My review in @aunz.theconversation.com of "New Asian Art" on now at the National Gallery of Australia (until 18 April 2027), a star-studded display of new acquisitions and collection highlights! 👇🏽
#Art 🖼️ #ArtSky 🎨 #Canberra 🏛️ #Galleries
I've been working as a freelance professional academic editor for over 15 years and have finally got around to creating a website. If you're an academic writer seeking experienced editorial help on a writing project (e.g. book, chapter, journal article), get in touch! And please spread the word ✏️📖
I'm pleased to announce I'm a founding co-editor of the new @manchesterup.bsky.social book series, Radical Histories.
Do let me know if you have a proposal for a book that fits our inclusive remit on radical histories.
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/radic...
Continuing position for an early modern historian at a top university! 👇🏽
"Applicants working at the forefront of gender history, on periods between the 12th and 18th centuries, and on regions beyond Europe and Australia are encouraged to apply"
#AcademicSky #History 📚🎓
Too many times 🫥
The number of times I've read "I've been inspired by your research on [insert word-for-word quote from staff profile] and especially your article [citation]"...
🫠
I should explain why I ask: we have an idea that, despite being a heavily urbanised country, Australian identity symbolically resides in rural places and spaces. But so many of the best Aussie movies of the last ~30 (50?) years have been set in cities and suburbs. Is our self-image evolving?
This is coming out quite soon! I loved writing it. I still mean to do some posts talking about it and how it came about. I will!
On the acceptance of GenAI Joep Schuurkes — 5 April 2026 By using GenAl: • I accept the models were trained on stolen data. • I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers. • I accept the environmental costs of the data centers running these models. • l accept that I am outsourcing some of my skills to a company. • I accept these companies don't have a viable business model. _ I accept that I am granting more power to big tech and their vision for the world. • I accept that I am granting more power to the United States. • I accept that all this effort could have been spent elsewhere. If any of these facts are new to you, you haven't been doing your due diligence. I have the deepest respect and sympathy for people who are forced by circumstances to accept these things. I acknowledge the people's ethical behavior is neither deterministic, nor consistent. But yeah, GenAl radicalized me.
Joep Schuurkes On the Acceptance of GenAI 🙏
smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/on...
Black and white photo of a red figure Pyxis lid with the painted face of a dog waiting for a well-deserved treat
It’s National Pet Day here in Australia.
And here is a good boy celebrating.
Oh yes you know you are a good boy.
4th century BC Pyxis,
Walters Art Museum 48.82
art.thewalters.org/object/48.82/
Call for conttributions to special issue of @bioethicalinquiry.bsky.social on 'Bioethics for the Planet', mixing medical ethics & environmental (climate) ethics - edited by Paul Komesaroff, Cara Platts, Natasha Rooney and me. EoI by May 31 to c.platts@unimelb.edu.au
#bioethics #medhum #envhum #STS
Book on a table, reading "Uncanny beliefs: superstition in modern Chinese history"
Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction / EMILY BAUM I. Discourses on Good and Bad Religion in China, 1850-1911 / VINCENT GOOSSAERT 2. "Superstitious Beyond All Expression": Superstition, China, and the Age of Empire, 1860-1900 / ALBERT Wo 3. Disembodied Spirits or Mental Suggestion? Psychical Research and the Redefinition of Superstition in Republican China / LUIs FERNANDO BERNARDI JUNQUEIRA 4. Shifting Boundaries: Spirit Writing and Superstition in Republican China / MATTHIAS SCHUMANN 5. The Affective Ties of Religion and Enlightenment: Tales of Medicine and Superstition / REBECCA NEDOSTUP 6. Women, Nation, and Superstition in Sinophone Muslims Reform Discourses During the Republican Era / VINCENT MU-CHIEN CHEN 7. Superstition in Translation? Vamps, Vampire Capitalists, and Vocabularies of Class and Gender in Republican China / CORALINE JORTAY 8. Fate, Fatalism, and Superstition in the Early Peoples Republic of China / EMILY BAUM 9. Household Religion and the Attack on "Superstitious Goods" in the Peoples Republic of China, 1949-1976 / S. A. SMITH vii ix xi 31 51 73 99 124 149 169 189
10. Cadres, Superstition, and the Making of Authority in North China Before and During the Socialist Education Movement, 1961-1966 / LoNG YANG II. Superstition and the "Religion Sphere" / ADAM YUET CHAU 12. Reimagining Superstition in the Digital Age: Fantasy Novels, Media Corporations, and the Chinese State / ZHANGE NI Epilogue: From Superstition to Cultural Heritage: Is Anything Left of the Campaigns Against Superstition? / IAN JOHNSON Bibliography List of Contributors Index 229 252 270 292 299 343 347
Superstition in Translation? Vamps, Vampire Capitalists, and Vocabularies of Class and Gender in Republican China CORALINE JORTAY o vocabularies of superstition translate? To what extent are they reshaped through local imaginaries or transferred onto existing categories in the receiving society? How are they then reconfigured as they leave the realm of discourse on superstition to enter other discursive realms? In her 1934 essay The Park, the feminist writer Xiao Hong (Ai4. 1911-1942) conjures up the figure of the woman vampire to parody a form of superstition afflicting left-wing male writers of her time who express disgust and horror in the face of lipstick-wearing, "blood-drinking," modern girls: The first thing I read in the newspaper every morning was the literary sup-plement. On this particular day, I noted an editorial: When I see lipstick on modern women, it reminds me of "blood." How do young ladies of the capitalist classes survive? Don't they survive by drinking blood? This is a clear and undeniable sign. Any mouth on which human blood has been smeared is a foul mouth. A mouth with a smell and color of blood is a sign of foulness.' 1. The Park (Gongyuan) was first published in periodical form in 1934 before being collected in Market Street (Shang shi jie) in 1936 as part of Ba Jin's literature series, edited by the Culture and Life Publishing Company. The except quoted here in English translation is from Xiao Hong, Market Street: A Chinese Woman in Harbin, trans. Howard Goldbatt (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 90.
With apologies for the bad pics (will do a proper thread later on), lovely surprise in the mail this morning -- Uncanny Beliefs is now out in the world with a chapter that was extraordinarily fun to write on vamps and vampire-capitalists in Republican China 🧛🏻♀️🧛🏻
Move slow and fix things
Adam Wirsing’s Marmora (1776) features hundreds of illustrations showcasing the beauty and variety of marble. Composed in numbered squares, six to a page, his images are colourful and complex odes to stone. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/adam-wirsing-...
Excited to see this in print! Co-edited with my @utas.edu.au colleagues Kristyn Harman and Anna Claydon, the result of several years' labour by a group of amazing scholars!
I mentioned this on Twitter back during Covid days. I am happy to share my collection of archival photos/primary sources with other researchers.
If you’re working on the history of political or social movements in Britain, Australia or South Africa, I might have stuff in my collection. Hit me up!
Want to know about my new book - The Citizen and the Vagabond? Find out all about it on this podcast. podscan.fm/podcasts/new...
Detail of a fresco showing a dish of eggs and some dead birds hanging above it
Four near complete eggs sitting in a black dish
Happy Easter!
Life imitating art. Fresco of dish of eggs from the Praedia of Julia Felix, #Pompeii and an exhibit of eggs that astonishingly survived the AD 79 eruption in Herculaneum. 🥚🥚🥚
Hey historians 🗃️ : what's your favorite microhistory, and why?
A picture of the Talk Talk biography In Another World and the lyric quote: 'Desire. Whispered. Spoken.'
Delighted to announce that In Another World: The Four Seasons of Talk Talk, is coming on May 21, 2026, published by the fabulous @newmodernbooks.bsky.social. There’s a lot of love in this one.
Pre-orders:
Resident: tinyurl.com/mrxrpsuh
Rough Trade: tinyurl.com/28v3tda4
A: tinyurl.com/3sz3scf4
For the first time, archaeologists have analysed ash residue from incense burners preserved at Pompeii, revealing the substances burnt as offerings to the gods in Roman households and the long-distance trade undertaken to acquire them.
A fragrant #AntiquityThread 1/10 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Cover of Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies by Isabelle Held. The cover is a a blue and coral pink duotone of a woman wearing a leotard that depicts a mushroom cloud. She is posing with her hands up and her mouth open in joy. The blue and pink are inverted to create circles around her. The title is written vertical in a large bold yellow sans serif font. The subtitle is in white in the bottom left corner. The author's name is below in yellow.
In "Atomic Bombshells," Isabelle Held challenges the usual narratives of how war technologies enter domestic use by following plastics on their journey into women’s bodies. Listen to an interview with her on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social: newbooksnetwork.com/atomic-bombs...
ERGASTERIA Premises and Processes of Creation in Antiquity Edited by Elena C. Partida and Constanze Graml
There is a new, open access book 🔨 on _ Ergasteria: Premises and Processes of Creation in Antiquity_ Edited by Elena C. Partida & Constanze Graml. Loving the chapter on artisans & painters of ancient polychromy by Amalie Skovmøller. www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress...
Passion flower from Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora (1798-1810), in the Ashmolean’s In Bloom exhibition: a text details how the flower displays a crown of thorns, leaves as spears, petals as apostles.
Now available from @reaktionbooks.bsky.social
reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/sons-of...
Here I've tried to give an account in English of the Ming ruling house as a family enterprise (and not forgetting imperial aunties)
Text reads, "Association for Asian American Studies 2026 Conference Exhibit. Use code AAAS26 for 40% off when you order from dukeupress.edu." Background features assorted book and journal covers arranged in columns.
Through May 14, 2026, use code AAAS26 to save 40% on all books and journal issues when you order on our website or that of our UK partner, MNG. #AsianAmericanStudies buff.ly/UZ5oCIR
In such good company here! I'm particularly excited for Leigh Radford's When Home is a Photograph (which I just ordered and is out very soon!)
Published today OA in @routledgehistory.bsky.social 'Maritime Humanities, 1400-1800: Cultures of the Sea' book series:
www.routledge.com/Material-Cul...
Many congratulations to the editors! ⚓⚓⚓
Shen Quan* 沈铨 1682-1760 specialized in bird-and-flower painting
'A Hundred Birds' 《百鸟图》
*pronounced "shun chew-en"
𝐍𝐄𝐖 @asiancha.bsky.social—Charlotte Marie Chadwick reads 𝑄𝑢𝑒𝑒𝑟 𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐴𝑠𝑖𝑎, eds. Shawna Tang & Hendri Yulius Wijaya, as theoretically ambitious and locally grounded, while observing its methodological unevenness and suggesting further directions for scholarship.
⧉ chajournal.com/2026/04/02/q...