THEY ARE GONE. THEY ARE DONE.

Closes at 7pm Central European time.

Elections day in Hungary. Send whatever vibes you can.

This is entirely bonkers :) Not really the style I would like to (or could) emulate but it is hilarious (particularly as I was a student of cultural anthropology struggling with the idea of fieldword), will read when I have the opportunity.

Another BNF day today - let me know if you have quick things to check, happy to help.

Really liked this one!

In French this time!

That travel writing is not some sort of 'true account' of the visited country, or even of the 'thoughts of the author', and that using some amount of fiction in travelogues has been the norm more or less at all times.

BNF day today - drop me a word in the next two hours if you have a small thing you would like to have checked.

Je viens de lire son livre "L'échange des princesses", j'ai tout de suite pensé à elle!

Yes, I am looking or writing IN French. I will be looking at the Blois etc programmes, but I am also looking at possibly older examples. Thanks Surekha!

What are your favourite French books of 'narrative' history, for larger audiences? Any period, any theme - looking for examples of great, accessible writing.

This is my traditional @alcs.co.uk appreciation post. It is truly appreciated.

Off to France today. First stop Angers, where I give the plenary at a conference on travelling children, followed by a few days of poking around in Paris. After a nonstop whirlwind semester, and with the sight of the world on fire, I need to calm down, be cool to enjoy all this as much as possible.

Now here is something that doesn't happen everyday: I am about to see an unpublished manuscript of Madame de Genlis, famous French educator. I worked on her novels, her guidebooks (which are also language books), her memoirs which contain her travels - but never encountered this manuscript. Excited!

Viatica, HS 8, 2025 : La littérature de voyage au prisme de l'écopoétique (dir. Yvan Daniel & Alain Romestaing Viatica, HS 8 | 2025 : La littérature de voyage au prisme de l'écopoétique Sous la direction de Yvan Daniel et Alain Romestaing   Dossier Yvan Daniel et Alain Romestaing Introduction [Texte intégral] ...

(cont.) ... Davide Vago, Odile Gannier, Pierre Schoentjes, Jean-Baptiste Bernard, Nina Rocipon et Haila Koo. www.fabula.org/actualites/1... Aussi, comptes rendus des livres de Catherine Pinguet, Jean-Jacques Bavoux, Christina Kullberg, Eva Johanna Holmberg et Philippe Antoine - Gilles Louÿs (dirs).

Vient de paraître: numéro hors-série 8 de la revue Viatica, intitulé "La littérature de voyage au prisme de l'écopoétique". Dirigé par Yvan Daniel et Alain Romestaing, articles par Sylvie Requemora, Anne-Gaëlle Weber, Daniel López, Virginie Teller, Pascale Auraix-Jonchière, Philippe Antoine (cont.)

(cont.) ... Davide Vago, Odile Gannier, Pierre Schoentjes, Jean-Baptiste Bernard, Nina Rocipon and Haila Koo. www.fabula.org/actualites/1... Also featuring reviews of books by Catherine Pinguet, Jean-Jacques Bavoux, Christina Kullberg, Eva Johanna Holmberg et Philippe Antoine - Gilles Louÿs (dirs).

The latest issue of 'Viatica', journal of travel literature, is out. It is a special issue on travel and ecopoetics, edited by Yvan Daniel and Alain Romestaing, with articles by Sylvie Requemora, Anne-Gaëlle Weber, Daniel López, Virginie Teller, Pascale Auraix-Jonchière, Philippe Antoine (cont.)

Off to Paris, with a conference in Le Havre and an archives day in Rouen in the middle. If you have a quick Archives nationales or Bnf query, I might be able to help, just let me know in time (today for the Archives as I'm going tomorrow).

Sames.

Lemon squares - one tray uses up 5-6 lemons. Would recommend reducing sugar compared to most recipes, if you are happy with tangy favours. Can be frozen.

We are now escalating our efforts! @ucu.org.uk

With just over 830 signatories, we are looking for 1000+ so we can take these requests higher on up.

Please do sign against outsourcing @uniofsurrey.bsky.social

Job klaxon: The Department of Modern Languages is looking for an Assistant in French. Lovely students, great colleagues, unbeatable location. Research training and contribute to content teaching possible! jobs.aber.ac.uk/en/vacancy/l...

We still don’t know how much energy AI consumes Companies must give us the chance to understand the environmental impact of the tech we use

Using big LLMs for basic queries is 'like turning on stadium floodlights to look for your keys' - this is good on the AI environmental questions.

After a couple of days working well through the pain barrier, the end of the marking tunnel is in sight.

Labour has a whopping great majority and four years left to turn this country around.

They should be setting the agenda, not chasing about trying to placate voters of a party with five MPs who will never vote for them anyway.

It's not only disappointing... it's embarrassing

A really exciting event for next spring in Angers on a very poorly explored topic, travelling children. I am very honoured to be invited as plenary speaker.

Just booked a 10-day Italian holiday, because. Plans include moderate amounts of sightseeing and inordinate amounts of ice-cream and focaccia (when in Liguria...).

We had a great discussion about Allais's paintings in my Humour module (where Allais is one of the authors we study) - they prompted very diverse and quite intense reactions this year.