iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Louise @selkies.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Is this a good time to mention that in college my History of Translation lecturer (Michael Cronin) told us that one of the first vernacular translations of The Illiad was into Irish, and the translator had to give the main characters dogs because in Gaelic society a free man had a dog

252250546

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Eoin Price @eoinprice.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Reading Emily Wilson's review of Nolan's Odyssey (which I have not yet seen) reminds me of the discourse around Thomas Heywood's spectacle Red Bull plays in the 17th century. Like Nolan, Heywood took on Greek myths & was accused of favouring noise & spectacle over supposedly literary qualities.

181

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Jess Zimmerman @jesszimmerman.com · 24/07/2026

I can’t believe it took me this long into the Odyssey discourse to think to post this but… if you loved the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis and you also love stuff Elon Musk would consider too woke, have I got a book for you

penguinrandomhouse.com

Women and Other Monsters by Jess Zimmerman: 9780807055540 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A fresh cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology, and an invitation for all women to reclaim these stories as inspiration for a more wild, more “monstrous” version of feminism...

318672

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Book Post @bookpostusa.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Christopher Nolan cited Emily Wilson's @wwnorton.com translation of #TheOdyssey as the inspiration for his adaptation. Read Book Post's Diary on the translation by @laurakolb.bsky.social free to non-subscribers for a limited time: books.substack.com/p/diary-laur... #TheOdyssey2026

books.substack.com

Diary: Laura Kolb, “Sing, Notes”

Venturing into the Iliad with new students and Emily Wilson’s notes

041

Reposted by Laura Kolb

michael röbbins @alienvsrobbins.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I love the opening line of The Odyssey, “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip”

2236

Reposted by Laura Kolb

michael röbbins @alienvsrobbins.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

sometimes i like to share a new poem instead of trying to get it published somewhere. i've been published in all the places i wanted to be published when i was young, so who cares. anyway, hope you like this, loosely inspired by the shijing

0175

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Well now I, too, am mad about the Odyssey movie

Screenshot of showtime details, reading, “ Butt Kicker: Enhanced with Buttkicker® Recliners - experience every seat-shaking moment”

013

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Well now I, too, am mad about the Odyssey movie

013

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Matthew Harrison @matthewharrison.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I have been remiss in promoting this Shakespeare Association seminar, called Close-Reading Now, that @laurakolb.bsky.social and I are running next April. We're gathering folks who want to delve deep into particular poems. (They made me cut the line banning all abstract theoretical discussion.)

Close Reading Now
Matthew P. Harrison
(West Texas A&M University)
Laura Kolb
(Stony Brook University)
What does close reading mean for early
modernists? How does it make meaning,
particularly now? This seminar invites
papers that develop close readings
of individual early modern poems.
Participants will engage the nuances
of each other's practice, with broader
methodological discussion emerging
from the details of our work.

1111

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Several years ago, on a whim, I started drawing a map of an eel's life travels as seen by the eel. I figured an eel thinks about its life as a linear journey, rather than a there-and-back again adventure. So I wanted to do a map to reflect this. This morning, on another whim, I finished the map!

A long, skinny map titled: "Life and Travels of the European Eel" with a subtitle reading: "From the Eel's Perspective." A label at the bottom of the map reads: "Begin Here." The map top half of the map is an mirror copy of the bottom half.

I will put the full text of the column in the alt text in an image in the next post in the thread.

The map goes from the bottom of the page up, starting in the Sargasso Sea. An set of arrows show the eels paths to shore, then up a river and into a marshland. The arrows continue up the page to show the eel leaving the marshland and heading back downstream, and out to sea. The land is green and verdant at the bottom of the map, because the eels migrate upstream in the spring. The land is brown and dry at the top of the map, because eels migrate downstream in the autumn.

A column of text on the side tells about the eels' journeys and changes. It is more text than I can relate in the space allowed here. Each paragraph has an arrow pointing up to the next one, and they are designed to be read from the bottom of the page going upwards.

341014280

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Not a specific piece but a couple places to look (if you haven’t already): the Folger’s Collation blog & the Sundial

010

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Tom Rutter @obscuredrama.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Please repost: Can you recommend a piece of writing (by you or anyone else) that sets out to make the writer's research in early modern lit/culture accessible to a general readership? I mean Conversation-type stuff but not necessarily The Conversation.

224

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Super Nintendo Chalmers @snchalmers.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

The ides of March has the chance to do the funniest thing ever

728470

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Matthew Harrison @matthewharrison.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

just learned that my piece on teaching Shakespeare at WTAMU is out in Borrowers and Lenders: on sounding country, Shakespeare voice, and the shame of trying. borrowers-ojs-azsu.tdl.org/borrowers/ar...

borrowers-ojs-azsu.tdl.org

View of Borderlands Shakespeare and the Sustaining Strategies of Collaboration | Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation

2144

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Matthew Harrison @matthewharrison.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

My department at West Texas A&M is hiring a creative writer (with a Ph. D. required). Please encourage anyone you know who might be interested to apply. I'm also glad to answer any questions that anyone might have. Job listing here: tamus.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/WTAMU_Extern...

tamus.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

Assistant/Associate Professor of English

Job TitleAssistant/Associate Professor of English Agency West Texas A&M University Department English, Philosophy & Modern Languages Proposed Minimum SalaryCommensurate Job LocationCanyon, Tex...

033

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Megan Heffernan @thecompass.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

If you’re as incensed as everyone at DePaul is about the closing of the university art museum, consider signing this letter. Thanks for the support! openletter.earth/letter-oppos...

openletter.earth

Letter Opposing the Closing of DPAM

012

Reposted by Laura Kolb

michael röbbins @alienvsrobbins.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

new poem, "Altogether Elsewhere," in new issue of The Sewanee Review thesewaneereview.com/articles/alt... (1/2)

2327

Reposted by Laura Kolb

matthew schratz @mattschratz.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

celebrate valentine's day by reading this thing i wrote last year about geoffrey chaucer: shooktownreview.substack.com/p/parliament...

shooktownreview.substack.com

Parliament Fowladelic

I apologize for the title

011

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

This will warm any annotator’s heart

031

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Last semester, I got very excited about one endnote, then ALL the endnotes, in Wilson’s Iliad. Then @bookpostusa.bsky.social gave me the chance to write about them: books.substack.com/p/diary-laur...

books.substack.com

Diary: Laura Kolb, “Sing, Notes”

Venturing into the Iliad with new students and Emily Wilson’s notes

1195

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Book Post @bookpostusa.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

New Post → Laura Kolb on the joy of great annotations hitting their mark and the stellar marksmanship in a translation of The Iliad. books.substack.com/p/diary-laur... @wwnorton.com @laurakolb.bsky.social

books.substack.com

Diary: Laura Kolb, “Sing, Notes”

Venturing into the Iliad with new students and Emily Wilson’s notes

011

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Stephanie Insley Hershinow @sinsleyh.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Question re: accreditation site visits for departments. Are your institutions doing these online now? In person again? Curious what these are looking like these days. (Also welcoming answers from those who serve on eval teams.)

362

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Update - as several people have suggested, this was very likely a fortune-telling game. Kicking myself for not opening at random & finding out my true calling

030

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Equiton Press @equiton.net · 23/01/2026

It was used as a fortune-book. It was custom to write the professions of their future possible husbands in the margins, and then 'flip the pages' and then see what came out.

181

Reposted by Laura Kolb

David Atkinson @davidatkinsonpoet.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

This from Meadowlands, which uses the Odyssey as a conceit to tell the story of deteriorating marriage. There are 3 broken hearts There is the detachment of not taking sides, but also the detachment of time – the speaker looking back as an adult and seeing things differently #poetry #poemoftheday

5625

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Beth Skwarecki @bethskw.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Fortune teller game? Open the book to a random page to play? (I’m thinking of how we’d play MASH with types of houses and occupations of husbands)

241

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

There does not seem to be - none I could puzzle out!

210

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

But I loved spending time with her, and all her people!

1110

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

…but that’s a guess. As to what she was up to—imagining different jobs and lives? peopling a world?—all I have there are guesses, too

270

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

The annotations have nothing to do with the text, which offers lessons in manners for young French noblemen, useful (perhaps) for all. I think maybe it was given to Mary because she was a young person, and young people are supposed to learn manners…

150

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

On the book‘s last page she signs her name: Mary McDonald

170

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

This job, “Admirall of the Red” gives us a clue as to when the annotator lived: this position (wikipedia tells me) came into being in 1805

“Admirall of the Red” written in the margins

1100

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

… another runs “a midwife,“ “a messenger,” “a chimney sweeper”; later, we get “an insurance master, a poet, a professor of Greek”

150

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

There is no real ordering principle; one sequence runs ”a wheel wright,” “an emperor,” “a silk-weaver”…

270

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

… and on subsequent pages, always on the right-hand margins, the same hand has written other professions: “a chaise-maker,” “a whale fisher” -

170

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Yesterday, nearing the end of a magical library fellowship, I called up The Rules of Civility, a conduct book written originally in French but very popular in Restoration England. Curiously someone has written “A Tanner” in the right-hand margin…

Title page of The Rules of Civility, printed in London in 1685. In the right-hand margin, “a tanner” has been written in ink

911116

Reposted by Laura Kolb

matthew schratz @mattschratz.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

I wrote a B-Side at Public Books, about Lydia Millet's great Oh Pure and Radiant Heart--enjoy!

021

Reposted by Laura Kolb

British Association for Local History @balhnews.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Join us next week to learn about how an Atlas of London in 1666 has been researched! This webinar is in collaboration with the Historic Towns Trust @historictownstrust.bsky.social Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/event-balh-r... #WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll

0168

Reposted by Laura Kolb

András Kiséry @andrask.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I was so happy to be in Reps that I forgot to brag about it here. The book trade, their catalogs, and how they made literature. First stab at something that is part of a bigger project. Abstract below, dm for pdf if you don’t have access.

online.ucpress.edu

Useless BooksBooksellers’ Catalogs, Puritans, and Our Categories of Literature

The catalog is a technology that mediates access to books and also mediates its users’ cultural categories. In a 1657 catalog, the bookseller William London effectively created a category for what we ...

051

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

“Graham Granger, a student in the school’s film and performing arts program, came upon some AI-generated art by MFA student Nick Dwyer and promptly ate it in protest.”

49012

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer @kitwhitfield.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Had an intriguing editorial discussion recently: how did people in the past talk about 'minutes' when they didn't have watches or standardised times? How does that affect your thinking? Come down an Elizabethan/Jacobean rabbit hole with me. 1/

111043475

Laura Kolb @laurakolb.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

yes, completely. (but also strangely buoyed by dog stroller joy)

020

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Dave Hershinow @dhersh.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Well, color me gobsmacked, I got an NEH grant! tinyurl.com/3a37thbk

tinyurl.com

NEH Announces $75.1 Million for 84 Humanities Projects

3203

Reposted by Laura Kolb

Book Post @bookpostusa.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Book curses! Great little blog post by Kait Astrella on these maledictions for the Morgan Library. One guy offers this book "with joyful heart in order that it may be an expiration for all sins committed by him. May he who steals it suffer violent bodily pains.” www.themorgan.org/blog/curses-...

041

Reposted by Laura Kolb

English Literary Renaissance @elrjournal.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

We have been remiss, absent, and not here, but, for your belated consideration: Our last issue of 2025 was a special issue guest edited by @laurakolb.bsky.social and Jessica Rosenberg entitled "Comic Epistemologies." Go read! (And see TOC in next posts). www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/elr/curr...

journals.uchicago.edu

English Literary Renaissance | Vol 55, No 3

12112