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Jonathan Potter

@drjonpotter.bsky.social
577 followers 912 following 98 posts

Researches Victorian periodicals, visual culture, and literature. Teaches English lit. Probably the least online person you'll meet online. Author of Discourses of Vision in C19th Britain: tinyurl.com/5bxvawy6

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Reposted by Jonathan Potter
Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Adam Tickell, Vice Chancellor at the University of Birmingham (previously Sussex VC) supports concentrating research in 20-30 universities, the argument too of Policy Exchange's Tarnished Towers report. An unevidenced, unmodelled ideological argument that's perniciously pervasive. Contest it. 2/2
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Anne Balke Staver @anneavelo.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
The most letter to the LRB letter to the LRB that I have ever read.
Rude Erudition
Writing about Joanne Paul’s recent biography of Thomas More (LRB, 6 November), Lucy Wooding observes that ‘More could proclaim “the beshitted tongue” of Luther “most fit to lick” the “posterior of a pissing she-mule”.’ She adds: ‘This kind of rhetoric sits uncomfortably with the accepted view of More as, if not a saint, at least a scholar of immense sophistication.’ But even here More is showing his erudition, since he is almost certainly adapting a line from the Roman poet Catullus. Here is More’s Latin: ‘ut vel meientis mulae posteriora lingat.’ And here is Catullus 97, lines 7-8: ‘praeterea rictum qualem diffissus in aestu/meientis mulae cunnus habere solet.’ Rough translation: ‘and besides, he tends to hold his mouth open like the gaping cunt of a pissing she-mule in heat.’ Even when the humanists were vulgar, it was often with ancient precedent in mind.
Matt Simonton
Princeton, New Jersey
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Jonathan Potter @drjonpotter.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Very excited at what just dropped through the letter box! It's the @vpfa.bsky.social special issue of Archiv (including a contribution from yours truly).
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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
"AI" literally falsifying the historical record. On an industrial scale.
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Jonathan Potter @drjonpotter.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Well this really didn't take long did it. I also feel like the headline could be clear this is not a run-of-the-mill misdemeanor, this is someone promoting Hitler's Nazi party in 2026. BBC News - Sheffield Reform UK councillor 'brought party into disrepute' - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Sheffield Reform UK councillor 'brought party into disrepute'
Reform UK say Sheffield councillor Nathaniel Menday has been suspended pending an investigation.
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Joanna Bryson @j2bryson.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Good luck with AI without humanities, UK.
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Lori Emerson @loriemerson.net · 05/04/2026
Benjamin wrote his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" in 1940, shortly before he died by suicide escaping the Nazis. Imagine, now, Hannah Arendt reading this aloud to fellow refugees fleeing the Third Reich on the ship that was smuggling them to the U.S.
picture of the 8th thesis. text reads: The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge-unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.
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Randy Browne @randybrowne.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Excellent news for the field www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo...
ucl.ac.uk
UCL History Secures $575k Grant for Caribbean Enslaved People Database
A $575,000 grant from a North American funder will support the development of a database of enslaved people at the UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (CSLBS).
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Jonathan Potter @drjonpotter.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
One of the more important tables imo. Pleased to see BCU moving in the right direction on this table - up to 7th place this year.
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Jonathan Potter @drjonpotter.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
I hope UCU can successfully fight this! As an English student at Leicester I benefitted from both modern languages and film studies modules and had friends in both degree programmes. Arts & Hum was such a vibrant community when I was there and these are valuable subjects worth fighting for!
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
It's hard to do satire of a field that is continually self-satiring, but this is a valiant attempt: puregenius.education
puregenius.education
The World's First Fully Automated Genius System
Experience the future of education with PureGenius - an AI-powered learning platform that unlocks every student's potential. Sign up for early access today.
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Derek Johnston @drdjohnston.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Well, this is bad.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 10/03/2026
There's a bunch of Chevening Scholars in my Masters classes and they massively enrich it. Impressive people and also so obviously wedded to going back and improving their own countries.
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Corey Rayburn Yung @coreyryung.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Even as a cynical scholar of rape culture, I'm shocked that this isn't the headline story on domestic politics everywhere right now. It's just an unfathomable abuse of power, in clear violation of the law.
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Amy Gray @amygraywrites.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
“In 2024 the UK’s creative industries contributed £145.8 billion to the economy while the entire AI sector contributed £11.8 billion.” www.thetimes.com/article/8561...
thetimes.com
Creative industries hold upper hand in AI copyright fight
Artists, musicians, writers and journalists are pushing back hard as Big Tech firms seek access to their work for training AI models
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Martin Calladine @uglygame.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
I still find it astonishing that, during Covid, the first response of so many people connected to the Conservative party was that it presented an opportunity to loot the country undercover of a national emergency. Unforgivable wartime profiteering. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
theguardian.com
Tory peer to leave Lords after investigation finds he breached standards over Covid PPE deals
Lord Chadlington introduced government to company in which he had financial interest in 2020
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Victorian Popular Fiction Association @vpfa.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Join us for a mid-week, mid-afternoon writing retreat and beat that afternoon slump! As usual, this event is free for VPFA members, but we have now opened this up to non-members for a small fee of £5 (£6.13 inc. Eventbrite fee). Sign up is available here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1984543534...
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Jonathan Potter @drjonpotter.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Coen brothers' Pickwick Papers.
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Johanna Winant @johannawinant.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
CALL FOR PITCHES @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not. Details below!
Close Reading Is For Everyone
Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant

Call for Pitches

Based on our previous Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, we are at work on a new version that’s shorter, slimmer, and aimed at a more general audience. 

We’re looking for a new set of contributors who would write excellent, brief, model close readings of texts that high schoolers might know and care about. Think: “The Gettysburg Address,” Macbeth, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but also song lyrics, idioms, or even a visual image. What is your best, most instructive, most exciting, most welcoming example of how a close reading builds a real argument out from a tiny, perhaps overlooked detail?

If you’re interested in pitching us, please send us your 250-word close reading of the text you propose. Your close reading should be mappable using our vocabulary of close reading: the five steps of scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation, and global theorizing. (Our close reading of “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the early pages of our introduction is the sort of thing we’re seeking.) If we think we can use yours, we’ll ask you to expand it to a 1,200 word essay in which you explain how your close reading works step by step.

We seek close readings both of texts that are canonical and also ones that aren’t. And so we invite contributors both from the discipline of literary studies, and other disciplines across the university, and the public humanities beyond it.  

Send your pitches—please include your name and contact info—to daniel.sinykin@emory.edu and jwinant@reed.edu by March 15.
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Dr. Sandra Duffy Golden @sandraduffy.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
This house thinks this is the best party political broadcast we've ever seen.
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Wolf Hour @wolfhour.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
(cartoon Mike Luckovich) #politics #ice
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
The video in the thread redacts the images, mercifully. But you can see from the prompts what is happening. This is obscene, vicious and intolerable. X and Grok should be shut down until this grotesque harassment can be stopped. Those responsible should face the full force of the law.
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Mark Nixon @fatbadger442.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
#fascism
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Happy New Year, everyone! This is a @theguardian.com books cartoon from a few years ago.
Title: New year's resolution 

A man sits at a table with a coffee writing in a notebook: “This year i will devote myself completely to reading serious, improving literature, forsaking easy pleasures and tirelessly seeking out truth and profundity in the work of the greatest writers.”

He looks at it
Says: Hmm... 
then “Scratch Scratch Scratch scratch” scribbles out words until the text reads: “This year I will read for Fun”
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Jonathan Potter @drjonpotter.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
Everyone has their blind spots etc, but Hobsbawm is a great historian - accessible, interesting, provocative - for undergrads and general readers so I'd be surprised if he wasn't still on many undergrad reading lists (he's on mine!).
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Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Out of curiosity, I just ran a few paragraphs from The Butchering Art through an AI checker and it got flagged: 88% AI. This book was released in 2017, and AI machines were subsequently trained off it. How many writers are getting flagged for AI because of the literal theft of their work(s)? Insane.
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Paul ✍🏻 Dean @paullicino.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
Disco Elysium being free on the Epic Games Store is truly a Christmas miracle. This is such a singular and superb video game. store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/disc...
store.epicgames.com
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store
Download and play Disco Elysium - The Final Cut at the Epic Games Store. Check for platform availability and price!
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𝔍𝔬𝔢 @joeblivion.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
December 25th. The day the Fellowship departs Rivendell to destroy the One Ring. Whatever you celebrate, may you have the courage to take the first steps to defy and endure against the dark, and rekindle light into the world.
December 25 The Company of the Ring leaves Rivendell at dusk.
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Dr Laura Eastlake @victorianmasc.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Go check out Bob for Wired!
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Centre for Modern British Studies @mbsbirmingham.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
We are delighted to be co-sponsoring this event alongside @ihr.bsky.social and @royalhistsoc.org. Details and sign-up information is below!
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Jenka @jenka.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
Its all over Threads www.threads.com/@permanent_o...
threads.com
KarolinaM (@permanent_optimist) on Threads
So, everyone has already seen the comparison of Miller to Goebels, but have you seen these? Rubio the same as Nixon in January 1973 (6 months into Watergate) And Scavino like Himmler?
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Eleanor Courtemanche @ecourtem.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Amazing 😳 digital archaeology How AI’s annoying blandness “accidentally replicated the linguistic ghost of the British Empire”
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Lawrence Schimel @lawrenceschimel.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
💪🏽💪🏽
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David Leigh Roth @notonebit.com · 13/12/2025
Happy 100th birthday Dick Van Dyke!
media.tenor.com
a man in a hat is dancing in a crowd of people
ALT: a man in a hat is dancing in a crowd of people
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
The world's richest 0.001% now control 3x as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity combined. 56,000 wealthy individuals have more than roughly 4 billion people. Read that back.
theguardian.com
Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%
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Julia Boss @juliaboss.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Excellent advice. Get away from the desk, go for a walk. Don’t listen to a podcast, just walk. That’s when the best thinking happens.
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sunyi @sunyidean.com · 04/12/2025
Love it 🙌
Things You Can Make ChatGPT Write for You
- Hayley DeRoche
Your last words
But before them
What to murmur to a lover in bed
What to say in the group chat when someone's
Sister mother brother is dead and
The apology you could never quite get right for a friend And hell why not make the robot compose your proposal
Your wedding toast, too
Your best friend's birthday roast
You could ask it to write a custom lullaby For the baby snuffling at your breast.
You can cradle to grave away
Every warm human word
You could ever have said
And when they chisel your gravestone
For your final rest
We can ask ChatGPT
Because it knew you best
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Jonathan Potter @drjonpotter.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
As a chess fan this is a marvelous read. I had no idea Marx played chess, though I'm not hugely surprised.
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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
“One person is an autocratic president of the university for decades” certainly wasn’t a flawless system but it’s clear that “admins hop from job to job scaling the career ladder by filling their CV with ‘accomplishments’ that are expensive burdens to the schools they leave behind” is even worse.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
So kid, in your heart you want to study humanities but you worry about your job prospects? Let’s play a game. On the latest data, who is more likely to be unemployed after 15 months after graduation. The English Lit grad or the Maths grad? WRONG!
English lit - 6.4% unemployed Maths - 7.5% unemployed
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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
“Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before. Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad. What does reading offer to pupils except tears?” this guy has his finger on the pulse amirite www.history-uk.ac.uk/history-in-p... 🗃️
history-uk.ac.uk
‘Doing the Readings’
Dr Will Pooley (Associate Professor in Modern History), University of Bristol The students, we often grumble, don’t read the secondary readings we set for class. Every year, we find ourselves press…
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Big Issue @bigissue.com · 28/11/2025
Grant. Andrew. Stewart. Andre. Four vendors equipped to earn this winter. A Vendor Support Kit gives them the tools to work their way to a better future: ♨️ Warm hat and gloves ☕ Hot food voucher 💳 Cashless payment support 📈 One-to-one sales coaching Buy one online at bigissue.com/supportkit
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
What do UK graduates do? Lots of information in this annual report. A reminder that Humanities graduates are quite employable. Compare unemployment rates for Biology (8.4%), Chemistry (5.9%) and Physics (8.0%) with English literature (6.4%), History (7.6%) and Languages (7.6%) for example.
graduatemarkettrends.cdn.prismic.io
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Cathy Waters @catherinefaver.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
A huge figure in Dickens Studies, his contribution to the field over the last half century is unsurpassed. @dickensfellowhq.bsky.social has lost a champion.
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Duncan Mackay @theduncanmackay.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
A walk through the stone defences of Mither Tap, Bennachie in Aberdeenshire for #HillfortsWednesday I believe occupied in the early Middle Ages, don’t know how far it goes back? Whenever it was, I hope it was less windy than now.
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
This is one of the worst, most horrifying exposures we have ever seen. It is hard to overstate how bad the things that people are using tools like for are, and it's insane to pretend like these tools are anything other than nonconsensual porn machines www.404media.co/ai-porn-secr...
404media.co
Massive Leak Shows Erotic Chatbot Users Turned Women’s Yearbook Pictures Into AI Porn
Chatbot roleplay and image generator platform SecretDesires.ai left cloud storage containers of nearly two million of images and videos exposed, including photos and full names of women from social me...
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Turing Police Andúnië Branch 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dov.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
Well it certainly doesnt help if you start your focus on things that bring people joy instead of decarbonising the energy grid, yes.
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WRONG or METAPHYSICAL IN NATURE @jsthrill.modphi.com · 12/11/2025
For anyone who is like “the creature is also named Frankenstein”; Mary Shelley went to see a play version of Frankenstein and was tickled that they listed the creature as “———“ in the dramatis personae: “this nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good” www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3...
But lo and behold! I found myself famous. Frankenstein had prodigious success as a drama, and was about to be repeated, for the twenty-third night, at the English Opera House. The play-bill amused me extremely, for, in the list of dramatis personce, came
"———, by Mr. T. Cooke." This nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good.
On Friday, 29th August, Jane, my Father, William, and I went to the theatre to see it. Wallack looked very well as Frankenstein.
He is at the beginning full of hope and expectation. At the end of the first act the stage represents a room with a staircase leading to Frankenstein's workshop; he goes to it, and you see his light at a small window, through which a frightened servant peeps, who runs off in terror when Frankenstein exclaims "It lives!" Presently Frankenstein himself rushes in horror and trepidation from the room, and, while still expressing his agony and terror,
"———" throws down the door of the laboratory, leaps the staircase, and presents his unearthly and monstrous person on the stage. The story is not well managed, but Cooke played ———'s part extremely well; his seeking, as it were, for support; his trying to grasp at the sounds he heard; all, indeed, he does was well imagined and executed. I was much amused, and it appeared to excite a breathless eagerness in the audience. It was a third piece, a scanty pit filled at half-price, and all stayed till it was over.
They continue to play it even now.
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