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William Carruthers

@williamcarruthers.bsky.social

5.7K followers 2.2K following 7.5K posts

Lecturer in Heritage @phaisessex.bsky.social . ‘Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology’ out now with Cornell UP. Fellow, RHistS. https://williamcarruthers.co.uk // williamcarruthers.wordpress.com

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 16d

In better news my book is coming out in paperback next March (pre-orders now available)! www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Flooded Pasts by William Carruthers | Hardcover | Cornell University Press

Flooded Pasts examines a world famous yet critically underexamined event—UNESCO's International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia (1960–80)—to show how the project, its genealogy, and its...

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 1h

Reform UK

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2h

Building a freeport (Jebel Ali?) also helped cement it. What’s notable is that this—shipping—is why Egypt used to be so important but it seems to have become less so other than as transit point through Suez. That said, without the canal, UAE would have problems.

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2h

UK did amazingly well exiting its positions i. the Gulf at least in part due to falconry…

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2h

Yes. And the royal family are based in AD.

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2h

100%. Don’t tell people in the US.

Reposted by William Carruthers

Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 5h

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2h

Yep. And, in my experience, archaeologists (as precarious as parts of that existence are).

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 3h

I mean, it’s both, right? The oil plus the fact it can quite easily become trading/travel entrepot

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 3h

Extremely well located, globally speaking

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 3h

Tbh also a very popular move to have a servant amongst the wealthier populations from everywhere else who move to Dubai

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 3h

That is precisely it. The failed/third sons being sent abroad.

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 3h

The subtext of ‘we should be more like Dubai’, beyond the obvious racism, is ‘I should have a servant’.

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Vanessa is the name of the Doctor! @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 8h

Reminder that basing funding on graduate income incentivises unis to close courses like nursing (too poorly paid), and to discriminate against female students and most minority ethnic groups (whose earnings on graduation are lower than white men).

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 8h

'Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce plans to cut the number of UK university places by about 100,000 annually by reintroducing student number controls.' 1/3

Badenoch’s number caps plan would cut 100,000 university places

Tory leader to use conference speech to attack ‘debt trap degrees’ and pledge more money for apprenticeships

www.timeshighereducation.com

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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 7h

All I think about when reading this is how many jobs the money spent on that pile of brick and glass could have saved in smaller humanities departments - my own colleagues. It’s like building a monument of gold in a landscape of wrack and ruin.

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 8h

'The gleaming palace to the humanities – the single largest building project ever undertaken by the University of Oxford made possible by the largest philanthropic gift it has ever received – stands in stark contrast to the beleaguered, shrinking state of the rest of the sector.'

Oxford’s largest-ever project ‘shows what the humanities can do’

New building which brings together disciplines for the first time will also open its doors to the public to engage with big questions facing the world

www.timeshighereducation.com

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 20h

Don’t know who the journalist is, but he should win an award for sitting through that, frankly

Reposted by William Carruthers

General Boles @generalboles.bsky.social · 1d

Everyone who advocates for turning the UK into the UAE assumes they'll be the one with a marina penthouse rather than the guy working on a building site in 50c heat

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 1d

Yes

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 1d

I wonder what shop this used to be… really difficult to work it out

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Reposted by William Carruthers

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 2d

A work of art

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2d

Got it (and agreed…)

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2d

No, but I’m imagining the unintended consequences of a party in favour of expats having it come back to bite them

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2d

The only reason I turn up at seminars is that I’m compelled to, tbh

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2d

This is a decent explanation of why academia—a profession reliant on public speaking—produces lots of people who don’t enjoy public speaking

Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 2d

Academia turns its eye toward itself

(Source: The art of anthropology: Essays and diagrams / Alfred Gell 1999, edited by Eric Hirsch)

The British-style (anthropology) seminar is a peculiar institution with rules of its own. A regular weekly (term-time) event, the 'ideal' seminar usually brings together some 20 or more participants, around a table, under the chairmanship of an experienced teacher and seminar leader. The chairman introduces, and generally gives moral support to, the speaker, while the audience undertake the role of critics, and may, indeed, ask extremely hostile-sounding questions. In a good seminar, there are usually three or four expert seminar practitioners, who can be relied on to give the speaker something of a grilling. The questioning goes on for an hour, allowing time for the more junior members of the seminar to intervene as well and acquire the interrogatory skills of their seniors. However, the seminar is not as unfriendly an occasion as it sometimes seems to visitors unused to its conventions. There is an implicit rule that really severe questioning is reserved for speakers who have shown, in the course of their papers, either that they possess the dialectical skill to handle even the most destructive questioning, or, on rare occasions, that they are so bumptious and thick-skulled that they are unlikely to comprehend the devastating nature of the questioning they receive.

The mild, tentative, paper from an inexperienced speaker will not be dealt with harshly. Meanwhile, the skilled dialectician relishes the cut and thrust of debate, and exploits the opportunity afforded by hostile questioning to produce additional extemporized displays of wit, turning the questions back on the questioners and making fun of their positions. As the question period draws to a close, the skilled speaker elaborates the main points of the paper in a series of improvisations on themes suggested by the audience. Adrenalin flows copiously through the speaker's bloodstream by this time - now the hard questioning has been overcome - and unusual freedom of expression may be attained. The audience are enjoying themselves too. But the chairman must close the seminar once the time allotted for its duration is over, since, like Cinderella's ball, seminar bonhomie has a fixed temporal compass, which cannot exceed two hours, even by a second. At this point, the chairman thanks the speaker, conducts him to a place of refreshment, where adrenalin is tempered with alcohol, and happy, animated conversations ensue. The point is that the seminar is a social occasion, a game, an exchange, an ordeal, an initiation. To one of a naturally social disposition, to hear a paper in a seminar is intrinsically much more interesting than to read the same paper in cold blood, because one's social proclivities are excited as well as one's strictly academic or intellectual interests. I confess to being a social animal of this type. Consequently, it is much more exciting for me to write a paper for presentation at a seminar than it is to write for an imaginary reader, as one does when writing a book. Books do not give anything like the feedback that one gets from seminars.

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mappingmuc.bsky.social @mappingmuc.bsky.social · 2d

Das neue Buch von @he-mel.bsky.social ist vor wenigen Tagen beim @unrastverlag.bsky.social erschienen:

"Der lange Schatten des deutschen Kolonialismus
Verdrängung, Verleugnung, Umdeutung"

unrast-verlag.de/produkt/der-...

Auf der Titelseite des Buches ist ein weißer Mann mit "Tropenhelm" zu sehen. Er sitzt in einer Art Hängematte, die von zwei Schwarzen Personen getragen wird. Weitere Schwarze Personen blicken in Richtung Kamera.

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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2d

The other shitty thing about all of this is that it further cements hierarchies among institutions