The Firearm Revolution A groundbreaking account of how firearms changed Europe and the world

Thank you, publication-day buddy! My copy of your book is arriving later today! All who care about early modern topics should order a copy of Catherine’s book! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

When looked at from the right angle and disposition, a single stone can narrate the entire history of human existence. That is the hope of Sedimentary Aesthetics.

James W. Nygren
09/04/46-03/31/2026
My foundation stone

objects that conjure new worlds, illustrate miracles, and make dreams of infinite duration. I hope that my book draws attention to the twisted temporalities of stone and humanity’s relationship to it.

We emerged from earthly sediment, and in due time each of us shall return as sediment to the Earth. In the timeline of the universe, humanity is a mere blip. But in our time on this mineral-rich rock, humanity has learned to transform stones into beautiful objects

The book is full of many other stories like this. It is, in the end, my plea to the discipline of art history and early modern studies to consider paintings within structures of time, labor, and creativity that are distintive from the stories we typiccaly tell about the Renaissance.

Life is precious. The artworks we look at and love are the product of complicated networks of human and non-human agents that go far beyond the artists and patrons. When you look at a painting on a slate support (my book is full of them) remember that the stone was carried down the mountain by women

You can read a bit about his life here: www.gilbertmemorialpark.com/obituaries/j...
This thread began as me feeling an obligation to promote the publication of my book. But as with the process of writing the book itself, I’ve come to see with clarity so many things beyond the book’s final content

Dad passed away on 31 March 2026. He was an amazing man. He was a Vietnam veteran who never wanted to talk about the war; a manager who was beloved by his employees; a father figure to many children in our neighborhood; a lover of good food and wine. And much else.

I made lasagna and brought it in with bottles of wine, even though he could no longer eat; we played music; we put photos on the walls. And the entire time, a copy of Sedimentary Aesthetics sat on his hospital tray.

February and March 2026 were rough. I flew back and forth between Pittsburgh and Phoenix more times than I’d care to remember. But I was able to be there with him. In late March, he moved into hospice care. In hospice, we tried to keep the mood boyant.

He was very proud to hold the book in his hands, and when he saw the dedication in the volume, he was moved; he never thought he’d have a book dedicated to him (I had to remind hiim that I’d also dedicated my first book to him, mom, and my wife).

In February of this year, dad’s condition began to worsen. A tumor on his spine began to paralyze him. About the time that started, an advanced copy of my book arrived from Yale. I was able to show him the physical copy as he did in-patient physical therapy to recover from the impacts of the tumor

However, the most valuable thing was the dedication page, which I was able to show my parents at the hospital. It meant the world to be able to share that. Dad being dad, he then rallied. His body adjusted to the medicine and he went on to live another year.

The initial results were amazing. They provided 8 options for the cover. It was amazing to get to show them to mom and dad and have them participate in selecting the cover for a book that would be dedicated to them. The title page was also gorgeous.

Their response was an act of kindness that I will never forget. “we will do what we can to accelerate the process.” Within 10 days the designer (Jeff Wincapaw, whose work is incredible!) had produced designs for the cover as well as the layout of the title page, TOC, and openings for each “part”

In March 2025 he almost died as his body adjusted to the medicine. On 27 March 2025 I wrote to the design/production @yalebooks.bsky.social asking a favor: was there any way they could produce the title page and dedication page of the book so that I could show it to my father before he dies?

Winter 2025 was a really rough time. He elected to enroll in a clinical trial. He was only the fourth person on the planet to receive the drug. As I told him, more people had walked on the moon than received this drug. He was an Apollo astronaut of oncology. Well, the treatment was brutal.

About the time I sent the final manuscript to Yale for copyediting, my father was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. For over a decade he’d kept his cancer at bay through a combination of radiation, immunotherapy, and other threatments. We had a sense that metastasis was coming, but it still sucked.

I think the scholarship is sound and I look forward to the conversations this book will (hopefully) spark. Beyond that, though, this book is deeply personal. @kboller.bsky.social and the team at Yale were amazing as I went through some very difficult times during the book’s final production.

Sedimentary Aesthetics An unprecedented investigation of painting on stone in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy that considers the ecological and artistic forces that made t...

The final version seeks to re-embed paintings on stone in a broad ecology that encompasses geology, nameless laborers, premodern conceptions of time, the colonization of the Americas, and much more. You can read a short description here: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

At a scholarly level, the book is the culmination of a project I’ve been working on for years. It began in a very different form. The final version is something I could not have foreseen in 2017 when I was developing this as an @acls1919.bsky.social fellow.

Today is the official publication day for my new book, Sedimentary Aesthetics: Painting on Stone and the Ecology of Early Modern Art. It is out in the world, and I would like to thank @yalepress.bsky.social for all they did. I’d also like to tell you a bit about why this publication means so much.

Capitalized. And it is right. Just like the Oxford comma.

Fuck cancer

Poster for the program that reads as follows: Curious about art and the stories it can tell? HISTORY OF ART: Visual Analysis & Exhibition Design Pre-College Program at UMass Amherst JUNE 28 - JULY 11, 2026 • Visit museums and architectural sites across the Five Colleges • Contribute to a public exhibition at the Greenbaum Gallery • Study works of art and discover how they communicate meaning • Engage in analytical discussion and curatorial thinking For rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors

Spread the word! My department at UMass-Amherst is inaugurating a Pre-College Summer Program in the History of Art: Visual Analysis and Exhibition Design.

www.umass.edu/art-history/...

When Bender shared our piece a couple of months ago, she issued an important quibble w respect to my & @cnygren.bsky.social's specific argument regarding resistance to the AI industry's takeover of education. A story broken by student journalists at GW reveals that quibble to have been prescient. 1/

Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry - Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews The Château de Chantilly justifiably billed its exhibition as a landmark show, and for early modernists and medievalists, it was the most anticipated

Art History will continue to be seen as an elitist discipline if the public apparatuses for communicating it refuse to acknowledge the scholarship that has drawn attention to art's role in serving and subverting power.

Read the righteous review by Sherry Lindqiust here. hnanews.org/hnar/reviews...

If you are attending @historians.org #aha2026 please join us at 330 this afternoon when we discuss our project, “Transforming Humanities Education in a Time of Gun Violence.” We discuss various approaches to tracing the long history of guns, gun control, and legislation.

Wtaf? This is absurd. The fact that people are looking for this is insane and such a waste of resources. I hate when STEM decides it cares about history