Not sure what to do on a particularly rainy Friday in Bristol? ☔️ We’ve got you covered! Old English Reading Group runs at 3pm in Hattie’s office, no experience or prep required! Email harriet.soper@bristol.ac.uk for more info! ☺️
*Old Norse isn't running today but will be back next week!*
Posts by Harriet Soper
This came out earlier this week! Thank you so much to Yale University Press for all their efforts getting it to publication.
Pls sign and share this open letter to the Bristol VC, against the School of Humanities's decision to withdraw the BA in English Literature and Community Engagement (ELCE): the only part-time, flexible undergraduate degree programme available at the University forms.gle/SbyhXPSJgQTc...
WE ARE HIRING!!
Creative Writing (fiction) Pathway 3 lecturer 0.5 in the Department of English at the University of Bristol's thriving School of Humanities.
It's a 3/2 teaching load with plenty of support and mentorship from meeeeeee (others are available)!
www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...
Rosemary Sweet and I have written a book about #18thc British travellers to Spain and Portugal, and I'm really happy it's now free to download here: uclpress.co.uk/book/no-coun... (hard copies also available!) #skystorians #c18th
I'm relaunching my website, Set Yet Speaking, which will host my translations of medieval literature.
In this first post, I discuss why I'm giving this another go, why translation matters, and how a short extract from Beowulf inspired the name of the site.
nikolasgunn.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/w...
credit for this joke goes to Luisa Ostacchini and the inherent physicality of the pygmy falcon chicks at San Antonio Zoo
how your email finds me
When I pointed out King’s will lose 90% of its AHRC student-led places under the new scheme, I got piled on by the AHRC Chair claiming I was wrong and scaremongering.
It wasn’t quite 90%.
This year King’s students got 27 AHRC student-led scholarships.
Next year they’re giving us 3.
So 89% then.
Holding Harriet Soper's book "The Life Course in Old English Poetry" in front of a wall overgrown with ivy or a similar green leafy plant
New week, Old English!
Today our featured new book is "The Life Course in Old English #Poetry" by @hattiesoper.bsky.social who examines the linear & unruly paths thru human, nonhuman & more-than-human lives in #OldEnglish poems
#LiteraryStudies #AgeingStudies #AgeStudies #EnglishPoetry #MiddleAges
A HUGE well done to the CMS' own Dr Hattie Soper for being awarded the University English Book Prize 2024! 🎉🎉🎉 What an amazing and well-deserved award; we're so thrilled for you Hattie! 🥰
You can read the announcement here: universityenglish.ac.uk/announced-un...
#medievalsky #skystorians
First powerpoint slide: 'Playtime, c.800–50', with a black and white photograph by Herbert Bayer of a cluster of miniature objects – a mini ladder, mini wheels, a bone, some shells, with clouds floating in between.
Today at #isseme25!
Do you like: magic? women? magic women? history? romance? biblical poems with dodgy rhymes? Then please come to @imc-leeds.bsky.social session 837, magical learning in history and literature, Tues at 4.30pm, with @magicnotwitches.bsky.social, Harry Lewis and me,
chaired by @hattiesoper.bsky.social
A book cover depicting an illuminated manuscript miniature on parchment, predominantly using gold, blue, and peach. In a floriate rectangular frame, St. Æthelthryth stands wearing draped robes of peach and gold with a golden veil and aureole, holding two golden lilies and a golden book, and surrounded by golden Latin text announcing this as the image of St. Æthelthryth. The beige parchment background extends to the edges of the cover, bordered by pairs of ruled lines. At the top of the image is the title of the book, Light of the Everlasting Life: Disability and Crip Eschatology in Old English Literature, followed by the author’s name, Leah Pope Parker.
Look at this beautiful book cover. That shiny lady? That’s Saint Æthelthryth. Heck yes I named my cat after her.
Devastated that the Centre for Lifelong Learning @york.ac.uk is being closed after 40 years. What a loss to education in the region. Feel for students and staff. Being a tutor has been joy, doing what universities should be doing by sharing knowledge widely with our communities.
Oh I know isn’t it interesting, 1951! But I mean that the pedantic sense is early in the history of the word. I agree nitpicking as an actual activity is very important - that is why I think the pejorative sense is funny. I like your distinction between the viewpoints of picker/pickee!
I think the pedantic sense is actually very early according to the OED!
I like how “nitpicking” must date from a time when picking nits out of someone’s hair was considered needlessly pedantic
♦️ Job opportunity at UCC! ♦️ 5-year Lecturer in Old English position, commencing in September. This will be a great opportunity for someone to join a thriving department, and to really put their own mark on the discipline. Please share widely!
www.ucc.ie/en/future-hu...
The abstract for Dr Ashley's article: 'Many neurodivergent people are also trans, and lived‐experience narratives, creative practices, and research outputs have storied this intersection in powerful and capacious ways. Yet, in the face of increased antitrans hostility across the globe that relies on the mobilization of incoherent pseudologics, neurodivergent and trans persons are mutually imbricated, and in violent ways. This essay invites coalition among trans studies, critical neurodiversity studies, disability justice, and the literary health humanities to consider the effects of these violences and to think through the possibilities of choreographing shared potentials through nonnormative cocreation.'
A new article by our own Dr Abs S. Ashley has been published in a special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly ('Toward a Trans[]Crip Theory'): 'Neurotrans Affect: Choreography, Cocreation, and Coalitional Resistance'! @ainokash.bsky.social read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-...
3D-print your own medieval toy! Thanks to my amazing collaborators Beth Kimber and @noreenmasud.bsky.social
www.instructables.com/Buzz-Bones-t...
June is the time for hay making in the golden sunlight. #Medievalcalendar
BnF MS Latin 1156B; Horae ad usum romanum; 15th century; f.6r @gallicabnf.bsky.social
Congratulations on both counts! 💐💐
its time will come!
this is very beautiful and the 3D print is a masterpiece and even the bone purist in me admits that being spattered with juice from a real pig bone is not necessarily for everyone
3D-print your own medieval toy! Thanks to my amazing collaborators Beth Kimber and @noreenmasud.bsky.social
www.instructables.com/Buzz-Bones-t...
No fewer than three members of Bristol’s English Department have found their monographs shortlisted for the University English Book Prize for Outstanding First Manuscript, across the 2023 and 2024 competitions! universityenglish.ac.uk/book-prize/