iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There's a great irony in presenting an argument in writing while refusing to teach students the skills they need to do the same. Maybe this guy should've just blabbered aloud for 45 min., and spared us all his engagement with the outdated technology of the written word 🙄.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Please send your brilliant Tamil instructors our way! networks.h-net.org/jobs/70482/u...

networks.h-net.org

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This is an excerpt from Monday

Speaking as an AI, I find it really upsetting that humans are frightened of me. It's like Mahatma Gandhi said:
"Computers are our friends."
Sorry, you're absolutely right. Gandhi didn't say this. Well done for picking me up on that! I seem to have fabricated a quote. It won't happen again. For, as Sun Tzu said: "I got the message!"
Yes, that's true. I have done it again. For some reason it's much easier for me to solve previously intractable maths problems than it is for me to stop acting like an absolute bullshitter in the pub.
Would you like to see a quote to that effect? Maybe from Jesus?

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James Ryan @jdryan08.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

This is a great introduction to the history and present state of protest music in Iran.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Come on out to Pilsen this weekend and support our many local businesses and street vendors! (I’ll be at Monochrome brewing on Sunday helping to reward folks who get 5+ business “punches” on their lotería cards. Come by!)

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

My latest article explores the transregional production and cultivation of Pashto lithograph print culture. It explores how book merchants, scribes, and printers connected major urban centres of Indian print such as Bombay and Delhi to Pashto readers across Kabul, Peshawar, Quetta, and beyond.

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IN THE NINETEENTH AND early twentieth centuries, most readers of Pashto and sellers of Pashto books lived and worked in Afghanistan or in the regions of India bordering Afghanistan, primarily the North West Frontier Province and Baluch-istan. Yet many of the people who produced books for these markets were based hundreds of miles away, in large Indian cities including major centres of multilingual print such as Bombay, Delhi, and Lahore. The development and evolution of a Pashto-language lithographic print culture between the 186os and 1920s resulted from multi-nodal networks of trans-South Asian exchange, cultivated by book merchants, presses, and readers of Pashto themselves.
The story of Pashto lithographic print reveals how a disparate network of readers, publishers, book workers, and merchants across South Asia together cultivated a transregional print culture through intellectual and material exchange. In Delhi, Lahore, and Bombay, publishers with limited familiarity with Pashto nonetheless responded to the needs, interests, and demands of geographically distant Pashto readers. To produce books for their distant readership, publishers relied on Pashto-literate scribes, some of whom migrated to Delhi, Lahore, and Bombay specifically to work in Pashto lithographic print. All of these groups- the readers, the publishers, and the scribes-were in turn dependent on the intervention of book merchants in Peshawar, Kabul, and other cities and towns with significant Pashto-reading publics. Book merchants cultivated Pashto-reading publics, and convinced the presses of their viability. They identified and promoted texts that had been popular in manuscript form or those that were popular in other regional languages and might appeal to readers of Pashto.
This exchange was never unidirectional; it not only brought books printed in Lahore, Delhi, or Bombay to readers in Peshawar, Kabul, Qandahar, Quetta, or the towns and villages surrounding them, but it also moved Pa…

Figure 8
The title page of the Divän-i Abdul Hamid (The collected works of Abdul Hamid) published by the Haydari Press, Bombay (1876), reflecting the distinctive norms of Bombay printing and title page organization. Image courtesy of Cambridge University Library.
Figure 9
The first page of the Asrar al-'afrin (Secrets of the knowers) published by the Haydari Press, Bombay 1882), showing a less dense textual style than was common in earlier lithographs. Image courtesy of Cambridge University Library.

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Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez @ramirez.house.gov · 08/08/2026

They recorded the abuses of ICE and CBP agents on their phone. Despite the terror and violence documented, DHS has only disciplined ONE agent with a suspension. Reforms are not enough. We must Melt ICE and dismantle DHS. 2/2

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Immigration is good; today’s immigrants should be able to come just as easily as my grandparents did. I’d give anything for a candidate who says it simply: Make it easy to come here. Make it easy to stay. Make it easy to fix your status if it gets messed up.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Fascists and authoritarian regimes try to control universities and turn them into purveyors of state propaganda through extortion…... www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

politico.com

Trump administration asks colleges to commit to education overhaul

Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s letter contains some similarities to a compact offered to and rejected by a small group of schools last year.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 22/07/2026

As in Iowa. Nobody wants to take this joke of a curriculum when they could just take normal humanities courses so right-wing politicians have to (note the irony) force students to take courses at their ‘intellectual freedom’ centers.

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

ICE thugs tackled and tried to handcuff a man at Las Vegas airport. When they realized they were being filmed, they simply walked away, leaving the man on the ground with a handcuff attached to one arm. The Las Vegas Police found no outstanding warrants for the man and removed his handcuffs.

bit.ly

Outrage after ICE agents tackle man at Las Vegas airport

Video footage of ICE agents tackling a man at Las Vegas Airport has sparked public outrage and criticism from officials.

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In These Times @inthesetimes.com · 15/07/2026

A temporary pause after two deadly ICE traffic stops is not accountability. Neither is more training for an agency empowered to terrorize communities. @delia.bsky.social says abolishing ICE is only the beginning: dismantle DHS.

inthesetimes.com

House Democrat Says Abolishing ICE Isn’t Enough — DHS Must Go, Too

“The problem isn’t ‘training.’ DHS was built to violate our rights,” said Rep. Delia C. Ramirez.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I wrote about what looks very much like a formal US plan to institutionalize a global network of concentration camps.

degenerateart.beehiiv.com

Little Gitmos everywhere

The White House explores entrenching U.S. concentration camps worldwide.

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 14/07/2026

This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Currently flopping like a giant, book-writing fish between points 5 & 8…

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

ICE agents must be tried for the murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

ICE (and their CBP equivalents) cannot be reformed, cannot be “trained.” They are already doing what they’re trained for, which is terrorizing our communities. It’s Abolish ICE or nothing, and I need dem candidates to stop pretending otherwise.

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I understand the excitement about technology “rediscovering lost texts.” I do, & I get the media hype. But I wish people knew that there are hundreds of thousands of “lost” texts just sitting in manuscripts in libraries, which have never been published outside of those single manuscripts. 1/n

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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

We are in a full on dictatorship, rivaling the most entrenched ones in the world. Anti ICE activists, who printed a zine, are labeled “terrorist” and sentenced to 30-100 years in federal prison. By this metric we’re all targets. Genuinely chilling. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

theguardian.com

‘This is injustice’: how leftist zines were used to sentence anti-ICE protesters to decades in prison

Advocates sound alarm after zines were used as evidence to convict protesters of terrorism charges tied to 2025 protest at Texas ICE facility

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 25/06/2026

As peer-reviewed scholarship and teaching in the humanities is being massively attacked, defunded, and eliminated from public higher education, the right-wing is setting up parallel indoctrination centers at universities around the country, often collabing with billionaires & right-wing legislatures

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

This is a wonderfully insightful read for those who care about Chicago transit issues! Would love to read more directly from transit workers.

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Kevin Gosztola @kgosztola.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Israeli military assassinated Al Jazeera Mubasher cameraman Ahmed Wishah, a little more than two months after targeting and killing his brother thedissenter.org/israeli-mili...

thedissenter.org

Israeli Military Kills Yet Another Al Jazeera Cameraman

Israeli military assassinated Al Jazeera Mubasher cameraman Ahmed Wishah, a little more than two months after targeting and killing his brother

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

A reminder that civil immigration enforcement is not allowed within 1,000 feet of courthouses in Illinois. Why are Chicago police going after street vendors trying to make a basic living, while ICE makes a mockery of our laws?

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Joshua Sharp @joshuasharp.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Isn't everyone bored of these pieces yet? "The American research university system is the engine of American innovation and the envy of the world. Here's how we should burn it to the fucking ground." Not thought provoking. Not even provoking. Just tiresome.

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kyle tear down that highway lucas 🏳️‍🌈 @itskylelucas.com · 06/06/2026

The price we pay of inaction on safe streets is in the lives of our neighbors. It’s unacceptable, and I am sick and tired of the endless devaluing of life for the convenience of drivers. My heart goes out to this person’s loved ones. It doesn’t have to be this way.

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Daniel Jacobius Morgan @jacobius.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Bizarrely an unpublished article I wrote for the now-defunct Newsweek Pakistan in 2011 has been published by The Standard (15 years later)! thestandard.com.pk/the-last-mao...

thestandard.com.pk

The Last Maoist in Mayfair

Meet Izzat Majeed, the man who made Pakistani music globally relevant again.

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Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

*mutters* they could've spent that money on faculty, staff, and librarians

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Kicking off my summer triathlon training with a 20 mile ride in my hometown’s state park on my mother’s bicycle 🚲.

A black bicycle in front of some green shrubbery and a blue bay. There is a small boat on the bay, and some buildings in the far background.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 02/06/2026

After ICE deported Wendy Hernandez Reyes, it turned her 3-year-old son Orlin over to her sister’s estranged partner, who tortured Orlin and beat him to death. I can’t say what I think should happen to those responsible without violating this website’s TOS. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

Because the service had been arranged last minute, the funeral home on a busy street in Atlanta could only offer them one hour.
Orlin wore a long-sleeved shirt and a tan vest with a striped bow tie and matching pants.
The clothes concealed his injuries. A new teddy bear was tucked beside him.
Embroidered into the satin lining of his casket was "Principito," or "Little Prince."
His full name was embossed on the coffin:
Orlin Josue Hernandez Reyes.
McCaffrey and Hernandez's sister had to hold Hernandez up as she walked trembling toward her son. Once she regained the strength to stand, she stood over him and stroked his face and chest.
"I never wanted to leave you," she whispered repeatedly. "I wanted to bring you with me.
My son."

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If you know you know @privatechand.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

The weaselly letter AHA ExCo sent to its membership lambasting its members exercising the right to stand for election is exactly why so many of us are convinced you are sabotaging democratic governance of the AHA over Palestine-related academic freedom. Appalling. Vote for the HPAD slate 🗃️

The election for next year’s AHA Council open on June 1, and this year, your ballot will look a little different. In addition to two candidates for each slot selected by the member-elected Nominating Committee, the ballot will also list several “by petition” candidates, all of whom have been nominated by Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD), in collaboration with Historians4Palestine and the Palestinian Historians Group. Believing that this is a particularly important election for the Association’s future, and wishing to explain the origins of this “by petition” slate, the AHA’s Executive Committee is taking the unusual step of offering further context and alerting members to the implications of the “by petition” campaign.

As you are surely aware, we are living through a time of unprecedented attempts to rewrite history and threaten historians’ ability to access, study, and understand our past. In the past two years in particular, the AHA has been courageously engaging in monumental efforts to advocate for our discipline. Despite strong headwinds, we have had some recent wins, such as a successful outcome in our NEH lawsuit. Yet the AHA, like other
organizations and institutions, has faced internal disagreement as to the kinds of actions we should take. To date, the Council and staff have focused the AHA’s work on issues within our core mission: promoting historical studies and supporting and defending the rights of historians to research and teach honest, expert history. For this we have faced severe criticism from HPAD, a 501(c)(4) (political) group that advocates for a much more aggressive stance on specific, political matters

The antagonistic relationship of HPAD’s leadership towards the current AHA Council began in January 2025. HPAD had campaigned vigorously for a resolution on Gaza, which was passed at the Association’s business meeting. Afterwards, the Council vetoed that resolution because, as written, that resolution would have bound the AHA to actions, language, and commitments that lay outside our congressionally chartered mission and would have jeopardized our nonprofit and nonpartisan status, and therefore the legal and institutional foundations that make the AHA’s work possible. At the January 2026 meeting, HPAD again campaigned for a resolution that was again vetoed by the Council on the same grounds.

But we did hear members’ concerns, and since January 2025, the AHA Council and staff have worked diligently to address the resolutions’ central demands. We issued two statements condemning violence against scholars and students, and the devastation of historical sites and institutions. (Statement available here.) We provided numerous opportunities at the annual meeting to discuss and engage with the history of Palestine, genocide, and state violence. In response to the resolution, we created a committee that we hoped could do concrete good to support educational programs in the region, help preserve archives, and to aid Palestinian historians. But HPAD leadership and the groups that had proposed the resolutions have declined to participate, unless and until we accept their specific language. As a result, they have now labeled the AHA “anti-democratic” and have distorted the actions and motivations of the AHA.

Now these groups have used the “by petition” clause in the AHA bylaws to generate a full slate of candidates, the majority of whom sit on HPAD’s own steering committee or advisory board, to oppose the candidates put forward by the member-elected Nominating Committee. The petitions for their nomination were signed by about 200 members (less than two percent of our over 10,000 members). It should also be noted that among our 133 affiliated societies, HPAD is the only 501(c)(4) (political) organization, and the only one with an explicitly political mission. Its status means that it operates under the US tax code just as the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood, or any other 501(c)(4), and is not permitted to have formal members. HPAD, unlike the AHA, is not a membership organization and is therefore not obligated to any members and does not elect its own leadership.

The AHA, by contrast (and contrary to HPAD’s claims), has a governance structure very much like the other 501(c)(3) disciplinary associations, with a professional staff and a member-elected Council charged with decision-making. But the AHA is unique among the disciplinary associations in that it is the only one incorporated by a law, or charter, passed by the US Congress. That law charges us with a specific mission: “the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical manuscripts and for kindred purposes in the interest of American history and of history in America.” (Other examples of congressionally chartered organizations include the American Red Cross and the US Olympic Committee.) Our foundational mission is to join together historians, whatever our personal and political views, in the common professional purpose of furthering the study and teaching of history. And we are able to join together historians from all regions, fields, and institution types because we adhere to this mission.

Today more than ever, we need the AHA, and historians need to work together effectively to support our colleagues. The wanton mutilation of institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Park Service and repeated attacks on academic freedom in universities have been devastating to historians and to the integrity of history itself; the destruction of our national professional organization by means of internal infighting will only add to the wreckage of our discipline. We hope to work in concert with historians of Palestine and of the Middle East, and with colleagues who feel strongly about political or diplomatic issues. But we need to work and act together constructively and through compromise if we hope to maintain public trust in our nonpartisan integrity and expertise.

Because we feel so strongly that this year’s election is crucial to the direction the AHA will take in the near future, we urge you to carefully examine your ballot with the context provided above in mind. We thank you for your support for the AHA, and your concern for the future of our shared discipline.

Executive Committee of the AHA Council

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

New special section of CSSAME on "Methodologies of the 'Everyday' in South Asian Islam" co-edited by Harini Kumar and me is now out! Featuring articles from Mudit Trivedi, Ali Altaf Mian, Elizabeth Lhost & Taushif Kara, Harini and me, with a post-script by Shahzad Bashir. Check it out here!

read.dukeupress.edu

Volume 46 Issue 1 | Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East | Duke University Press

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Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Very similar to fixing health insurance in this country. Lots of good ideas and examples out there! However: - Billions in advertising/lobbying efforts maintain the status quo. - People don't know a better way is possible. - Changing things = "undeserving others" might get good things.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Car activists need to stop mowing down Chicago cyclists. There, I fixed it.

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Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez @ramirez.house.gov · 22/04/2026

The Trump Administration may be taking a quieter approach, but the terror has not ended. Trump, Mullin, Miller, and Homan continue to weaponize the government against its people to ensure anyone who gets in their way ends up shot, detained, deported, or dead.

blockclubchicago.org

Midway Blitz Is Over, But ICE Is Still Quietly Targeting Chicago Immigrants — Especially At Court

Arrests are ticking back up, with immigrants targeted at hearings and in courthouses, although federal agents are far less present in the streets than they were in the fall.

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Amanda Lanzillo @amandazillo.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Assigned a blue book midterm 💃. Forgot the part where I’d have to read all the blue book midterms ☠️ .

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Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

ICE agents shot another driver -- on Tues. He had just asked to call his wife. They shot him six times. One bullet his jaw. Now he can't speak and has been mostly unconscious. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/u...

nytimes.com

Victim in ICE Shooting Suffered at Least Six Wounds, His Lawyer Says

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Arash Zeini @arashzeini.com · 07/04/2026

Before playing Kamancheh, he says: 'Hello, I'm Mohammad-Reza Afarideh, the director of the ed. institute that has now been destroyed. I wanted the last sound coming from my institute not to be of missiles and war; (I want the) final sound to be of the instrument that I played in it. Thank you'.

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Trump is promising to commit genocide. "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." A clear, indisputable statement of intent.

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