Maggie Fritz-Morkin
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emeffem.bsky.social
Maggie Fritz-Morkin
@emeffem.bsky.social
2.2K followers 3.6K following 780 posts
Medievalist/ italianist/ tennist, associate prof UNC-Chapel Hill, Boccaccio, prose and other cons. Up with the stars
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emeffem.bsky.social
If you bought nothing on #BlackFriday you get an extra #caturday
A slender white cat with a few dark gray patches looking smugly down at the camera. He palms his front paw on his chest, and the long tip of his dark tail points up toward his nose
November 29, 2025 at 12:47 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
Thanksgiving lost & found drama happening
A screenshot of someone’s photo. A small black ziploc bag with “Blue Meteorite” written on it. It’s puffy and quite full
November 27, 2025 at 10:33 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Our cat is absolute AI slop
An irregular gray shape with two swooping leg-like projections of different lengths and many toe clumps. A bright wishbone shape looks a little like a cat face. A bright triangle to the left of the wishbone also looks a little like a cat face.
November 25, 2025 at 3:31 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
If AI generated a picture of my cat sitting in my child’s lap, probably
A thatching of legs, some gray and furry, others beige and smooth. A cat face and tail emerge at improbable angles
November 25, 2025 at 2:23 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7) really deserves to be seen in color. Who’s really on trial, the adulteress or the cuckold? Ludovico Ceffini sees how it is
Manuscript illustration of Madonna Filippa’s trial in Ludocico Ceffini’s 15th c. codex, now BnF MS It. 63 fol. 202r. A woman with a red robe stands at the center of the frame with her index finger outstretched in an authoritative gesture. At right, a man sits humiliated on a low seat, and a judge points down at him from his high bench. A group of five men and women stand on the left side of the image, hanging on every word of the woman who is speaking
November 24, 2025 at 6:42 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Hate to see Dante in the Epstein emails. I’d say he got the circle right though
Screenshot of Epstein emails From: Steve Bannon [1] Sent: 7/23/2018 12:18:57 AM To: jeffrey E. Ljeevacation@gmail.com] Subject: Re: Fw: Importance: High Well played sir Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T From: "jeffrey E." Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2018 01:58:06 +0200 To: Subject: Re: Fw: Hicks? On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 1:57 AM Steve Bannon < Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T From: "jeffrey E." Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2018 01:51:58 +0200 To: Subject: Re: Fw: 9th circle On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 1:26 AM Steve Bannon < Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
November 13, 2025 at 3:33 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
Illustrator's toddler had tripped while escaping bath earlier in the day
Medieval manuscript illustration of Dante's Inferno XXXI (BML Strozzi 152, f. 27r). A black-haired giant with the smooth naked body of a kewpie doll appears to fall headlong to the ground, clutching a Dante and a Virgil to his torso as he breaks his fall
November 11, 2025 at 1:53 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
Mamdani sign meme: Quattro for maggi
November 9, 2025 at 4:06 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Zohran sign meme. Top line is a golden big capital O with a red shadow. Bottom line in same retro golden shade: For Tuna
November 9, 2025 at 12:52 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Behold the advent of #libbingout
Screenshot of the google trends graph for the interest in expression “libbing out”. The x-axis begins at 10am on Nov. 4 with a flat line at zero. There are two sharp spikes at 9:56pm (80 searches) and shortly thereafter (100 searches), just as polling results were rolling in
November 5, 2025 at 3:33 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Manifesting a democratic future #vote #electionday
Close-up of voting stickers on an orange and white sweater. One says I voted, the other says Future voter. Because there will continue to be elections
November 4, 2025 at 4:09 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Typical Glowseph, refusing to see the gravity of our situation #caturday
A slender white cat with big gray patches sleeps curled up with his arms straight out like superman and his chin tucked to his chest. His unusually long gray tail wraps around his eyes like a blindfold
November 1, 2025 at 11:34 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Career first: calling in a suspected gas leak mid-lecture

TA, after class: “felt like a bachelorette party”
College lecture hall with impassive medievalist holding the podium while two fully suited firemen with oxygen tanks and axes check for a gas leak
October 23, 2025 at 7:38 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
It’s the royal court
Painting of sex pest Henry VIII in a cavernous gilded ballroom
October 23, 2025 at 1:53 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
Rendering of the proposed ballroom
Painting of an absolutely spherical King Henry VIII draped in gold and fur and standing in a cavernous gilded ballroom. He’s clutching the hand of a poor girl who knows she’s going to be left two-dimensional if he gets his way tonight
October 23, 2025 at 12:23 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
Very metal child protesting in Carrboro NC #nokings
A child wearing a bat-eared balaclava holding a sign that says “ICE belongs at the bottom of Hell. -Dante”. In the background Lucifer pouts like a little bitch on the icy floor of Hell, a dark cave looming all around him. The drawing is copied from Gustav Doré’s illustrations of Dante’s Inferno
October 18, 2025 at 9:31 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Antifa insurrection equipment ready to go #NoKings #Frog
A round green messenger bag with the Portland Frog drawn on it in green and black sharpie. The bag has a light blue labubu clipped on, and the labubu monster is wearing its own frog messenger bag (which is a froggy-faced bell). Not pictured: Stephen Miller shitting his pants
October 18, 2025 at 4:13 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
“I can use my protest gear from last time” vs. no I can’t #NoKings #WIP #DIY #Frog
New protest gear in progress. An old green bag that’s round is becoming a frog face. A fat black permanent marker and green and black sharpies are around the bag. The frog’s mouth and nostrils are outlined, and a green line above the mouth divides the space that will be dark green from the light green chin
October 18, 2025 at 2:50 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
“the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa”
Anna Magnani wearing all black, smoking a cigarette, shooting the most withering glance ever shot. You’re now fully withered
October 9, 2025 at 2:57 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
I made a vinyl sticker bonus question for my #Dante midterm. Everyone got it right and now there are 70 stickers floating around campus marking our community 👹👹🥹
An oval-shaped vinyl sticker with a dark purple background and two cartoon labubu characters. The left monster is red with lavender face and hands. His bunny ears droop forward, he stands pigeon-toed, and his face is crumpled with fright. At right, a pale gray monster with a ghostly white face extends a reassuring hand to the fearful one. He wears a laurel crown and carries a golden book in his other hand. Since designing the sticker I have learned that labubus have 9 teeth, so these monsters with 6 and 8 teeth are technically lafufus. Who are they??
October 7, 2025 at 9:49 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
“What am I supposed to do with the leftovers??”

Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7) walking so Nicole could run
Manuscript illustration of a long-haired woman arguing in court that as long as she has satisfied her husband’s sexual needs, and the feeble chump sitting in the hot seat testifies that indeed she has, she has every right to do what she pleases with her surplus of sexual capacity. The woman is hot and many people have gathered to see if she’ll get away with adultery. Boccaccio’s Decameron 6.7, BnF Ms. It. 63, f. 202r.
October 6, 2025 at 4:59 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
This is not the most pressing UNC problem but I am once again obliged to share the state of things in a humanities building. Can we get some Belichik bathrooms over in Dey Hall
Grenade-ass rusty water heater rigged under a the sink in a Carolina blue bathroom. The aura of world class medieval scholars lingers improbably in the air
October 4, 2025 at 9:59 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Jane Goodall woven into our family lore ❤️
A tiny photo album open to two very similar compositions. Left: a baby sitting on a couch next to a plush orangutan bigger than himself. The baby meets the gaze of the plushie with wonder. At right, Jane Goodall sits with her back to the wall next to a female gorilla. Goodall turns to look at her face and they seem to be in peaceful conversation.
October 1, 2025 at 9:17 PM
emeffem.bsky.social
Lauren Berlant’s intro to Cruel Optimism (Duke, 2011) is in the neighborhood 😕
cal sense of the present affectively as immanence, emanation, atmosphere, or emergence. Perturbation is Deleuze's word for disturbances in the atmosphere that constitute situations whose shape can only be forged by continuous reaction and transversal movement, releasing subjects from the norma-tivity of intuition and making them available for alternative ordinaries.® The situation is therefore a genre of social time and practice in which a relation of persons and worlds is sensed to be changing but the rules for habitation and the genres of storytelling about it are unstable, in chaos. Chapter 5, "Nearly Utopian, Nearly Normal," argues that the precarious public sphere has generated a new popular variation, the "situation tragedy." In the situation comedy, the subject whose world is not too destabilized by a "situation" that arises performs a slapstick maladjustment that turns out absurdly and laughably, without destroying very much. In the situation tragedy, the subject's world is fragile beyond repair, one gesture away from losing all access to sustaining its fantasies: the situation threatens utter, abject unraveling.
September 30, 2025 at 2:42 AM
emeffem.bsky.social
The kids are alright
Impish tween boy with a red mop of hair ducking behind a pint glass of milk, which reads Peace & Love & Purple Rain in three different shades of purple
September 27, 2025 at 12:36 AM