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Chris Cantwell

@cdc29.bsky.social

3.3K followers 1.4K following 310 posts

Religious History | Public History | Digital History Assistant Professor of History | Loyola University Chicago https://www.luc.edu/history/people/facultyandstaffdirectory/profiles/cantwellchristopher.shtml

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Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · Nov 12

Pinned post for this introductory era

I'm a US religious historian & former museum professional whose lives in the overlap of those spaces

I write about religion & memory. I teach about public history & digital humanities. I do community engaged scholarship w/ religious congregations in transition

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 1d

First thing I immediately thought of after reading the story was this:

a man is holding a microphone in front of a hockey rink and says " as they say in hockey "

ALT: a man is holding a microphone in front of a hockey rink and says " as they say in hockey "

media.tenor.com

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 7d

Paging @mjcressler.bsky.social …

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 7d

I wonder if we could come up with a theological term for these MAGA Catholics who reject the pope’s authority and know Jesus loves capitalism because he told them so directly? Like, “protest Catholics?” “Protesterants”? There’s gotta be something…

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 10d

“If loons invented the music of being alone, cranes invented the music of being together.”

- Kim Heacox

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks! And yeah. And what concerns me is the pressure to adopt AI renders anything other than its use a maker of some kind of Luddite mentality. WHICH IS NOT TRUE! I’ve always used blue books in intro classes. No I worry about their reception.

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

My god. What a potent (and environmentally appropriate) metaphor. And I think it echoes earlier DH conversations about infrastructure building as scholarship which now feel all the more relevant.

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

I want to be clear that this is in no way meant to dispel the very real concerns about the intellectual, political, & environmental impacts of AI. But I think "rejecting AI" or "abolishing AI" as some has said is not the answer. But that's a subject for a different thread. Finis. /11

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

Again I really have no answers here. But I've begun to think about reframing my DH class. To recalculate my own sense of possibility to account for the very real & very legitimate fears my students seem to have. To see DH as a defense of the humanities rather than a digital capitulation /10

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

But I also can't help but feel that folks are unnecessarily associating the general precarities of our moment with the tech that has come to define it. The two certainly do have a relationship. But I worry that the politicization of AI will only serve to further isolate the humanities. /9

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

This seems to track the story told about the rightward trend of tech more generally as the scrappy startups that fueled Obama's campaigns became the authoritarian storytellers of the Trump regime post-covid. /8

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

My sense is that these sentiments emerge from two sources. First, is the fact that we are genuinely being force fed AI by the tech oligarchs who have ensconced themselves within our politics. In contrast to that earlier moment, the rise of AI is neither democratic nor subversive. /7

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

I have no real insights into this change other than to document, and I generally refuse to air my students' experiences online. But it feels real. The overwhelmingly negative reception AI generally receives within the humanities seems to be coloring the understanding some have of DH. /6

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

The advent of AI and the rise of LLMs, however, has seemed to shift completely the tone & vibe around DH. At least in my limited experience. DH now seems like one more digital burden for students and educators alike. Just another way in which the tech world bears down upon us. /5

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

Of course DH had its critics, & some of us were certainly naive in our fervor. Yet the spirit of the times was vibrant and the moment felt full of opportunity. It was the one bright academic spot as the academy began the contraction that coninies through today. /4

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

We MADE things in class that lived in the world instead of writing papers that got graded and then tossed. it all seemed so novel and borderline revolutionary. I still have students read some early DH stuff from the '00s to see the almost breathless tone with which some was written. /3

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

When first started teaching in 2013, DH classes had a rebellious, almost subversive quality to them. Our work seemed to counter the power structures within our disciplines & perhaps even in society. Our work challenged what knowledge looked like or democratized knowledge in some way. /2

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 16d

A somewhat thinking out loud thread on teaching #DH in the age of AI.

Every fall, I've taught an intro to #digitalhumanities class in a #history 🗃️ department for more than ten years. Change, of course, inevitable. But there's been a big vibe shift this year. /1

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 19d

@loyolahistdept.bsky.social will be hosting the first ever @shgape.bsky.social conference this summer, and the CFP is now live. Please share widely and consider submitting something yourself!

blog.shgape.org/cfp-shgape-c...

CFP: SHGAPE Conference - SHGAPE Blog

The Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is delighted to host its first stand-alone conference, June 4-6, 2026, at Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois. We welcome anyone int...

blog.shgape.org

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 20d

The candy dish next to the copier in my department is out of chocolate and it is a legitimate crisis for me.

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 20d

@andrewmarkhenry.bsky.social is one of the most innovative thinkers in the public understanding of religion. His new venture, "The Religion Department," is vital in a time when universities & state legislatures are shuttering such departments. I hope this flourishes.
www.religiondepartment.com

The Religion Department

www.religiondepartment.com

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 23d

I agree. But there are so many pieces by historians on the latter but almost nothing about the former. As a digital humanist it’s weird to see an absence of showcases and thought pieces on the tech’s potential

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 23d

If you have examples of pieces by historians, literary theorists, or digital humanities emphasizing the tech’s potential over rueing its disruptions, I’d love to see them. Cause I can’t find them. Save maybe Graham Burnett.

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · 23d

i get the anxiety of AI and the humanities, but I just had my Claude account turn a crappy PDF with multiple columns of text into a RTF file I can read, edit, and fix in five minutes. Why does the discourse on these models just ignore their obvious benefits to humanistic research?

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · Sep 4

Yeah. These posts were my last ditch effort to get them to sync directly before looking into third party software. Thanks for the rec. ShadowCalendar seems reasonable too. But the thought of paying for something because our tech oligarchs want to colonize the web like a continent is infuriating.

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · Sep 4

I WISH I COULD!

Chris Cantwell @cdc29.bsky.social · Sep 4

I worried it might be this dire...