As a meta-task, I asked first years to give a piece of advice to incoming first years and one was ‘if you’re only in classes two days a week, make sure you do something else to get you up on other days to keep your sleep cycle normal’ & I thought it was a) based on personal experience & b) profound
You're more whimsical than a kaleidoscope gaining consciousness
Yes! We love it! The recent episode with Gerald Moore as the guest was an absolute hoot!
You’re missing Robin Ray from the ideal Face the Music line up (with Attenborough and Grenfell)!
Let's get looking
Happy birthday, Charlotte Brontë! Alongside my love of Jane Eyre, my favourite CB titbits are: she went thru a phase of signing her letters Caliban AND there’s a secret set of poems in Poems (1846) wherein a wife demands to travel with her spy husband, gets chased thru French woods, & survives him 🖤
a drawing in pencil of various noses, some with bushy moustaches underneath them
A drawing in pencil of various human noses – drawn around 1831 by a teenaged Charlotte Brontë, who was born on this day (21 April) in West Yorkshire in 1816 🗃️
https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/view/group/210079?_ga=2.53489376.910004438.1776677182-702014116.1776677181
🦇 #BatsInArt #PreciousBats #American #ArtNouveau #Shakespeare #TheTempest #Ariel #LouisRhead
Louis Rhead (1857-1926)
ARIEL ON A BAT'S BACK, 1917 - 1918
Watercolour
Naming all of my summer assignments with Austen quotes. The commonplace book is called “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
Haunting, gorgeous setting of ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ by Rebecca Dale 💛
www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...
My PhD supervisor‘s first book was basically an interogation of these kinds of phenomenon
I went to see a performance of Giselle at the Pacific Northwest Ballet yesterday (one of my students was in it!) It was beautiful, but the most thought-provoking moment for me was when one of the dancers accidentally slipped and fell. For a very brief moment, a look of total confusion and terror 1/4
Ooh, also going to see Fight Club with a friend’s friend who hated it when I thought it was great
Also: Idioterne or Festen for divisive dogme films - I prefer The Idiots!
This is a great prompt and would make a great class - having thought about it, I remember watching Bound & Mulholland Drive with people who HATED them (to be clear I love both films) - conversely, I hated Sally Potter’s The Man Who Cried, the most exciting part of the film was when the reel snapped!
I think I'd like to teach a class on hate-watching sometime. Beyond the catchy topic, the point would be to investigate all the different reasons students dislike certain films and what they say about us personally, culturally, politically, etc. What would you assign in such a class?
#KSAABlog: 2025 K-SAA Arts & Public Engagement Award–winning project Refuge from the Ravens.
This project reimagines Lyrical Ballads through workshops with people affected by homelessness and marginalization—centering voice, dignity, and creative practice.
🔗https://www.k-saa.org/blog/apeaward2025
Lovely quote from #Satie himself in the final, diary section of Ian Penman's remarkable 'Erik Satie: Three Piece Suite' which I've just finished reading: "When will people get out of the habit of explaining everything?" 💙📚
Congratulations! 🥂 < emoji representing cheap-ish treat!
hey guys I got promoted to full professor, how should I celebrate?
cheap and / or free answers only since the raise doesn’t kick in until next AY
I couldn’t resist this new Another Timbre / Apartment House release with the Keatsian title - strange, wonderful music with the aim to ‘find the new in the re-interpretation of the past’, citing Basho & Rossetti as well as Keats - the end of ‘geschrieben in wasser’ comes as a delightful surprise!
AI offering to summarize the article I just downloaded is a little like a restaurant offering to have someone eat the meal I just ordered.
The CFP for Dickens Day 2026 is live! We warmly invite proposals linked to this year’s theme of “Dickens and family” (both in his life and work). The deadline is 15 June, and the day itsef will be on Saturday 10 October at Senate House, London. All are welcome!
www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...
Oh yes that makes so much sense!
Poster for the e film with librarian mum sporting shopping bags with Riley the dog (warning: Riley is old and sick from the start of the film) on one side of the title and musician son all in black with amp and guitar on the other against a light blue background
On a whim, I watched Days of the Bagnold Summer which is just a gorgeous little British indie film: the bittersweet humour of the Belle & Sebastian-meets-Heavy Metal soundtrack matches the film’s witty scene compositions and great ear for awkward dialogue - awesome!
This was a really lovely conversation on the research funding landscape, journeys through it, some advice on applications, & the joy of failure!
Thanks to Carmen for organising & @mjrsangster.bsky.social, @mckeever.bsky.social , & @rfergussonpoet.bsky.social for speaking.
More to follow…
You still have time to get your abstracts in for 'Placing the Nineteenth Century', hosted by EHUNineteen's PhD students!
Yes please!
After #EASLCE2026, I think it’s time to update the ecocriticism and envlit list (and starter pack) 🌻
Should you be on it? Please respond to this post and I’ll add you
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Manchester University Press is proud to launch Radical Histories, a new series dedicated to the individuals, movements and ideas that have challenged political, social and cultural authority.
Call for proposals now open. Find out more: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/04...
Bookface selfie with a painting of a woman'd face looking existential and pained. The book is Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria (Mary) and The Wrongs of Woman
Blah, Monday. Here we go again.