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Charlotte Gauthier

@faraiunvers.bsky.social

2.4K followers 350 following 270 posts

Historian of late medieval/early modern religious conflict and diplomacy. England and Christendom, the crusades, and the Reformation. Also: digital humanities, early music, historical theology, and public history. www.charlottegauthier.com

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 1d

Join me next year at the #SSCLE conference in Porto, from 29 June-3 July 2025. Do please share this #CFP with anyone who studies the Later Crusades (post-1291) and would like to share their research with an enthusiastic and perceptive audience. #skystorians #medievalsky #earlymodernsky

Recent decades have seen significant advances in our understanding of the later crusades (post-1291). This session aims to showcase the latest research on this fascinating topic.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers exploring new perspectives on the later crusades. Topics are not limited to, but might include:
Diplomacy and statecraft Crusading and Reformation Logistics, financing, recruitment, and volunteerism
Crusading in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic, and Iberia Crusades against ‘heretics’ Intellectual history of crusading
Submit your paper title, abstract
(250 words) and a brief biography to charlotte.gauthier.2017@live.rhul.ac.uk by 25 October 2025.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 17d

William Chester Jordan. Read this beautiful article - which was recommended to me years ago when I asked the same question: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

Etiam reges, Even Kings | Speculum: Vol 90, No 3

“He could not believe that the army had been brought so far, through so many dangers, only to fail at the last.” With these few words Joseph Strayer grasped the essence of Louis IX's feelings during t...

www.journals.uchicago.edu

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 26d

There’s hope for us all.

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 26d

Which is, frankly, the point of the assignment. It will be salutary to give them a visceral experience (assuming they do the assignment) of AI slop falsifying records.

Apologies for the sheer amount of CO2 the exercise will generate, however.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 26d

I've just tried this with ChatGPT about a well-known event: the sinking of the Lusitania. The book references it spit out were actually real - though with the US rather than UK publishers. But it completely hallucinated all 5 of the "journal articles" it referenced. (No surprise there!)

A screenshot of a completely factitious bibliography on the sinking of the Lusitania generated by ChatGPT.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 26d

Setting up Moodle for my digital history class this term and considering what to do for an assignment on the week I talk about AI slop and fake historical records. I've settled on a bibliography assignment. Use your favourite AI to generate a bibliography, then verify the references.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 23

The French don't do tea, Francis. Why do you think they fought so many wars with England?

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 23

On this, the final weekend before what’s shaping up to be a brutal term, I’m in Hammersmith on a sort of pilgrimage.

Sign for the Dove pub, which gave its name to the Dove Press next door

Blue plaque for Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson on Dove Cottage

One of William Morris’s presses at Kelmscott House

Blue plaque for Emery Walker on his Hammersmith Terrace house

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 19

Fair!

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 19

Now Nic, tell us how you’d defend it from an attack from the sea, and then conversely how you’d besiege it. We want battle plans. 😉

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Reposted by Charlotte Gauthier

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · Aug 14

A poem from this morning.

Humanities

Who needs history?
Literature? Languages?
Art? Philosophy?

These can only help
you to better understand
our humanity.

Best to let machines
read your books. And write your books.
Do your art for you.

You will never need
to think. Never need to learn.
You’ll learn to like it.

And when the end comes
you’ll have never burdened down
your soul with any growth.

Someone selling this
sees profit in destroying
your humanity.

-- John Wyatt Greenlee

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 14

Everyone in the Middle Ages wore nothing but brown and went around permanently dirty and dishevelled. Also, there was no sunshine so even daylight had a permanently blue cast to it.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 13

Bland, inoffensive, and (low be it spoken) sometimes insincere niceness, designed to entice people to join a Christian community in which they can then be 'discipled'. The 'winsome' are often well-meaning, but whether 'winsomeness' brings anyone to a robust faith is a matter of some doubt.

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 13

The NRSV is a never-ending fount of modern clangers. It's ageing just about as well as some of the 1950s/60s 'modern language' translations, some of which are now unintentionally hilarious.

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 13

This. I wince whenever I hear any of the following:
'have a heart for'
'having a season [of/for] x'
'winsome'
'being church'
'growing younger'
'discipling'
...amongst others. Ironically, such phrases have sometimes been sold as "reducing jargon" and "speaking the "language of the people". Well... 🤷‍♀️

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 13

This is why the comma after 'both' is so important. 😂

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 13

I too am agog to hear this tip.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 10

Yes! When I worked in tech I never hired comp sci graduates. Musicians, historians, and physicists always made the best programmers.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 10

Always delighted to get in the way of such people.

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 7

Some people obviously saw Agent Smith and were like - “Yeah, let’s build that!”

Reposted by Charlotte Gauthier

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · Aug 5

ACADEMIC READING ALREADY COMES WITH A SUMMARY IT IS CALLED THE ABSTRACT

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · Aug 5

The Appendix on an AI policy is actually quite bad. Having an AI deliver a summary before reading has major implications in terms of the experience of student learning. What we want students to do and how they do it is the question. The experience of reading is not the same as reading a summary.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 5

Yeah pretty much.

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 5

Let’s just call it “saunders” as the Victorians did, and skip the controversy altogether.

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 3

Sod’s Law of Research Days: As soon as you request the manuscripts you want to see at the library hours away from your home, several different people will email you wanting to set up urgent meetings for that very same day.

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · Aug 3

This is not to say that swords should be banned - that's asinine. But perpetuating myths doesn't help educate people.