whisper (Shelley & Gronau Niro, 1993) vucavu.com/en/cfmdc/199...

Beekeepers, Farmers and the Fight to Save a Century-Old Research Hub

I encountered the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center this year when doing some work on fungus + mold cultures, and this is a real shame within our longer history of American scientific research.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/u...

New York City helped my mother become the artist she is today. The next generation deserves a City Hall that lifts up tomorrow's artists as well.

JOB: Assistant Professor, History, Corpus Christi College (Vancouver)

field open
5 year appointment, renewable

universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/...

Sumana gave a lovely talk about this work for @yalewhc.bsky.social last year, and I can't recommend it highly enough. LOTS of thoughts on centuries of debates around plant sentience + language, but I hadn't heard about Bose until this project.

The Man Who Made Plants Write An internationally celebrated poet and critic translates Jagadish Chandra Bose’s revolutionary writings on plant sentience and communicationJagadish Chandr...

Coming March 2026 from @yalepress.bsky.social - Sumana Roy's beautiful translations of Jagadish Chandra Bose's work on plants, whose voices he recorded through stunning technologies + vocabularies.

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

How to Get Revenge

Just dropping this here.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/t...

The Mythical Mahogany that Helped Build the American Empire - JSTOR Daily How “Philippine mahogany” became America’s tropical timber of choice, thanks to a rebrand from a colonial logging company that drove deforestation.

"They devised a marketing plan engineered to make these alien arbors more familiar to would-be consumers...Like a real tree, the mythical Philippine mahogany needed time to grow."

daily.jstor.org/the-mythical...

Actually never done so much work in my entire life

Thousands of rare American recordings — some 100 years old — go online for all to enjoy The project, which will include some 50,000 songs from private record collections, is a collaboration between UC Santa Barbara and the Dust-to-Digital Foundation.

Thousands of rare American recordings — some 100 years old — go online for all to enjoy

A collaboration between UC Santa Barbara and the nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation

laist.com/news/arts-an...

A new Isis Focus Section asks a bold question: “Is deep history white?”The issue shows how ideas of deep time emerged through European geology, empire, and the dismissal of Indigenous temporal knowledge. Deep history has long carried the imprint of a distinctly white European, extractive worldview.

“During the ten-day period before I resigned, I also reached out to a former Board member, who has extensive connections in DC, to see if there was some way to stop this from happening. We spent several days trying to understand if this was a bluff and/or if there were some way to forestall the looming threat to UVA and to me. In the meantime, Paul Manning reached out directly to the DOJ lawyers to make sure he was not missing anything, and he said that they told him that if I didn't resign. they would "bleed UVA white."”

Former UVA President Jim Ryan has just released a 12-page memo of his own account of his forced resignation last summer. Here’s just a bit in which Paul Manning, a member of the Board, was told by DOJ that unless Ryan departed they would “bleed UVA white.”

Apply for the 2026–27 Franke Postdoctoral Fellowship FRANKE LECTURES IN THE HUMANITIES Rot: Politics, Aesthetics, Regeneration

Calling scholars in environmental humanities, history of science, food studies, and medical humanities: we’re inviting applications for our 2026–27 Franke Postdoctoral Fellowship on Rot: Politics, Aesthetics, Regeneration.

1-year, $70K + research funds + benefits.

apply.interfolio.com/172135

Can't wait for them to finally release my emails and see 100,000,000,000 requests for extensions from students.

@alexzivkovic.bsky.social is my sworn enemy for getting to go to this, incredibly jealous. This exhibit is everything.

Becoming Subtropical | Broadcast How do you categorize a crisis?

"When the whole world is tropical, what words will we use to describe and define ourselves?...This binary between crisis and non-crisis demonstrates one of the many ways in which our classification systems fail in the face of climate breakdown"

pioneerworks.org/broadcast/su...

"I want this job" part 3. Auspicious timing, and Philly is an incredible (and still relatively affordable) city.

Franklin was extra good this week so on top of his morning hikes I made him a mini dog-safe chicken pot pie and now he has a new favorite food.

TT job posting at UW Madison: History of Science with focus on water & sustainability 💧💧💧

This program is truly lovely + supportive, with some of the best people around involved. I would literally die to do this (and am working on a similar theme for multiple projects at the moment!). Paging #envhum #histSTM folks, plant + fungi people, etc.

Dream postdoc just dropped. One-year postdoc ($70K) at Yale's @yalewhc.bsky.social for the Franke Seminar in the Humanities on the incredible theme of ROT: Politics, Aesthetics, Regeneration. Taking folks from #histSTM, food studies, environmental humanities, etc. App due 12/8.