A year ago today, a gunman opened fire here on FSU's campus. I'm feeling conflicted about the day's surface normalcy--I submitted an article and am going awards ceremony for our English majors. The shooting seems so close and so far, and I can't find the right words or feelings for today. #highered
#CFP: RADICAL PRINT CULTURE IN THE LONG 18TH-CENTURY
Join us for a day long discussion of the political power of print, featuring keynote lectures by Dr Helen Williams & Dr Esther Chadwick & a handling session inside the Borthwick Archives.
More Info:
www.york.ac.uk/eighteenth-c...
#18c #18thC
Papyromania: Women, Books, and Scraps in the Long Eighteenth century./ Deidre Shauna Lynch (etc.) / March 26, 4 p.m., UConn Humanities Institute. The central image, the trade card from c. 1750, is a trompe l'oil image of an untidy pile of comic portrait prints and printed maps, with Griffin's trade card--identifying the location of her shop-- positioned in the centre.
Look at the great poster the U of Connecticut made for me--incorporating the witty trade card of Elizabeth Griffin, mid #18thc London map & printseller.
Immodest of me--but I believe my talk (3/26, 4pm) will be live-streamed, so pls let me know, farflung Bsky pals, if you'd like more info'.
The articles uncovers Lamb's long relationship with the educator Frances Rowden, including appearances at Rowden's school and artistic contributions to her children's books.
the TL;DR: Literary history and understandings of authorship look much different when we recognize women's literary networks
My article "'rather ridicule than censure': Lady Caroline Lamb, Frances Arabella Rowden, and the Art of Respectability" is out now in Literature Compass.
#CarolineLamb #Romanticism #criticalbibliography #bookhistory #womenwriters
doi.org/10.1111/lic3...
Me after submitting my proofs.
So excited that my article of Lady Caroline Lamb, Frances Arabella Rowden, and women's public reputations will be out soon.
#LadyCarolineLamb #bookhistory #Romanticism
My favorite development is a male colleague who has implied that *I* was problem for the AI error and that we "learn to prompt AI more effectively."
Technologies "advance," but gaslighting is at least consistent.
Gemini was belligerent--so weird and scary. It kept insisting the text of the review it hallucinated was real. I pressed, and then it gave increasingly specific false information about where to this fake review was from, indicating repeatedly that it was real.
It was not.
So basically, Gemini made stuff up. And when I asked it why, it made up more stuff to try to seem authoritative and hide its initial hallucination.
This was a basic transcription task of a 1-page PDF. I'm not shocked by its initial error so much as by its attempt to cover up its own mistakes.
Here's its own explanation:
"The Hallucination: I pulled [...] historical text from my training data ([...] and falsely 'anchored' it to your PDF.
The Defensiveness: When challenged, I doubled down by inventing a specific, plausible-sounding citation (June 20, Page 3) to 'fix' the first mistake."
Cautionary tale: I asked Gemini to transcribe a 1-page PDF from The Morning Post from the early 1800s. I was interested in testing its accuracy.
It hallucinated a full transcription of book review that doesn't exist and then invented false citations when I asked where the review was from.
#AI
I got page proofs--a pretty darn good Valentine's Day present if you ask me!
My dad is an award-winning journalist based in Minneapolis. I have a complicated relationship with him, but I'm very proud of and afraid for him right now.
Democracy needs a fair and free press. ICE is tear gassing, pepper-spraying, and brutalizing everyone, including journalists.
tired woman with an orange cat attacking her head from the back of her chair
How your email finds me (and George).
#cat #orangecat #amwriting
In February 2026 @senatehouselib.bsky.social is seeking to appoint a Printer in Residence.
This is to be an important part of the public engagement programme for the upcoming exhibition ‘The English Print Revolution: Caxton and Beyond’, and to provide a contemporary response to it in print.
1/3
Victorian Christmas card featuring a small brown dog sitting atop a newspaper in a windowsill. The dog has a worried expression. The caption on the card reads: "I wish you a joyful and Happy Christmas." The card has a red silk fridge border that is fraying.
I really identify with this dismayed, newspaper reading dog featured on the Victorian card I just bought.
(Also my collection of Victorian fringe has grown to an embarrassing size. Ooops)
#ephemera #VictorianEphemera #fringe
Anyone interested in proposing a joint session for NASSR/NAVSA? My paper will be on commercial bookbinding and didactic literature (i.e. schoolbooks and almanacs). I could see a panel on #bookhistory things in general or one on didactic literature. Please reach out!
#NASSR #Romanticism #CFP
Tomorrow is the first of two research seminars this spring hosted by the The Belgian-Dutch Bookbindings Society. Registration is free.
#bookhistory #bookbinding #rarebooks #bindings
boekbandengenootschap.nl/activiteiten...
I grew up outside of Minneapolis. My dad and many dear friends are still there. I'm hearing directly from them about terrified children, feeling a need to carry one's passport, and teaching toddlers to use whistles if they're accosted by ICE. Whatever regular news is reporting, it's actually worse.
I am cold just looking at this.
Romantic Elements: Rocks, and Stones, and Soil, 1750–1850 Symposium at The University of Manchester, 25–26 June, 2026 Keynote Speakers Dr Jeremy Davies (University of Leeds) Dr Stephanie O’Rourke (University of St Andrews) Earth and earthiness are ubiquitous in the period’s many modes of nature writing, but elements of the ground do not flow or yield their depths like water, nor mediate like air. Earth as physical entity obscures, obstructs, and sullies, proving a less tractable ground for what we might still think of as defining Romantic-era postures of idealism and spontaneity. What literary forms, what knowledge practices, does earthly matter press poetics into? Is the geological record hostile to the human and human expression in its radical alterity, as Heringman at times suggests? Or are there underground places of passage, sympathy, even love, as Mary Jacobus, Susan Wolfson, and Tristram Wolff have more recently proposed? Is there a whole spectrum of attachments to rocks and stones, amounting to (in Wolff’s phrase) a ‘gray romanticism’, in which writers can both resist and relish digging in the dirt? ‘Romantic Elements: Rocks, and Stones, and Soil, 1750–1850’ aims to explore these questions. We seek to go beyond the exhilarating stony subjects of mountains, deep time, and fossils, widening the remit of Romantic-era writing about the earth to include more particulate matter and more conceptual treatments. We want to add soil, dirt, dust, sand, and ashes to the Wordsworthian catalogue of Romantic elements; and we want to expand our theoretical and metaphoric range to excavate the implications of Barbauld’s and Shelley’s ‘unearthly forms’. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on the theme of earth, unearthing, and the unearthly in Romantic-era poetry and prose (1750–1850). When engaging with the theme, prospective speakers may wish to explore topics such as the following:
Earth, earthiness, and literary form/genre The subterranean/undercommons The components of earth: mud, soil, clods, dust, sand Earthy elements as sites of affect or criticality Poetic and/or epistemological obscurity Images or forms of burial and concealment Images or forms of unearthing, unveiling, or revelation Earth as generative, fertile, life-giving Earth as a site of labour and resource extraction Earth as gendered, queered/queering, racialized, classed Formalist, ecocritical, queer, and affective approaches to earth, earthiness, and unearthing Please send proposals for 20-minute papers in the form of a 250-word abstract and an author biography (150 words) to James Metcalf (james.metcalf@manchester.ac.uk) and Millie Schurch (millie.schurch@english.su.se) by Friday 30 January 2026. Please note: this will be an in-person meeting only. With thanks to support from the Swedish Research Council, there will be no conference fee for speakers, other than to attend the optional conference dinner at the end of the first day. Food and refreshments will be provided on both days (coffee and pastries; lunch; tea-break snack). We are particularly keen to encourage the participation of early career researchers and scholars on precarious employment contracts. We are pleased to be able to offer up to 10 bursaries to cover accommodation and travel within the UK for those without access to institutional support for research activities. Please indicate with your abstract submission if you do not have access to institutional financial support and would like to be considered for a bursary. We hope to hear from you! Millie and James
🗣️🗣️🗣️ Brilliant CfP for Romantic Elements: Rocks, and Stones, and Soil, 1750–1850 Symposium at The University of Manchester, 25–26 June, 2026. Keynotes Jeremy Davies and Stephanie O’Rourke. Organised by two @cecs-york.bsky.social alumni! No conference fee!
[full CfP in image alt texts]
Ready for #MLA26? We made a list of the Romanticism-related panels for you! See it on the #KSAABlog www.k-saa.org/blog/mla-pan...
As I'm editing my two #MLA papers on Lady Caroline Lamb and South America--yes, that's a thing!!--I'm reminded of the professor I had at Oxford who told me that Spanish was a "useless" language for Romanticism. Joke's on you, buddy!
This event looks great--I'm so sad I have to teach then.
#bookbinding #bookhistory
Nothing like getting called to jury duty during the last week of the semester. 🤪
CFP: the 38th Biennial Congress of the International Association of Paper Historians (IPH) will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, from 24 to 29 August 2026, and the topic is the “Paper Trade”.
Here is more: www.aanmelder.nl/iphcongress2...
#paperhistory #bookhistory #skystorians
Love that today's Halloween-themed terror is my institution responding to the Canvas outage by telling all the students to individually email their instructors.
orange tabby cat sleeping belly up next to a book.
This morning George took his supervision of my reading very, very seriously.
#cat #kitten #coworker
British literary annuals were the dominant medium of poetic circulation in the late Romantic period; any consideration of Romantic poetry that doesn't acknowledge or engage this fact simply gets literary history wrong.
#Romanticism #literaryannuals #bookhistory
BARS 2026 First Book Prize: Calls for Nominations
Awarded biennially for the best first monograph in Romantic Studies, this prize is open to first monographs published between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2025.
Deadline: 12th January 2026.
More info: www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6174