Laura DeLuca
@laurasdeluca.bsky.social
900 followers 1K following 29 posts
Ancient Queens in Early Modern Drama 👑📚 | Book History + DH | PhD Candidate at Carnegie Mellon
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laurasdeluca.bsky.social
Found my journal back home from when I was 8 years old, where I write about having a “moment of inspiration” from “Shakespear.” Now, I conduct research on early modern drama as a PhD candidate. I’m not crying, you are.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
rhutabhayga.bsky.social
Mary Anning (1799–1847) was a pioneering English fossil collector and paleontologist whose discoveries in the Jurassic cliffs of Lyme Regis laid the groundwork for modern paleontology.

Can you imagine getting down in the dirt in that get-up?

#GirlPower
#RadicalWomen
Mary Anning (1799–1847) was a pioneering English fossil collector and paleontologist whose discoveries in the Jurassic cliffs of Lyme Regis laid the groundwork for modern paleontology. Despite limited formal education and the challenges faced by women in science during her era, Anning’s keen eye and relentless curiosity uncovered some of the most important prehistoric fossils ever found.
Born into a poor family, Anning began searching for fossils with her father along the Dorset coast from a young age. Her notable discoveries included the first complete Ichthyosaurus skeleton, the first Plesiosaurus, and important early specimens of Pterosaur. These finds challenged existing ideas about Earth’s history and contributed significantly to the emerging field of geology.
Though her contributions were often overshadowed by male scientists who published about her findings, Anning earned respect among naturalists and geologists during her lifetime. Today, she is celebrated as a trailblazer who expanded our understanding of prehistoric life and demonstrated the vital role of women in science—even without formal recognition or academic credentials.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
svanimpe.bsky.social
#EarlyModern meme! #BookHistory
The bottom of a page of printed text, showing three hands (or printers' fists) pointing at each other. The spiderman meme: three spidermen pointing at each other.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
lampallib.bsky.social
Happy October! This woodcut of a cat with a mouse is the printer's device of the Venetian printer Melchior Sessa, and was used by his heirs in this 1598 book of sermons.

(Sion A66.0/OS5)

#RareBooks #SionCollege #Cats #Manuscripts
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
eyesack.bsky.social
DIDO: Remember me, but ah! forget my fate on this device
Paul F. Tompkins: Something so poignant about "remember me on this device"
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
cmu.edu
In the newly released 2026 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, Carnegie Mellon University is No. 1 in seven undergraduate disciplines and 20th among national universities! 👏

➡️ cmu.is/US-News-and-World-Report-2026
A Top 20 University 
#1 in 7 undergraduate disciplines
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
insidehighered.com
How One University Is Reimagining a Humanities Ph.D. Program

@cmu.edu is turning its literary and cultural studies Ph.D. program into one focused on computational cultural studies. The reframe comes as many humanities graduate programs face an uncertain future. https://bit.ly/4ngm7R7
A diploma sitting between handwritten and typed backgrounds.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
johnlurie.bsky.social
In every breath you take there is one molecule of air from the last exhale of Cleopatra.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
chrisvvarren.bsky.social
Trying to keep my professional chill but I’m SO excited Carnegie Mellon is launching a cluster hire in computational humanities—MULTIPLE JOBS!

1. Asst Teaching Track Prof in Computational Humanities - apply.interfolio.com/173622
2. Asst Tenure Track Prof in CH - apply.interfolio.com/173626
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
jdmccafferty.bsky.social
16 Sept 1672: d. Anne Bradstreet, #poet - she was the first woman to be published in the #English American colonies #otd
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
amybrown.xyz
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me?
Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.
laurasdeluca.bsky.social
First week teaching about ancient queens in early modern drama to upper-level undergrads begins with Dido, and I fittingly get to hold class in a building with neoclassical columns that recall the Greco-Roman past quite nicely 👑🏛️
A neoclassical building with tall stone columns set against a bright blue sky.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
grubstreetwomen.bsky.social
Very exciting: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography published a cluster of new entries on women stationers. See the intro by Valerie Wayne: www.oxforddnb.com/newsitem/906...

ODNB entries are so helpful in identifying women from traces on printed material. So happy to see this work ❤️
www.oxforddnb.com
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
chrisvvarren.bsky.social
After nearly two years running our homespun ESTC 📚📜, we’ll soon retire it at the request of the ESTC. Proud to have been part of the @print-and-prob.bsky.social team 💪, led by Nikolai Vogler, that helped our scholarly community in a time of need 💜
chrisvvarren.bsky.social
When our Print & Probability collaborator UCSD grad student Nikolai Vogler heard that ESTC was down due to the BL cyberattack, he jumped into action. Here’s the site he built to help #earlymodern scholars access the essential metadata needed for teaching and research 📚 📜 estc.printprobability.org
estc.printprobability.org
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
emilyfbrooks.bsky.social
As a book history/digital humanities scholar, I immensely enjoyed this @rarebookschool.bsky.social talk on Warren's term, computational bibliography, as a set of tools to connect the study of artifact (microscopic/Hinman) to ideology (systemic/Darnton). (1/7)
diagram goes from authors to publishers to printers to books to gatherings to sheets to inner/outer forms, to pages, to sorts. Closed captioning reads: "...a method for moving between them. For connecting the microscopic to the systemic, the page to the printer, the sort to the state. It builds a bridge..."
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
mildakviz.bsky.social
A little bit of a personal touch left behind.

De censuris Ecclesiasticis tractatus. Leiden, 1608 #NationalLibraryOfLithuanis
#earlymodern #printculture
A close-up photo of an old book page numbered 267, showing Latin text printed in black ink. In the upper right margin, there is a visible black fingerprint smudge, suggesting someone with ink-stained fingers touched the page. The paper has a rough texture and slightly browned edges.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
grubstreetwomen.bsky.social
This is why I love bibliography: i want to do a really good job on a small little piece and add it to the wealth of human knowledge. Then 50 years later, someone else finds it and adores this stranger who helped them so thoroughly. I want to be for others who bibliographers were to me.
Reposted by Laura DeLuca
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
“AI” doesn’t lie. It’s not deceitful, it doesn’t have feelings: it is broken. Those who are selling AI products encourage people to anthropomorphize it because doing so avoids language that indicates what a garbage product it is they’re selling. Or, as I wrote here: www.artforum.com/features/gen...
Computer vision doesn't hallucinate because of an inscrutable
deus inside the machina. It "hallucinates" — such a groovy word for being wrong with confidence-because that is the ideology with which it was encoded.
laurasdeluca.bsky.social
Calling scholars of #earlymodernwomen! Whether you're working on representations, histories, labor, or cultural afterlives, consider submitting to my #cfp for @rsaorg.bsky.social conference in San Francisco #RenSA26. Please share widely!
A digital call-for-papers flier titled “Early Modern Women: Figures, Labors, Afterlives.” The flier invites proposals for a panel exploring how early modern women were represented and imagined across genres and cultures. It poses questions about gender, race, class, authority, and empire in early modern texts and welcomes papers on literary and historical figures, print culture, and archival recovery. Submission deadline is August 1, 2025. Abstracts (max 250 words), a short bio, and CV should be sent to Laura DeLuca at ldeluca@cmu.edu.