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Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian

@aslodounik.bsky.social
84 followers 56 following 34 posts

Art History │ Modern Art │ History of Photography │ Hearts = Bookmarks

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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Oren Samet @osamet.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
record breaking at Buffalo, record breaking at Illinois, freedom to learn, freedom to learn buffalonews.com/news/local/e...
buffalonews.com
UB expects record first-year enrollment of more than 5,000 students
UB anticipated the enrollment of more than 30,000 students for the seventh straight year. And the university is expecting a record first-year enrollment of more than 5,000 students for the fall 2025 s...
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
ECR French Nineteenth-Century Art Network @ecrfrenchart.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
We've just sent out our summer newsletter, a special issue on all things Cezanne as part of the wealth of exhibitions, publications and conferences taking place. You can read it here: mailchi.mp/3415135f429d...
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Dana Stevens @thehighsign.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.
Quote from a story on changes at the U of Chicago that notes they are "pausing" doctoral eduction in Classics, Comp Lit, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Romance languages and literatures, and South Asian Studies.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Ruth EJ Booth (she/they) will be at PictCon 2026 @ruthejbooth.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details: LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a... Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au... (This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)
theatlantic.com
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Dr. Justine De Young @addressingart.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
So thrilled to share this research with everyone at last!
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Halloween III: Season of the Ben @franzferdinand2.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Dr. Justine De Young @addressingart.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
🎉Publication Day! *The Art of Parisian Chic* is now available in softcover, hardcover and ebook formats. Paperback is only $28!
Redheaded woman in black dress stands holding book with the same cover as the painting behind her, which depicts a woman in a 19th c. black dress staring out.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Shout it out: Poetry 👏🏻 is 👏🏻 for 👏🏻 everyone 👏🏻! This is not your New Critics’ How-To. TEACHING POETRY NOW. 31 short essays chock-full of strategies from all types of colleges & classrooms. Coming in Feb from @sunypress.bsky.social. Preorder now. 30% off w/ code SBACK25. sunypress.edu/Books/T/Teac...
Teaching Poetry Now, edited by Caroline Gelmi and Lizzy LeRud
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities demolishing higher education is economic sabotage
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
saint-timonious.bsky.social @saint-timonious.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
MA put in a 4% millionaires tax 2 years ago, & the GOP said we'd miss revenue targets & millionaires would flee. MA collected TWICE the projected revenues, & the number of millionaires went UP 40%. www.wbur.org/news/2025/04...
wbur.org
Not fleeing: New report shows more wealthy residents in Mass., 2 years into 'millionaire's tax'
Despite previous concerns, Massachusetts' "millionaire's tax" hasn't seemed to deter high-earners from continuing to live here, according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Dr. Justine De Young @addressingart.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
This screenshot from Instagram is my only evidence my book was on sale (early!) in the Met’s “Sargent and Paris” gift shop. I went to photograph it today and it was sold out! Releases widely on August 7!
Sargent and Paris catalogues with a close crop of a white woman’s neck and a tiny view of The Art of Parisian Chic on a bookshelf behind.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
New York Focus @nysfocus.com · 30/07/2025
NEW: Twenty-seven media organizations in New York, including 18 public radio and TV stations, stand to lose at least $57 million in federal funding over two years. “This is a devastating outcome.”
nysfocus.com
New York Public Media Will Lose At Least $57 Million in Federal Funds
Nearly $50 million will come specifically from public radio and TV stations, including rural ones that rely heavily on federal money.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Nina Metz @ninametz.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV? I talk with media studies professor and public media expert Josh Shepperd for an explainer. In short, it's dire Gift 🔗
chicagotribune.com
Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV?
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it is “wind-down” operations. What does this mean for public radio and TV?
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
A friend has asked for examples of libraries — public, private, academic, etc. — that launch inventive, esp formally experimental *exhibitions.* NYPL + BPL, of course. I also love the Philly Free Library’s hallway cubby exhibitions (below). I’d welcome other recs!
A hall way of the free library that’s lined with small display casesA display case back with a vibrant pattern, featuring various ephemera and open booksAnother display case with a vibrant background, a vase, full of flowers, an accordion book, and a few framed printsAnother display case featuring a few framed pictures, some potted plants, and a single open book
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Colonial Networks @colnet.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
"Slaves in Paris: A Digital Mapping Project" - a partnership between Miranda Spieler and Colonial Networks slavesinparis.org. Created with the support of our Kress Foundation Digital Art History Grant. Officially launched today in Paris at #GCFHSResist
Screenshot of the website header for slavesinparis.org comprising a drawing of the Place des Victoires in 18th-century Paris
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Christa R. DiMarco @christadimarco.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Join me this summer for "Understanding Vincent van Gogh's Portraits," a virtual course for Roundtable @92ndstreety.bsky.social . We meet August 8th and 15th 🌻 Link: roundtable.org/live-courses... Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887. Musée Rodin, Paris. #Art #ArtHistory #VanGogh
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
And here it is!: Barthes’ “Death of the Author” — as it originally appeared, in a booklet alongside Kubler and Sontag — in Aspen 5 + 6, Fall / Winter 67; via Cooper Hewitt library
A white square booklet with the contents listed on the cover: THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR / ROLAND BARTHES
STYLE AND THE REPRESENTATION OF HISTORICAL TIME / GEORGE KUBLER
THE AESTHETICS OF SILENCE / SUSAN SONTAGThe first spread of Barthes’ “death of the author”; below: a film reel and several plastic 7 inchesCornelius Cardew’s contribution: handwritten text, performers, notes, a squiggly drawing, a round graph, and a translucent sheet with dotsThe side of the box in which the magazine was packaged, stamped with the name of the collector
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
“‘Al’ is a marketing term. It doesn't refer to a coherent set of technologies. Instead, the phrase …is deployed when the people building or selling a particular set of technologies will profit from getting others to believe that their tech is similar to humans” Excellent & uncompromising. Read it!
A copy in my hand of The AI Con by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Sheila Liming @seeshespeak.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
“For every $1 invested in public libraries, there is a return of at least $4.50.” Be sure to mention this when you call / email your representatives!
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
An indispensable how-to guide for scholars at all career stages. @lportwoodstacer.bsky.social‬'s Make Your Manuscript Work is out August 5. Learn more and preorder yours: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
From the bestselling author of The Book Proposal Book, a practical, step-by-step approach to mastering the four pillars of scholarly writing for authors, editors, and publishing professionals
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Christina Riggs @christinajriggs.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Two #photography jobs at the V&A London, 3-yr full-time posts to work on the Royal Photographic Society collection. Deadline July 18th. Project Archivist in link below, Project Cataloguer in the next post. 📜🗃️📷📸 Not great pay for London - but fantastic opportunities otherwise!
vam.current-vacancies.com
RPS Project Archivist - Cromwell Road, London
The V&A is a family of museums dedicated to the power of creativity. Our mission is to champion art, design and creativity in all its forms, for everyone. We share a 5,000-year-old story of creativity...
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Daniel Radosh @radosh.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
New York City had free college tuition at all CUNY schools for 130 years
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Here's the West Philly Tool Library! Brooklyn's got the Greenpoint Public Library Tool Library, the Flatbush Tool Library, the Green Guerillas' Tool Library...
A sign with the letters WPTL made out of tools! Ladders along one wall; power tools on the other wall; a long table with other tools laid out on top Lawnmowers, power cords, dollies, and other gadgets A bookshelf full of how-to books
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Nick Kapur @nickkapur.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
✪ Beware the Gray Ghost ✪ @jongraywb.blacksky.app · 29/06/2025
Firefox extension for those who are interested.
addons.mozilla.org
Hide Google AI Overviews – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)
Download Hide Google AI Overviews for Firefox. Hide annoying Google AI Overviews.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Data centers are multiplying fast, draining water and power in vulnerable regions. Case studies from Chile, the US, the Netherlands, Mexico, and South Africa shed light on the harms and how frontline communities are pushing back, writes The Maybe’s Hanna Barakat.
buff.ly
Learnings from Five Cases of Data Center Development and Defiance | TechPolicy.Press
The Maybe's Hanna Barakat considers lessons from five data center developments in Chile, the US, the Netherlands, Mexico, and South Africa.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Rebecca Spang @rlspang.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...
ipm.org
Indiana public colleges cut almost 20% of degrees
Public Indiana colleges and universities have eliminated 19 percent of their degree programs to meet requirements added to the state’s budget, according to the Commission for Higher Education.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Marni Kessler @marnikessler.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Such a joy to see the magisterial “Gustave Caillebotte:Painting his World” exh @artinstitutechi.bsky.social on Sat with 2 beloved former grad students. The show is full of clever juxtapositions that inspire new thoughts. But I’ll never tire of the grids and veils that structure many of his works.
3 women in front of Gustave Caillebotte’s painting Le Pont de L’Europe. A detail of Gustave Caillebotte’s Boulevard Seen From Above.A detail of Gustave Caillebotte’s Le Pont de l’Europe.
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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
One thing you will never think after reading a great book or listening to a great album or seeing a great piece of art is, “I’m really glad this person remained cautious while they were making this and guarded against being perceived as weird.”
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Steven Mazie @stevenmazie.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Justice Jackson in dissent: "The Court's decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law."
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Dr. Justine De Young @addressingart.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Warning the hardcover version is even nicer 😅. Pre-order now, releasing August 7: www.bloomsbury.com/us/art-of-pa...
Cover of The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris with a woman standing, staring out and removing one glove. She wears a black dress and has a prominent tea rose in her hat. Vague office setting behind.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 05/06/2025
Other side of this, we really gotta start teaching kids about/in a production model of knowledge rather than a discovery one. *Way* too many people still seem to think that knowledge & research just like… happen, w/o the entangled embedded infrastructural systems of universities, libraries, labs, &c
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Lucy Whelan @lucywhelan.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
You'd think feminist scholars already had Balthus covered but, apart from a short plea from Linda Nochlin, it turns out they mostly didn't. So, contrary to all plans, I found myself writing an article, and it's here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Photo of proof stage, assistant included.
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Robin Mitchell @parisnoire.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
I am currently reading this!
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
"This “sense” of how things work elevates statistical modeling to a sacrament. Lack of evidence becomes the source of faith. A lack of control over a system can, to some, feel like evidence of a divine intelligence: this is the start of myth."
techpolicy.press
The Black Box Myth: What the Industry Pretends Not to Know About AI | TechPolicy.Press
Tech Policy Press fellow Eryk Salvaggio says it's a problem is that those of us outside of the AI industry don’t know what rules they are following.
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Lori Emerson @loriemerson.net · 22/06/2025
really enjoying reading _The AI Con_ which just came out! "To put it bluntly, 'AI' is a marketing term. It doesn't refer to a coherent set of technologies. Instead, the phrase 'artificial intelligence' is deployed when the people building or selling a particular set of technologies + 1/2
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Hannah Scott @drhannahlscott.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Everyone should read Sam's painfully truthful account of precarity, esp. those who haven't lost years & years of youth & life to its mill. James Illingworth & I wrote about our own experiences & the impact on French in 2024 & it has got measurably worse since then doi.org/10.3366/nfs....
doi.org
Foreword: Hope Labour, Precarious Research, and the Future of French Studies | Nottingham French Studies
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Prof Julia Steinberger 🌹🌱🌍 #ClimateAction #Fightfascism @jksteinberger.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄
NO CHATGPT Or other artificial stupidity: motivation
First, clarity on distinguishing AIs:
Non-generative: grammar aid, translation, dictionary, text-to-audio (e.g. Natural Reader): no problem
As long as you use the appropriate tools (least intensive in data and server energy use).
Why? Because you provide the content. Your brain is doing the most important work
Generative: ChatGPT & Co. 
You only supply the prompt, the AI supplies the content.
Why is this delegation of work problematic?
3 domains: ethical, environmental, intellectual engagement.

(Caveat: generative is probably ok for computer programming, where it can be useful and save time. Not relevant to this class.)
1) AI and ethics
Mass theft of all and everything
«learning» on books, articles, blogs, social media, images, music, cultural production, without  permission of authors/creators, and leading to their mass joblessness. Profits are not reditributed to originators. 
Permanent destruction of the mental health of underpaid precarious tech workers in the Global South (Kenya, Philippines …):
«correction» to avoid production of violent and pedophile contents etc, tech workers are obliged to watch and correct super violent contents for days on end, leading to extreme psychological suffering and trauma, from which recovery is doubtful. No or little compensation (certainly not at the level of the suffering inflicted). 
In short, an industry built on theft of real human creation and sacrifice of real human health, profiting a few megafortunes. 
2) AI and (un)sustainability

Massive consumption of electricity, water, server capacity for generative AI. 
Outcome: keep fossil fuel companies in business, using up new renewable capacity, without any satisfaction of basic human needs.
Massive misappropriation of the finance necessary for climate and ecological action (renewable generation, efficiency and retrofit for buildings, public transit, infrastructures for cycling etc) towards AI industry. 
Overall: undermine climate action, reinforce fossil industry, waste resources necessary for human development. 
3) AI and intellectual engagement

First, what learning is (or should be) about:
The goal should not (only) be the reproduction of «correct» knowledge,
But mainly personal engagement and experience of thinking about topics of interest. Personal engagement = using one’s own brain. 
The most important activity for learning and intellectual engagement is the experience of making one’s own mistakes, by trial and error, corrections based on new ideas, starting over again. Learning to recognise nuances, knowledge gaps, better explanations 
This kind of learning is possible only through using your own brain, not AI. 
Also, Ais are not «intelligent». At all. 
They simply reproduce pre-existing patterns. They «bullshit», invent false references, false facts, false data, simply because those sound plausible. VERY DANGEROUS. 
If you learn how to NOT use AI, and how to research facts and data on your own, this will serve you and your communities for the rest of your life.
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
kate wehwalt @katewagner.wehwalt.net · 20/06/2025
NEW MCMANSION HELL on what may be the ugliest house i've ever seen mcmansionhell.com/post/7868373...
mcmansionhell.com
glam metal modern but also your contractor is going to jail dawg
Sometimes a house is so ugly, disgust boomerangs back into a form of respect. This is a rare phenomenon, one which should be treated seriously. I've been looking at ugly houses professionally for...
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Reposted by Dr. Aaron Slodounik, Art Historian
Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Things are disastrous, but we’re hoping that learning together, celebrating public knowledge + the gloriously noncompliant, can be ✨✊❤️‍🩹🌱. We’re hosting our first zoom info session this Friday at noon ET; sign-up @ the bottom of the page:
metro.org
Join Us For Misfits: A Fall Course From The Cross-Reference Coalition
We’re thrilled to share the Call for Applications for a fall course from the Cross-Reference Coalition: a new, interdisciplinary community learning project from the Metropolitan New York Library Counc...
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Robin Mitchell @parisnoire.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
Hey #historysky #historiansky #academicsjy what is your favorite essay on either the purpose of History or why History matters? Hit me!
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Anne O’Neil-Henry @anneoneilhenry.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Check out the special section of NCFS that Cary Hollingshead-Strick and I co-edited—“Fueling the Nineteenth Century"! It was so great working with all these wonderful authors!🔥🚂⛴️🌲 www.ncfs-journal.org/current-toc
ncfs-journal.org
Current Table of Contents | ncfs
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Dr. Justine De Young @addressingart.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Happy day! My advance copies have arrived! Available for preorder now (link in bio). Publishing August 7th! @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social #fashionhistory #19thcentury #arthistory
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INCSA @incsa.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
The Goya Network (goyanetwork.com) is a new interactive database that maps the social and professional relationships surrounding the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, focusing on his connections with artists, critics, and collectors in 19th-century Spain and France. - ‪@pfayosp.bsky.social‬
goyanetwork.com
The Goya Network
Explore the social and artistic network around Francisco de Goya in 19th-century France and Spain.
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Siva @sivav.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
If you ain’t doing propaganda, the NEH ain’t interested.
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Dr. Justine De Young @addressingart.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
See a comparison fashion plate for the Jeanne Duval photo in replies to this thread (and in my book).
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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Want your NIH and NSF program officers and division directors to be fired and turned into political appointees? Deadline extended: 3 days left! Already 33,000+ public comments Comments can tank a proposed rule in court. 📣 Oppose the rule with a brief comment: shorturl.at/WKuBj
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