Michael Hancher
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michaelhancher.bsky.social
Michael Hancher
@michaelhancher.bsky.social

Sometime English professor, JHU and UMN; past president, Dictionary Society of North America. Victorian literature and art, book illustration, speech acts, interpretation, law. Macaulay and English in India (Routledge, 2026). https://z.umn.edu/M-H. .. more

Michael Hanchard, often published as Michael G. Hanchard, is an American political scientist, currently the Gustave C. Kuemmerle Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of the Marginalized Populations Project there. He studies comparative politics and political theory, focusing on understanding the causes and consequences of nationalism and xenophobia, particularly within democracies. .. more

Communication & Media Studies 26%
Art 25%

"For this reason, the concept of a textual source must involve attention to the presentation of a text, not simply to the text as a disembodied group of words." MLA, "Significance of Primary Records" (1995): 27. www.mla.org/content/down...
www.mla.org

"Texts are inevitably affected by the physical means of their transmission; the physical features of the artifacts conveying texts therefore play an integral role in the attempt to comprehend those texts.
New issue of my newsletter: "The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition" — One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved, and it's a good use of AI newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-...
The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition
One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved
newsletter.dancohen.org

Reposted by Michael Hancher

If you live in Minnesota you have access (no login required) to thousands of journals and ebooks, the full text of the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Star Tribune (all the way back to the 80s), and much more. All thanks to eLibrary Minnesota. Libraries rule! 2/4 elibrarymn.org
eLibrary Minnesota
elibrarymn.org

Despite the recent banner, not actually on sale yet: Macaulay and English in India (Routledge: March 2026). www.routledge.com/Macaulay-and....
Macaulay and English in India
This book traces how the English language emerged from the nineteenth century as not only an imperial and bureaucratic language but also as a global one. It highlights the role of Thomas Babington Mac...
www.routledge.com

Scribe ready to transcribe what Homer says. Detail of Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus, engraving after Raphael by Marcantonio Raimondi; c. 1517–20. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Well antedates the OED for jaywalk ("1957 C. Brooke-Rose"). More at books.google.com/ngrams/graph...

Hjeriñ sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlichen Proportion durch Albrechten Dürer von Nürenberg erfunden und beschriben (Nürenberg: Jeronymum Formschneyder, 1528). primo.lib.umn.edu/permalink/01...

Reposted by Michael Hancher

Dictionaries 46:2 (2025) is now available (open access!) on
@projectmuse.bsky.social
Read here about: Arabic in China, Wittgenstein & Austrian German, etymology, Georgian learner-lexicography, antedating & linguistics pedagogy + Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary review

muse.jhu.edu/issue/55471
Project MUSE - Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America-Volume 46, Number 2, 2025
muse.jhu.edu

"It's an ill wind," etc.: "Before the introduction of the zebra mussel, visibility of only 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m) was usual, slightly decreasing as the years passed. Water clarity improved markedly in the mid-1990s with the arrival of zebra mussels, which feed on algae."
Thousand Islands - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
VPR is seeking an Associate Editor to oversee book reviews and assist the editor with special features. This is a great opportunity for a #periodicals scholar looking to develop editorial and leadership skills. Applications are due December 15. Details at rs4vp.org/vpr-seeks-as... @rs4vp.org

A fine G&S weekend: Last night, Iolanthe by The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, Twin Cities. Tonight, via Vimeo, last year's Pirates of Penzance by The Lamplighters Music Theatre, San Francisco. This afternoon Pirates finished a 5-performance run in Cambridge, MA--a perennial favorite.
The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company Twin Cities
The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company is a Twin Cities based theater company, dedicated to bringing the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, Britain’s foremost light opera collaborators, to life for...
gsvloc.org

Perhaps properly paper is prior.

Members of the Dictionary Society of North America and other subscribers should receive their paper copies soon, if not already. Library digital access via
@projectmuse.bsky.social is expected within a week.
Dictionaries 46:2 (2025), @projectmuse.bsky.social, edited by @lynneguist.bsky.social. Topics: Arabic in China, Wittgenstein and Austrian German, historical dictionaries, Georgian dictionaries and corpora, antedating and linguistics pedagogy, The Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary.

Dictionaries 46:2 (2025), @projectmuse.bsky.social, edited by @lynneguist.bsky.social. Topics: Arabic in China, Wittgenstein and Austrian German, historical dictionaries, Georgian dictionaries and corpora, antedating and linguistics pedagogy, The Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary.

Maybe not the most thorough account, but probably the most entertaining:
A boy at the Hogarth Press / by Richard Kennedy ; illustrated by the author ; with an introduction by Bevis Hillier.
Kennedy, Richard 1910-1989 [author, illustrator]
London : Heinemann [1972]

Reposted by Michael Hancher

Wonderful tribute to a teacher: young Sofonisba Anguissola paints herself being created by Bernardino Campi -- yet at same time, she is of course creating him! Today is her day.

Reposted by Michael Hancher

important new resource on #art, #books, #printing

Charles Hart, Lithography: Its Theory and Practice, ed. Georgia B. Barnhill

life in a C19 New York printing company, including observations about the lithographic process & commercial printers & artists

www.oakknoll.com/pag...
CHARLES HART'S LITHOGRAPHY: ITS THEORY AND PRACTICE by Georgia B. Barnhill on Oak Knoll
Ann Arbor, MI: The Legacy Press, 2025. 10 x 7 inches hardcover, sewn 248 pages ISBN: 9781940965321
www.oakknoll.com

The OED chart is flat to 1870 -- a full century before the Ngram chart. Why the difference? Supposedly the same data.

Me too. OED cites 1791. An OED frequency chart, drawing on the same GB database, indicates an inflection point c. 1880. A later chart, drawn mostly from newspapers, shows another one at 2021. Thought-provoking.

"There are between 500,000 and 750,000 books published annually, plus an estimated 170 million already in print."
Great post on book distribution! We are distributed by Ingram. bsky.app/profile/leek...
I recently wrote a post for Feeding the Elephant explaining distribution's place within publishing. It is geared toward scholarly publishing, but a lot of it holds true for the whole industry. #feedingtheelephant

networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

"you often just want to name each thing" Details at doi.org/10.1525/rep....

Reposted by Michael Hancher

Great post on book distribution! We are distributed by Ingram. bsky.app/profile/leek...
I recently wrote a post for Feeding the Elephant explaining distribution's place within publishing. It is geared toward scholarly publishing, but a lot of it holds true for the whole industry. #feedingtheelephant

networks.h-net.org/group/discus...
Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Book Distribution, but Were Afraid to Ask | H-Net
A guest post from
networks.h-net.org

Autumn Leaves

Congratulations to @katnuernberger.bsky.social

Reposted by Michael Hancher

NEW EPISODE:
Poet and essayist Kathryn Nuernberger joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and @sugi.bsky.social to talk about her new collection of lyric essays, Held: Essays in Belonging, which is about symbiotic mutualisms and climate grief/joy.
@literaryhub.bsky.social
lithub.com/kathryn-nuer...
Kathryn Nuernberger on Mutualism, Climate, and Finding Family at the End of the World
Poet and essayist Kathryn Nuernberger joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her new collection of lyric essays, Held: Essays in Belonging, which is about symbiotic mu…
lithub.com

Reposted by Michael Hancher

NPR @npr.org · 14d
The children’s picture book, “Strega Nona, An OldTale,” celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Author and illustrator Tomie dePaola penned the book about the Italian “grandmother witch.” (via @mprnews.org)
Strega Nona turns 50 — and her art lives in Minneapolis
The University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Collection is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Tomie dePaola’s beloved picture book “Strega Nona,” showcasing the original illustrations and highlighting Minnesota’s unique role in preserving the warmth, artistry and enduring cultural impact of this classic story.
n.pr