When I first came to career choice as a topic for historical study, I was enchanted by George McClure's work on the "culture of profession in Late Renaissance Italy". Floored to see the article his work inspired–from which a dissertation grew–cited in his new book's conclusion. 🗃️

Today was the last day of my first semester on the tenure track. Tomorrow I'll be heading to Central Asia for 1.5 months of research.

Given that I began making contingency plans for leaving academia around this time last year, I am both relieved and overjoyed.
🗃️

My first semester on the tenure track has been quite an adjustment, but I am lucky to finish it with grad students doing fascinating work: anti-feminist women writing on motherhood and marriage c. 1900; the reception of Dickens in political speeches; cultural responses to shell-shock therapies...

Ran into a student with her 5-year-old daughter. She said she wished I would be her daughter's professor, too—thus I realized that if our retirement age remains 70, I still have *41* years of teaching ahead of me. I might just still be there to teach her grandchildren...

I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.

Very excited to participate in evaluating applications for this year's Critical Language Scholarship program in Russian and Arabic. As long as there's at least some avenues open to funding language study...

I want to write about the history of real estate just so I can make a pun using, or at least a witty reference to, the fact that the Danish word lejlighed means both "apartment" and "opportunity."

Will do, thanks!

I have some grant funding for research assistance in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. If you know (preferably) history grad students who might be interested in working with me on the history of STEM education/professions in Soviet Central Asia, please send them my way. 🗃️

From the life of Parisian tenants:
1. Eviction, 1912
2. Association: the inaugural meeting of the 12th arrondissement's tenants association, 1924

From the life of renters in Paris:
1. Eviction of tenants, 1912
2. The inaugural meeting of the tenants' association of12 arrondissement, 1924

My preferred language is Ottoman Turkish but I can settle for English if we must

A lovely finance bro tried to summarize my work at the pub to make sure he got it: "So modernity is a panic attack; you are the psychologist; the book manuscript is your case notes. Right?" 🗃️

Please share this CFA with your graduate students. I am happy to sponsor applications. Nearby archives, including the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People (located at the National Library in Jerusalem), host valuable collections—including a newly indexed collection on Yugoslav Jewry.

Soviet Grandpa called and, without even exchanging pleasantries, asked (in a mildly agitated voice) why I hadn't gotten into a field that awards a Nobel Prize. "To what global recognition can historians aspire?" he inquired, deadly serious. "I mean a household-name award!"

After another brief chat with a friend who edits a journal can hardly find referees, let me remind the journal editors on here that I am rarely at capacity, usually happy to accept an assignment, and always return my feedback promptly... :) 🗃️

The great thing about teaching a grad seminar: after I shared my excitement with them, the students committed to writing their term papers on Sven Beckert's new, much-anticipated global history of capitalism — and we'll dedicate a portion of each session to progress reports. 🗃️

Every time I add 2-3 adjectives/adverbs, I hear @nmw1.bsky.social's disapproval. Then, I am left with a one-adjective sentence. At that point, I can hear @marcishore.bsky.social marking the noun, asking if I intended to draw attention to it with the adjective. I then shake my head and remove it.

The entrance ticket to the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza costs 1,450 EGP (30 USD, 26 EUR). My friend, a software engineer at an international company in Cairo, thus earns 22 tickets a month. Luckily, citizens pay 200 EGP (4 USD), so his salary buys 165 tickets...

About to kick off a peer review workshop with our brilliant @sriucl.bsky.social PhD students right now. Thanks to my colleague Alina Pelikh for hosting and I wish something like this was available when I started out.

So, you think calculus is hard? Good luck making sense of the right to vote in Habsburg Austria

(from a wonderful article by Birgitta Bader-Zaar) 🗃️

Halldór Laxness is my spirit animal. So relatable at such a young age.

Submitted my course proposals for next year, including a seminar on what Ibsen called "life-lies," the self-deceptions that sustain one's happiness, in nineteenth-century Europe: bourgeois, aristocratic, rustic idylls and those who tried to shatter them. 🗃️

I met with a university press editor 1.5 years ago -- and the advice she gave me for revising my dissertation into a book manuscript is one of the documents I use daily. It is really amazing how transformative these random strikes of generosity can be.

הזכרתי בכיתה השבוע את הנריק פונטופידן, סופר דני שזכה בפרס הנובל ב-1917. הבטחתי לסטודנטים שאתרגם להם קצת כי אין בעברית. הנה קטע קצר גם לכם, קצת אחרי שהגיבור הנוצרי וארוסתו היהודייה, בטיול בלתי מתוכנן אל האלפים, מגלים שהם חולקים סלידה, עוד מילדות, מפעמוני כנסייה:

The mark of a great book: a write-up by the inimitable Holly Case.

Recent controversies spark concern in Georgia’s booming surrogacy industry In recent years, Georgia has emerged as a major global fertility hub — yet there is no proper regulatory framework, leaving surrogates at risk.

surrogacy in #Georgia has plenty of evidence of the slide in basic governance standards across the board -- yes, profits being made, and probably some happy stories, too, but also LOTS of women left very vulnerable.

Helena Bedwell for @ocmedia.bsky.social

oc-media.org/recent-contr...

Today I spent hours crafting three paragraphs on a sermon that "hints at what other sermons do not even mention," only to do one more Google Books search, just to be sure, and find a sermon that addresses the topic clearly and forcefully. Time to call it a day.

Mini career milestone: signed my first form as someone's Ph.D. advisor!

The good news: My ESTA to enter the US was rejected due to a scribal error—some details I filled out did not match my previous visa, but that was because they entered the wrong data for my student visa.
The bad news: "It might take a while for the request to fix the erroneous details to go through."