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Drew Flanagan Ph.D

@drewflanaganphd.bsky.social
1.8K followers 710 following 344 posts

Historian of western European borderlands, European unity, and civilizational thinking. Assistant Prof. at Pitt-Bradford. Author of From Occupation to Integration: Recivilizing the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany 1945-55 (LSU Press, 2026)

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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Morocco has its first woman Prime Minister as of today - Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Reading student reflections on the Leeds Woolen Workers' Petition of 1786 (protesting the job loss caused by new industrial machinery in the textile industry) and admiring how a historical document can help students reflect on and make sense of technological transformations in their own time
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roxanne panchasi @rpanchasi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
definitely had this one on my bingo card...
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
"A change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and oneself anew." - Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
GenAI evangelists: there is no deskilling. You become as a god, a machine god, you- Every GenAI CEO: no one needs to know how to read and also I don't know how to put my pants on anymore
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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Thank you to all who attended my book launch event yesterday, hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Department of History and European Studies Center. Especially all the Pitt people I met on our Fulbright-Hays program in Senegal last May - couldn't ask for better colleagues and friends!
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Dr. Lindsay Stallones Marshall (she/her) @lindstorian.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
As someone who is elbows deep in revisions on a book about historical knowledge production and its connection to how we develop and reinforce historical memory, I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly destructive and dangerous it is to get your history from content generated by LLMs/genAI.
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andy™ @andylevy.net · 08/09/2026
werner herzog on AI filmmaking (from here www.indiewire.com/features/int...)
Q: A couple years ago at IDFA, I saw this movie "About a Hero," which is this partly Al-generated hybrid documentary that tries to recreate the atmosphere of your films.

A: The intention of this young filmmaker was never to remake any [of my films], but making something in the spirit. And I immediately said, "You will fail. It is such a stupid idea. It's phenomenally, abysmally stupid. I will not take part in it." He wanted me to explain things and have my voice in it.
I said, "You are alone. There's such a thing as free speech, which I respect. So go ahead and fail." And it is a failure, period.
It's so standardized that Al can step in because there's not real storytelling. It's mimicry of something that has happened before. And I welcome Al to replace all the idiots who are into nothing but repeating, repeating, repeating until it's ad nauseam.
When it's ad nauseam, please, please, please let Al step in and do the job.
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
For any #skystorians following the marketing kerfuffle aroud the film The Uprising, a new turn! A few weeks ago the film's marketing in the USA shifted to (wrongly) promote it as a Robin Hood movie. Now star Andrew Garfield himself is doing historical context tiktoks to set the record straight
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King Algamemnon @adamrothman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Sobering, insightful essay on how chatbots mangle historical primary sources. 🗃 www.hnn.us/article/ai-i...
hnn.us
AI Is an Anti-Primary Source Machine
Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.
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Oleksandr Polianichev @opolianichev.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Breaking my long, long social media break to announce that, starting this year, I’m working on a new research project, The Tsar’s Men in the Tropics: The Russian Empire and International Colonialism in Equatorial Africa, 1895–1910, generously supported by Östersjöstiftelsen.
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herman mark schwartz @thunen.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
USAians, listen up. Norway's King, Harald V, died on Friday. Easily 10s of 1000s of people have been at the palace yesterday in the rain and today in better weather with flowers (photos later) Why? Maybe it has something to do with this speech in 2016. (Sorry I'm advance for wall of text) 1/
Flowers outside the Royal palace in oslo
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Jason Hickel @jasonhickel.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
I'm happy to announce this new paper we have, exploring unequal exchange between France and the African CFA zone. Here's a few key points 🧵, and a free PDF at the end. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RABZF...
tandfonline.com
Unequal exchange between France and Africa’s CFA zone: monetary dependency and imperialist appropriation
The material prosperity of the global North relies on the appropriation of labour and resources from the global South through unequal exchange. While recent empirical research demonstrates this gen...
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Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This is set up for laughs, but it’s actually one of the best demonstrations I’ve seen of how being capable of producing convincing sounding language and understanding meaning are two completely different things. A chatbot does not understand you, it just has automated responses based on your words.
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
School of Prof: a paid summer camp experience on a gothic revival campus where you lead seminars, try on intellectual spectacle styles and tweeds, do conference presentations, attend cocktail parties in midcentury modern apartments, and finish with the awarding of doctoral gowns.
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WuTangIsForTheChildren @wutangforchildren.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Buckingham Palace band playing 9 to 5 for Dolly Parton
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Sail away with me To another world
youtube.com
Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton - "Islands in the Stream" | CMA Awards 1983
YouTube video by CMA
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
cognitive sabotage, you can ban it extra credit to U Chicago for bans on professional AND undergrad programs; smart SLACs are going to market AI free campuses soon chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...
chicagomaroon.com
Sosc Core to Institute AI Ban, Technology-Free Classrooms This Fall
All social science Core classes will transition to an “analog” approach for the upcoming academic year, restricting in-classroom technology use and banning AI-assisted writing and grading for students...
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Me, a US-based academic: I don’t care what any scholar believes, we all need to stand up publicly whenever someone’s academic freedom is threatened Me, continuing: also, the first time this has happened, motivating me to sign my first ever open letter, is in late 2026, to a race scientist, in Ghent
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The French History Podcast @fhp.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
#OTD 22 August 1962 The OAS attempts to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle.
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Briony Neilson @brionyneilson.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Two nuns in front of Matisse's 'The Dance' in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1964 – photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was born east of Paris on this day (22 August) in 1908 🗃️
b&w photo of two nuns in dark religious habits standing in front of a painting of naked people dancing in a circle, their hands linked
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Joe Stieb @joestieb.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
This kicks ass because it acknowledges that ALL the steps of the writing process involve thinking, and NONE can be outsourced to AI without losing something of the whole. I co-sign this declaration of hostilities.
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Here's a book chapter I really enjoyed writing, at the intersection of folklore studies, history of colonial ethnology, and the history of postwar Europe. www.academia.edu/124395999/A_...
academia.edu
A Universal Mission: The Folklore and Propaganda of Robert Boutet Between Morocco and Occupied Germany, 1931-1949
In the early post-World War II period, many French soldiers and civilians with experience in the French colonial empire came to Germany to participate in the French occupation. This chapter addresses ...
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The French History Podcast @fhp.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I like this approach a lot - I'm doing the printed course packs, laptop ban, and in-class reading and writing in all my classes this semester
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
In Pittsburgh on September 17? Consider coming to my book talk!
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Paul David Flood @pauldavidflood.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
What are some things you wish you knew in your first semester on the tenure-track/as a full-time faculty member (especially coming straight out of your PhD)?
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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Anyway it's wild that so many scholars are producing books and not getting jobs and we have to read "quit lit" from the people who got jobs and didn't produce books.
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
He lighted a cigar with a "D'you mind?" to Albertine, as one who asks permission to finish, while going on talking, an urgent piece of work. For he was one of those people who can never be "doing nothing," although there was nothing, for that matter, that he could ever be said to do. -Marcel Proust
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
What a cool find!
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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
“Universities denounced themselves as complicit in systemic racism.” Well yes, my university for example held the charred bones of Black children killed by Philadelphia police and at least one faculty member was using them to teach forensics so yes, gosh, there was some necessary self-denouncing
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Gregory A. Hargreaves @bordergroves.bsky.social · 19/08/2024
The history class I’m about to teach will generate about $130K for the university. As an adjunct with a PhD I will receive under $6K or roughly 4.5%. Two observations: 1. humanities courses are cash cows, defunding them is political not economic! 2. university instructors are grossly underpaid!
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Terrence Peterson @tgpeterson.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
You will still certainly not regret assigning my book
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Lewis Wade 🗃️ @wadehistory.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
The Rhine is so low at the moment – the land you see here would never be visible in any normal year (this photo is from Saturday), and the implications for river freight are easy to draw
A view of the Rhine from above Bacharach, with visible land jutting out into the river because the water levels are so low
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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
A couple of months ago someone asked me “What do you think of the DJT administration’s policy on Africa?” To which I replied “what policy?” I stand by that answer. USG Africa map mislaabels every single country on a slide deck at a conference. www.reuters.com/world/africa...
reuters.com
US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference
A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation at ‌a global conference taking place in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attendees who took screen...
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Fuming that the Kremlin doesn't consider me influential enough to hack my account
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Charlotte Weatherill @ckweatherill.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The point isn't to produce essays, it's to teach students how to think for fuck's sake. The minute you automate that, it's over. You might as well close the course. Which they're also doing. This is an attack on learning, and everyone is just shrugging.
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Corinne Gressang @corinnegressang.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | If You’re Over 40, You’re Ready to Use A.I. (Gift Article)
A.I. should work like this mystical Jewish practice.
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Ready to suffer emotionally with the Historians at the Movies crew tonight! We're watching Hamnet. 1) Slightly stretching the question here, but Dorothea Brooke and Will Ladislaw 2) A Midsummer Night's Dream 3) Mostly those little mandarin oranges that come in a mesh bag #HATM
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
You have my permission to get my book, From Occupation to Integration: Recivilizing the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany 1945-1955 (LSU Press, 2026) from the library 😉
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Anticommunist movements see communism as more than a political movement - in many cases they see it as literally demonic, at once the expression of and equivalent to all forms of societal decadence and immorality. Hence, for example, the Lavender Scare equating gayness with Communism and treason.
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Haven't yet read this book (big disclaimer) but I've read reviews from various ideological perspectives (including a screed from History Reclaimed). It prompted thoughts about "procolonial" and "anticolonial" scholarship, and the meaning of refuting someone like Nigel Biggar
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Drew Flanagan Ph.D @drewflanaganphd.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Going down a rabbit hole about the notion of North Africa as "white Africa" (Afrique blanche) as opposed to sub-Saharan "black Africa" (Afrique noire). Seems tied to the idea of Eurafrica in the mid-20th c., though ambiguously. "White Africa" is a great article title free to a good home, for sure.
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Chris Newfield @cnewf.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Gallup-Lumina poll on college confirms that Americans are upset about the personal politics of professors--that is, 11% are concerned. Three-quarters are upset about lack of affordability. Colleges should ignore the Twitter / Atlantic debates and lower costs while heading to debt-free for all
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
fields. Instead, he apparently laced into the company. According to the Financial Times, Eggers told the staff:

“The effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic. Whether you intended to do it or not, you’ve made every teacher’s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago. So, just let that settle in… If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write. And their voice is stolen from them. They’ll never have the ability to say their truth and tell their own story. And that’s silencing an entire generation or two.”
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 18/07/2026
🎯 “An elite consensus that AI-assisted learning might be fine for hoi polloi but not for future leaders at the most selective institutions cannot be far-off now“ The coming class divide on AI: tech-free learning at elite institutions, AI-centered learning everywhere else.
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Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
We (faculty at USC) took on an institutional behemoth with all the money and clout on earth, and we WON. We won our union. We're the biggest private-university faculty union in US history. Trying to make people care about this, challenge level IMPOSSIBLE
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