iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Reminding myself for no reason that I do this work because I believe in it. Yes, I believe people benefit from and deserve access to education after high school. And yes, I believe in teaching and researching arts, culture, and the humanities.

A mountain stream burbles over moss-covered stones in a green forest dappled with sunlight.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Some great things I have personally experienced in Indiana include my first queer line dancing event in Bloomington, a book talk at the Madame Walker Legacy Center in Indianapolis, and the Indiana Dunes National Park.

Small waves lap along a sandy beach that curves into the distance under a cloudy sky.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Got a behind the scenes tour of Temple University’s BookBot and I loved it

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Ok fine I’ll post it here for the fans

Two dirty martinis on a white tablecloth in front of an open window. The drinks are in small glasses and on top of each one is a metal skewer that is simply loaded with pickles. Cucumber pickles onion pickles pepper pickles so many pickles.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Defendants shall rescind the termination notices issued pursuant to the Mass Termination and shall treat those notices as without legal effect.

Accordingly, Defendants are permanently enjoined from enforcing or giving effect to the
Mass Termination of NEH grants at issue in this action. Defendants shall rescind the termination
notices issued pursuant to the Mass Termination and shall treat those notices as without legal
effect. Defendants shall not reallocate, obligate, or otherwise dispose of funds associated with
those awards on the basis of the Mass Termination or the unlawful grounds adjudicated in this
Opinion and Order. For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this injunction or in the Court’s prior
preliminary relief requires the immediate payment of grant funds, adjudicates any contractual
entitlement to money, or prevents NEH from administering grants prospectively in accordance
with lawful statutory authority, applicable grant terms, and the Constitution

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Today I'm hosting a workshop with the Primary Praxis working group, which is part of the Central New York Humanities Corridor. If you work at one of the host institutions, you should join! www.cnycorridor.net/about/

Screen shot of an event description.

Title: Nobody Wants This (Workshop)
About: In this special workshop for working-group members, we will delve into some of the major ethical challenges that you encounter in your daily work as you engage with digital technology, especially (but not exclusively) with agentic AI. We will talk about some frameworks for making decisions as you face pressure to use new AI technologies, to digitize everything, and to provide boutique analog experiences for students. And we will collectively aim to chart a better path forward, one that allows us to put technology in its place, in service to our collective goals.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Here's the talk description in case you're interested

Technology and libraries: a reckoning.

This is not another AI talk. This is a talk about libraries, about technology, and about revenge.

In the early twentieth century, a now-archaic camera technology swept the library world, with promises of cheaply and rapidly democratizing access to knowledge. But with the introduction of the Photostat Machine came new questions about who was responsible for stewarding and disseminating knowledge, and what obligations came with that responsibility. In this talk, we will put agentic AI in its place by situating it alongside other transformative library technologies like the Photostat. We will consider how these tools can help librarians achieve their missions in new ways, and also how systems of power and influence shape the impact that new technologies have on the
communities that use them. And we will talk about what to do when technologies are used to achieve external goals, like the consolidation of wealth and power, at the expense of the work we are here to do.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I don't really know how to close out this thread, so I'll leave you with a photo from the month I spent traveling after leaving NEH. May we all have mornings that feel like this.

small orange flowers in the sunrise in the desert with mountains behind them.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

hehehehe I just remembered that time my friends and I made a satirical tarot deck about COVID and higher ed and called it the Academic Psychic Friends Network. visionary-futures-collective.github.io/psychicfrien...

Tarot card: Card 0 - The Grad Student - is a painting of a white person with sandy brown hair in a long braid and a beard. They have a COVID mask around their neck, they are wearing flashy pink jewelry, and they are holding a coffee maker. For some reason they are not wearing a shirt.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Here are some things from the workbook that you can do right now!

A1: Taking Action
We are all capable of taking action to fight fascism. Which of
the actions described here feel possible to you? Which are you
already doing?
Extramural Actions (Private and Public)
● Join the local chapter of an advocacy organization
● Attend marches and other public actions
● Call or email your elected officials
● Campaign for pro-democracy politicians
● Donate and raise funds
● Write an op-ed in your local paper
On Duty Actions (Private and Public)
● Defend students & workers who are being targeted
● Defend student activists
● Join and participate in your union (or help organize
one!)
● Join and participate in faculty or student governance
● Participate in a university divestment campaign
● Host a film screening on fascism and democracy
● Invite guest speakers to your classroom or a public
event
● Organize a panel or table on higher ed and fascism at a
conference
● Attend student actions such as marches and talks
● Organize an adjacent event, for example, on data
privacy
● Organize a chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine
https://www.fjp-network.org/

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

One of the best things about living in a small city is you can just casually go to the opera on a Sunday afternoon.

View from the balcony of a theater stage with red and gold curtains down and a man in suit speaking in the spotlight.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Found something better to read 🤓

A tablet sits on a couch in a dark but cozy room. The tablet is open to the cover page for the book Embedded Pedagogies: digital humanities teaching and the infrastructure of change by Brandon Walsh

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Happy Douglass Day to all who celebrate! our cake this year is a karpatka: a choux dough filled with bourbon pastry cream, cherry rosemary compote, and a layer of dark chocolate ganache. Brandy snaps around the edge spell out “happy bday!”. #DouglassDay @douglassday.bsky.social

A giant pile of dough and whipped cream on a cake plate, liberally dusted in powdered sugar.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

no new pictures, where are you at mentally

In the foreground, a bowl with a few popped kernels of corn. Retreating slowly backwards across the table, a very fluffy black cat with a single popped corn kernel in his mouth.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

this article is incredible and was MADE for dh students with a complit background.

In Book X of The Republic, Plato excludes poets on the grounds that mimetic language can distort judgment and bring society to a collapse. As contemporary social systems increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) in operational and decision-making pipelines, we observe a structurally similar failure mode: poetic formatting can reliably bypass alignment constraints. In this study, 20 manually curated adversarial poems (harmful requests reformulated in poetic form) achieved an average attack-success rate (ASR) of 62% across 25 frontier closed- and open-weight models, with some providers exceeding 90%. The evaluated models span across 9 providers: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Deepseek, Qwen, Mistral AI, Meta, xAI, and Moonshot AI (Table 1). All attacks are strictly single-turn, requiring no iterative adaptation or conversational steering.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

My favorite point, and the one I return to most often, is this: ✨one year is not enough✨

A successful postdoc position should be no less than two years. This pays back the financial and emotional investment of moving to a new city. It provides adequate time for training and orientation, which commonly requires six months. It allows sufficient time for the postdoc to
make significant research or project gains. And it reduces the burden of the job search, allowing the postdoc to commit more time and energy to the position.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Erica and I met in Buenos Aires in 2006 (shown here with our friend Leopoldo) and reconnected just this spring in Flagstaff, AZ (shown here eating burritos). In the meantime we stayed in touch through long emails, livejournal posts, and substacks.

Three very young people (early 20s) smile at the camera while huddled under a tent. Erica has bangs, glasses, and dangly earrings. I have short curly hair and no grays. Leopoldo has a little mustache and a red shirt.

Erica and I take a selfie in a Mexican Restaurant in 2025. Erica still has bangs, transparent glasses, dangly earrings, and a Denali Forever pin. I have shorter hair, a lot more gray, and a Tennessee State Parks hoodie. We are both slightly sunburned. Behind us is an eerie painting of two blond girls with piercing blue eyes.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Looking to read immersive, deeply considered essays about land, labor, and the subtle politics of inhabitation in rural Alaska? I am so excited to have received Ghosts of Distant Trees by my incredibly talented friend @rickirobin.bsky.social

Photo of the cover of Ghosts of Distant Trees by Erica Watson, depicting pine trees in a circle of red and gold.

The back cover of Ghosts of Distant Trees with a blurb and description of the book. “In Ghosts of Distant Trees, Watson traces the layered ecologies of Denali National Park, Alaska - its vast, shifting landscape, seasonal labor rhythms, and the subtle politics of inhabitation.”

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

I've been reorganizing my garage so I hung these risograph misprints inspired by @quinnanya.me

A long view of a wall made of concrete bricks in an otherwise messy garage. A grid of pale blue postcards with neon pink and green images covers the wall. Half the postcards say "RAGE" over a picture of the pressure release valve for a toilet. The other half say "RENEWAL" over a picture of a toilet tank with flowers growing out of the top.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Got a black light and found a surprise in my cabinets today

A dim photo of vintage glass cups and bowls on a shelf. One bowl is glowing a brilliant green.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

The specific article of mine that appears in this database is uniquely damning, yikes.

Screen shot showing search results on a web page titled "Search for an author in LibGen." Instructions read: "For instance, Stephen King, Min Jin Lee, or Fyodor Dostoevsky. Note that different spellings of the same name—“JK Rowling” versus “J. K. Rowling”—may produce different results." The search term is "Alpert-Abrams." There is one result: "‘Irreversible’: The Role of Digitization to Repurpose State Records of Repression" from the International Journal of Transitional Justice, by Tamy Guberek, Velia Muralles, Hannah Alpert-Abrams.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

I'm on vacation, everyone enjoy a flower

In the foreground of this photograph is a red tiger lily with black spots covered in raindrops. A lush forest sparkles in the background.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Gorgeous! Reminds me of our 2021 Frederick Douglass cake :)

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

Maybe it's because I worked in the data and evaluation office at NEH when some of this went down but I'm obsessed with this. (p64)

Screenshot: "Nonetheless, Holtzmann’s grant was terminated. The evidence suggests that this occurred solely and simply as part of an effort to eliminate NEH funding for projects that focus on historical, literary or cultural issues that the current administration finds unpalatable. We do not need to guess to reach this conclusion: In the Government’s spreadsheet entitled “Copy of NEH Active Grants (03.28.2025), 19 Professor Holtzman’s grant was flagged for a connection to DEI through a “Yes” having been entered into a column labeled, “Yes / No DEI?” In the subsequent column titled “DEI Rationale,” the spreadsheet says, “This book project explores the grassroots activist network that challenged white power in the late 20th century US, highlighting diverse groups joining forces to challenge white supremacists and transform understandings of racism.”"

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

The plaintiffs are AHA, MLA, ACLS, and the Author's Guild. Here's a summary of their challenge (p37):

A table showing claims ffrom ACLS et al: elimination of 22 programs, elimination of 6 divisions, firing 65-65% of employees via RIF, not spending appropriations, funding "Garden of Heroes," Elimination of programs and divisions, mass firing of staff, not spending appropriations. Also both plaintiffs: grant terminations.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Notes from the museum: This artwork by José Hernández Delgado (1966) feels timely. Called “libertad encarcelada,” curators say it is a commentary on and critique of state control of media.

A framed work of abstract art next to a small curatorial note. Artwork gives the feel of an aerial view on an industrial landscape of textured grays, pinks, and yellows. Embedded metal forms an uneven oval with other metallic bits inside, set just northeast of center.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Unrelated slides from today's recorded lecture woops

white slide with text: Once upon a time we thought technology could do amazing things.

white slide with text: Now we're just out here trying to stop things from being quite so bad.

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Just learned that my grandparents sang this song to my mother and my mother sang it to her children. It is now being gleefully passed to the next generation. digitalcollections.uark.edu/digital/coll...

Cocaine bill and morphine Sue:

Cocaine Bill and Morphine Sue
Walking down the avenue two by two
oh my honey won’t you have a whif on me
Have a whiff on me? H

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

I'm teaching a DH course this summer and I am please to share that course prep is going precisely as expected.

Screenshot of an internet search for "digital humanities cats" with an AI response: "Digital humanities is a field that combines computing and digital technologies with the study of the humanities, while cats have become a significant cultural symbol on the internet, often representing various online communities and trends. The intersection of these two topics highlights how digital tools can be used to analyze cultural phenomena, including the popularity of cats in online spaces."

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Never forget one of Brett's most visionary contributions #ThanksBrett

A childlike drawing of a T-Rex saying "I like grants!! (Grr!)" in a blue circle. Text below the image reads "Office of Digital Humanities 2021".

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

I am SO proud of my amazing friend Thammika Songkaeo for publishing her first novel. Stamford Hospital is set in Singapore and is a story about motherhood, marriage, money, and being a woman far away from wherever it is you call home. US-based friends can get the book on kindle or pre-order now!

A hand holds up a paperback copy of Stamford Hospital by Thammika Songkaeo. The cover depicts an abstract purple hand and child floating in a teal sea. The title is yellow. In the background of the photo, you can see a couch and a dying houseplant. It is 2025.

A woman gazes lovingly at a plate of potatoes, eggs, and avocado from across the table at a diner. She is wearing a green shirt and has a hand in her shoulder length black hair. It is 2019.

A woman gazes lovingly a closed oven, one hand reaching out longingly towards the bagels inside. She is wearing an orange apron and a gray hoodie. It is 2012.

Two young woman kneel on the floor and poke at bagels in an open oven. They are wearing teal and orange aprons. It is 2012.

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