Dr. Barry Torch

Challenge:

Male historians: cite women

Female academics: quit caping for the men. You can be kind, supportive, and rigorous simultaneously. I have faith in you.

Challenge-level: still impossible, evidently

Challenge accepted because holy shit it needs doing regularly/all the time/forever.

Book rest, c. 1630-1670 Cut out oak board, with decorated inlay in holly and bogwood. (Victoria & Albert Museum)

Because reading equipment from the past is always nice to gaze on.

CFP IS OUT FAM. Anyone want to do this?? I'll get the session proposal out. All you gotta do is read the book and turn up ready to talk about it?

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

As it's the start of #WomensHistoryMonth today, your reminder that there are LOADS of women who were active in archaeology, history and heritage @beyondnotables.bsky.social database! beyond-notability.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Main_Page

There’s a gallows humour joke to make here about how easy it must be to write books if we can just be a hack.

I KNOW it’s bait and I’m still irritated by it. Why is he doing this again?

I am not taking the bait on that new Stephen Greenblatt book because I’ve been done with him for too long now

“Hey Siri, what are historians?”

Does anyone happen to have access to Brill's Italian Reformation Online resource? They've digitised this manuscript (the libro di memorie of Vincenzo Burlamachi) and I'd love to see it! primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/itali...

Btw I'm putting together a CFP and eventually some panels for #scsc26 on "the colonial reformations" if anyone is interested/has ideas. #reformazing

Congratulations!!!

Oh and if people want a copy, feel free to free to DM me

Virginia Reinburg, "How Menocchio's Ordeal Began: Clerical sex Abuse and the Catholic Church in the Sixteenth and Twenty-First Centuries." *Huntington Library Quarterly* Volume 88, Numbers 1-2 (Spring/Summer 2025): 149-167. #earlymodern #historyarticle #articlestoread

"To put it in terms that supply the missing link in the chain of events: Men in positions of authority used sex as a tactic of domination over the less powerful." An important article by @vreinburg.bsky.social looking at patterns of clerical sex abuse highlighting Ginzburg's famous Menocchio.

Just saying, if a Canadian applicant is needed, I know a few people (including myself!) who would love a topic like this

Anyone else? Back from RSA and lining up fall plans in Chi?

God I WISH! I’m not travelling to the US right now or I absolutely would!

Great book, amazing topic. Can’t wait to purchase and read it!

a man in a tuxedo and bow tie is smiling and says `` very sneaky sir '' . ALT: a man in a tuxedo and bow tie is smiling and says `` very sneaky sir '' .

I mean, I technically don’t. Guess I’m super sneaky.

There are so many other things to critique Netanyahu for, that if people bring up his “original” last name, I always feel weirded out by that.

It’s so common to come across the assertion that books were luxury objects exclusively for the elite in the Middle Ages that I want to guest curate a massive exhibition called “Meh-nuscripts: Books for the Many,” which features just workaday or unremarkable objects.

The photo shows four images of the same Roman iron stylus (pen) one below the other, with knib to the left. This stylus is octagonal in shape, with an inscription dot-punched along its length on four alternate sides. The stylus is 132 mm long and 5 mm thick, and the letters are circa 2 mm high. The four images of the pen show the four lines of inscribed text (highlighted) which read: ‘ab urbe v[e]n[i] munus tibi gratum adf(e)ro acul[eat]um ut habe[a]s memor[ia]m nostra(m) rogo si fortuna dar[e]t quo possem largius ut longa via ceu sacculus est (v)acuus’ Translated as ‘I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me.
I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able (to give) as generously as the way is long (and) as my purse is empty.’ This inscription is generally interpreted by scholars as a humorous, tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment by the giver of the cheapness of the gift. The pen was used to write on wax-filled wooden writing tablets. Found in London (Roman ‘Londinium’) by MOLA, during excavations for Bloomberg’s European Headquarters in 2010–2014 . Photo by Juan Jose Fuldain for MOLA

Timeless humour!

A 2,000 year-old Roman souvenir pen with a joke inscription roughly equivalent to:

“I went to Rome and all I got you was this cheap pen!" 😂

Dated circa 70 AD, this iron stylus pen was recovered in London during excavations by MOLA. 📷 Juan Jose Fuldain/MOLA

#Archaeology

As someone who completed an article working FT (and currently waiting on peer review - eeep!), congratulations, Kathleen! It’s a huge deal and I’m sure they’re great words!! We’re in your corner! 🎉

"And we understand that these things are suggested to us by many very close friends not as a reproach, but out of the affection of friendly admonition." - Giovanni Bussi, preface to the Aulus Gellius print of 1469 - somehow talking about peer review 500 years in advance #skystorians #earlymodernity

So I see that the tradition of marketing your own books is QUITE old!

Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous

BAD BUNNY SCARES ME!

It's a mystery why they wouldn't run my Super Bowl commercial for ShammAI, the only LLM that tells you that your question is stupid and you should be able to figure this out yourself

This is amazing. No notes.