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John McCafferty @jdmccafferty.bsky.social · 2d

Hedgehog, c. 1650 (Rijksmuseum)

I love its expression.

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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 2d

Das wäre eine Idee für Deutschlands Feuilletons: Was können Wissenschaftler:innen nicht weiter erforschen bzw. entdecken, weil das #WissZeitVG existiert oder weil wir keine Tenure-Track-Verbindlichkeit haben?

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 3d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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Dr Jen Baker @jendeavour.bsky.social · 3d

If you're still filling in your spooky calendar, join me at Viktor Wynd Museum’s The Last Tuesday Society (8:00 pm London time) for ghosty children on Sunday 26th October.

If you can’t attend the talk in real time, ticket holders will have two weeks to view the video!

Dr Jen Baker @jendeavour.bsky.social · Aug 6

Join me online with the Viktor Wynd museum on 26th October, 8pm (GMT) for a talk on "Spectral Embodiments: Manifesting and Visualising the Ghost Child" 👻🖤

LOADS of other amazing talks available throughout the year too; check out The Last Tuesday Society!

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/manifestin...

Manifesting and Visualising the Ghost Child - Dr Jen Baker - Zoom

This talk examines the transformation of the ghost-child figure from oral folklore and legends to their literary incarnations in culture

www.eventbrite.co.uk

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Shani Cadwallender @overleaf.bsky.social · 3d

Chuffed to be in vol.2 of @plantperspectives.bsky.social.
Thanks to all at the journal & @rbgkew.bsky.social for including my weird little piece about working-class C19th poet Eliza Cook, trees, illness& intertemporal weirdness.

Read it here:
www.whp-journals.co.uk/PP/issue/vie...

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Horror Studies Research Group @ Northumbria @horrorstudies.bsky.social · 3d

Reminder - Call for papers: HORROR STUDIES NOW, May 28/29 2026, Northumbria University
t.co/QK7DDTdeNb

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Dr Emily Vincent @dremilyvincent.bsky.social · 3d

Our @cncsi.bsky.social C19 Gothic Afterlives programme!
🌴Sonja Lawrenson on Melmoth in Latin America
📖 @romgothsam.bsky.social Adapting Heathcliff
📻 Richard Hand haunted airwaves
🎮 @marijkevalk.bsky.social occult gaming
📺 @drdjohnston.bsky.social Gothic TV

Register ➡️ cn-csi.com/event/hallow...

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Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 3d

Many congratulations to my colleagues in the Forms of Labour project team on the publication of their new monograph! 🗃️👏🎉

Brilliantly, The Experience of Work in #EarlyModern England is available open access:

www.cambridge.org/core/books/e...

news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

A woman’s place was not in the home: New book challenges assumptions about women’s work in early modern history

New research has revealed that women played a fundamental role in the development of England’s national economy before 1700. Far from being the unpaid homemakers and housewives of traditional historic...

news.exeter.ac.uk

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David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 3d

CFP: 'Poetry's Environments', University of Leeds, June 2026.

About poetry and the natural environment in relation to the environments in which it is written, experienced, performed, preserved, and studied.

Please submit a proposal! Deadline 5 December.

conferences.leeds.ac.uk/poetryenviro...

Call for Proposals | Poetry's Environments

conferences.leeds.ac.uk

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👻🎃 Dr Evilyn Koch 🎃👻 @evelynkoch.bsky.social · 3d

Gute Besserung!

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Sophie Franklin @sophiefranklin.bsky.social · 4d

📣 Myself, Lara Ehrenfried, and Nikolina Hatton have established a new literary network, the Women Writing Violence Network, to foster a cross-historical approach.
We're having our launch event on 23 October at 14:00 (CET). All very welcome!
Zoom details here:
wwvnetwork.wordpress.com/meetings-eve...

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Dr Francis Young @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social · 5d

I’m pleased to say you can now pre-order my next book, ‘Fairies: A History’ (out in February 2026) from
@politybooks.bsky.social. Thank you to Jeremy Harte, Simon Young, Jo Hickey-Hall and Owen Davies for such generous endorsements! 🌿📚 www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

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👻🎃 Dr Evilyn Koch 🎃👻 @evelynkoch.bsky.social · 5d

The cat! 😼

John McCafferty @jdmccafferty.bsky.social · 5d

6 Oct 1573: b. Henry Wriothesley 3rd Earl of #Southampton #otd courtier & patron of #Shakespeare (Critz) & #cat lover?

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👻🎃 Dr Evilyn Koch 🎃👻 @evelynkoch.bsky.social · 5d

Went to see the ever reliably great Robert Forster and his Swedish Band (yes, that's what they're called). Great set and very dry wit by Mr Forster.

4 musicians performing on colourfully lit stage.

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Dr Victoria Xiaoxiao Ma @victoriaxiaoxiaoma.bsky.social · 6d

Found it yesterday in Waterstones. Heard of the book from the publisher’s skeet. Love the cover: ‘To Walshaw Dean’ by Angie Rogers. Many good proses and poems inside. A wonderful project and anthology! Need this more!

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Library of Anglo-American Culture & History @libraryaac.bsky.social · 6d

#CallforPapers #CfP on #VictorianLiterature #SensationFiction & the #HealthHumanities

Victorian Popular Fiction Association @vpfa.bsky.social · 10d

🚨Call for Papers!
❓Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day
🗺️Loughborough University
📅27 March 2026
💷 FREE
For full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/studyday/for...
Contact the organiser Anne-Marie Beller (@braddonite.bsky.social) at [email protected] for more information

Mentally ill patients dancing at a ball at Somerset County Asylum. Process
print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855.
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xswz3swa

CFP: Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities
A VPFA Study Day
Loughborough University, 27 March 2026

The Health Humanities and Victorian popular fiction intersect in revealing ways, offering insights into how 19th-century literature shaped and reflected contemporary understandings of health, illness, and the body. Popular narratives not only mirrored anxieties surrounding public health and medical progress but also contributed to shaping public perceptions of health and healing. Health Humanities approaches re-examine these texts to uncover how cultural narratives and literary representations influenced attitudes toward physical and mental well-being, gendered experiences of illness, and the ethics of care in an age of rapid scientific change.

Health Humanities is a particularly useful approach to sensation fiction because it illuminates the ways in which these emotionally charged, often morally ambiguous narratives explore and interrogate concepts of the body, illness, and mental health. Sensation fiction, with its focus on secrets, trauma, nervous disorders, and abnormal psychological states, frequently dramatizes the anxieties of Victorian society surrounding health, gender, and identity. By applying the lens of Health Humanities, scholars can uncover how these texts reflect and shape contemporary medical discourse. Interdisciplinary approaches also highlight how sensation fiction critiques institutional medicine, domestic care practices, and the pathologization of women’s experiences. Ultimately, Health Humanities allows us to see sensation fiction not just as entertainment, but as a culturally significant form that negotiates the meanings of illness, morality, and human vulnerability in a rapidly changing world.

20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of the health humanities and sensation fiction. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Madness, Hysteria, and the Sensation Heroine
• The Role of Doctors and Medical Authority in Se…

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Matthew Harrison @matthewharrison.bsky.social · 8d

not talking to anyone except this caterpillar from the Florentine Codex (book 11, 103r) right now

it is a very silly looking thing: all vertical lines in haphazard directions, with a circle on one end that i suppose is an eye.

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Julia Ditter @juliaditter.bsky.social · 9d

Call for Contributions: Victorian Infrastructures & their Environmental Legacies

We're still looking for articles to be included in our @openlibhums.org special issue!

Abstracts are due 31 October, full texts 31 March '26.

@bavs-uk.bsky.social @rs4vp.org @asleuki.bsky.social @easlce.bsky.social

OLHJ_CfP.pdf

shorturl.at

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Melissa Edmundson @melissae.bsky.social · 9d

Day 3 of #31days31books is Violet Tweedale’s Phantoms of the Dawn, originally published in 1924.

Front cover to Phantoms of the Dawn by Violet Tweedale.

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Simon Davies @simonfd.bsky.social · 9d

Happy Satan with similarly happy crotch-critter (1561) 😊

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British Library @britishlibrary.bsky.social · 10d

Hwæt! 🐉

Ever wondered what the epic poem Beowulf sounds like spoken in Old English?

#NationalPoetryDay

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Anna Smol @annasmol.bsky.social · 10d

Free online seminar: Arda's Entangled Bodies and Environments, featuring analyses across Tolkien's works. October 18, sponsored by the Tolkien Society and the Uni. of Glasgow's Centre for Fantasy & the Fantastic. Details in the link or go to the Tolkien Society Events page. wp.me/p2vwHX-2gZ

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 10d

Ch 3 of Voices of Thunder tells the story of the self-proclaimed prophet Elizabeth Poole, one of the only women of her era to intervene in political debate at the highest level. Just weeks before Charles I’s execution, Poole demanded an audience with Cromwell and the council of officers. 1/2

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 10d

I just received the first copies of my book and I have to say it’s looking gorgeous! 😍 Thank you @reaktionbooks.bsky.social for making such a beautiful book #earlymodern

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Sophie Franklin @sophiefranklin.bsky.social · 10d

My book, 'Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives', is out now with @edinburghup.bsky.social! It's the first major study of violence in the Brontës' fiction and afterlives, and I'd be thrilled if you ordered a copy for your library:
edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-violenc...

Violence and the Brontës

edinburghuniversitypress.com

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Simon Kövesi @kovesi.bsky.social · 10d

I directed Toby Jones when we recorded this series of readings of poems (& a bit of prose) by John Clare. Toby's readings lifted them off the page in ways I'd never experienced. & chief among all of them, is this, his reading of Clare's "Remembrances" (1832):
open.spotify.com/episode/45Ib...

Remembrances

open.spotify.com

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