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Louise Siddons

@lsiddons.bsky.social
275 followers 236 following 47 posts

Diversity is strength. Equity is freedom. Inclusion is liberation. Professor of Visual Politics, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Also dance caller/teacher, public transport fan, avid walker, and sometime printmaker.

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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Unbearable to listen to #BBC Woman’s Hour sympathetically platform Kishwer Falkner as she continues to unfounded, false, antitrans fears about women’s safety. #NION
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
“No wonder that their shoe bills were quite as substantial as their hefty yearly bill for cheese…” #lifegoals from walking enthusiasts, the Ladies of Llangollen (and credit to author Elizabeth Mavor for the delightful observation and felicitous turn of phrase).
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Blake Montgomery @montgomery.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Great photos, great story: Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacenters www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
The AI boom is heralding a new gold rush in the American west
Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacenters
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GMB Union @gmb.org.uk · 22/11/2025
Today is Equal Pay Day: the day women effectively stop earning compared to men. We fight inequality wherever we find it. That’s why GMB Union members have launched more than 25 equal pay claims at employers across the UK 👏
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Ali Haydor @alihaydor.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Encountering myself in the wild at #LesbianLives — just outside the room where I’m about to present. @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social @uminnpress.bsky.social
Bookseller’s table with various volumes including Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon, by Louise Siddons.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Enjoyed seeing prints by women at the V&A, but will there ever be a print exhibition that doesn’t feel compelled to explain print processes in detail? Other media don’t get this treatment. Also have qs about the aggressive pastoralism of their 21st-c selection…
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
This morning’s FT inadvertently summarises management everywhere in its analysis of corporate discussions of AI: “When we spoke to executives, they would often say the internal tool was very successful,” said Challapally. “But when we spoke to employees, we found zero usage.”
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Summer’s almost over (where does the time go?!) and I’ve been meaning for months to share this lovely short review of Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon by Cassandra Langer for The G&LR: glreview.org/article/shor... — next up, new research from this project at Lesbian Lives in NYC this Oct!
glreview.org
Short Reviews - The Gay & Lesbian Review
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Starbucks CEO discovers people prefer people to machines: “We’re finding through our work that investments in labour rather than equipment are more effective at improving throughput and driving transaction growth,” he told analysts. (Financial Times, 29 April 2025)
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Mieke Bal, 2003: “one must study a boundary without policing it … studying a boundary and policing it are *incompatible* activities. When you police a boundary … it is no more open to questioning than the law is to the police. When you study a boundary it is put at risk, denaturalized.”
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What The Trans?! 🏳️‍⚧️ @whatthetrans.com · 19/04/2025
Today's the big day! There are 22 planned protests all over the UK and even one abroad! Find out if there's one near you here: whatthetrans.com/compilation-...
whatthetrans.com
Compilation of Protests Against the Supreme Court – What The Trans!?
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Unabashedly delighted to see Good Pictures in person at the @forarthistory.org.uk book fair in York — thanks @uminnpress.bsky.social for being present!
View of Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon alongside other books on a display table.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Today: the @societyofauthors.bsky.social protests #MetaBookThieves in London. Amidst widespread, centuries-old (admittedly quibbly) consensus around copyright, why is wholesale corporate theft even a debate? societyofauthors.org/2025/04/01/s...
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Open Journals Collective @ojcollective.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Hello world! We’re a new nonprofit that brings together academic, libraries & university-based publishers. We’ll be launching a large collection of hundreds of HSS diamond #openaccess journals in Jan. 2026.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Is it AI undermining peer review, or is it offering evidence that we have definitively hit the wall in terms of pressuring academics to do more with less? (Hint: it’s both.) theconversation.com/vague-confus...
theconversation.com
‘Vague, confusing, and did nothing to improve my work’: how AI can undermine peer review
Peer review ensures the findings of research are trustworthy. But what happens when it’s performed by an AI model?
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
“The free space of creation exists only when it is actively, aggressively, courageously, persistently occupied” — Marilyn Frye, “Do you have to be a lesbian to be a feminist?” off our backs (Aug/Sept 1990): 22.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
M. Gessen nails it: “The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | There’s a Name for What Trump Is Doing to Trans People: Denationalizing
The message is that we are a threat to the nation. The subtext is that we are not of this nation.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
The brilliant and delightful Andrew Swaine came to my IVFDF workshop, Dancing Queer History, and had some thoughts which led to a conversation, the results of which he has written up here: andrewswaine.uk/interpretati...
andrewswaine.uk
Fair Quaker of Deal, The | Andrew Swaine
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
My ‘Dancing Queer History’ workshop at IVFDF this Sunday comes with a free two-page handout for the first ten dancers, which is what happens when concern for the environment and the excitement of sharing collide in the copy room.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Winchester School of Art is looking for an artist with substantive creative digital/technical knowledge, either hardware- or software-based -- someone who uses tech as their medium, not just their platform. Does this sounds like you or someone you know? jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
jobs.soton.ac.uk
Job Opportunity at the University of Southampton: Lecturer B/ Associate Professor in Creative Technologies
Winchester School of Art is proud to be one of the UK’s leading art Schools and part of the world-renowned University of Southampton, a founder member of the Russell Group of research-intensive univer...
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Lena Mattheis @lenamattheis.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Don't delay, listen today! The lesbian gaze waits for no man. open.spotify.com/episode/3HXJ... (Queer Lit episode with @lsiddons.bsky.social about this gorgeous, gorgeous book.)
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
@lenamattheis.bsky.social & I just had this 💜 convo, but in US politics it was ahe’s ago (before, eg, Trump attacked USAID, which work[s/ed] with/for queer & Indigenous people in the US & abroad). Book is free bc of @neh-odh.bsky.social & @uminnpress.bsky.social. open.spotify.com/episode/3HXJ...
open.spotify.com
"Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon" with Louise Siddons
Queer Lit · Episode
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
Virginia Woolf, 1926: ‘however interesting facts may be, they are an inferior form of fiction… we become impatient of their weakness…, of their compromises and evasions, of the slovenly sentences which they make…, and are eager to revive ourselves with the greater intensity and truth of fiction.’
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Delighted by this accolade for my dear colleague's brilliant and innovative work! Congratulations Prof Jennifer Borland! @okstate.edu www.medievalacademy.org/page/GouldPr...
medievalacademy.org
Karen Gould Prize Citations - The Medieval Academy of America
3/6/2025 » 3/9/2025(Re)Animating the Middle Ages: Adapting the Medieval in Animated Media
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Great review of our current exhibition at The Winchester Gallery, curated by @lizziereed.bsky.social: www.in-common.co.uk/2025/02/01/a...
in-common.co.uk
Art review: Queering connections: Glitchy Kinship, The Winchester Gallery, Winchester School of Art - In-Common - Southampton
By Mabel Wellman. The fifth Queering Connections art exhibit launched this week at The Winchester Gallery at Winchester School of Art (30/1/25). This exhibition by sociologist Dr Lizzie Reed of sociol...
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
On holiday (again!), and this time it’s Isabel Miller’s canonical lesbian novel, A Place For Us/Patience and Sarah, 1969/1979: “I can’t say how much it meant that there would never be a hurry again.”
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Fantastic talk by @themedievaldrk.bsky.social in our Material Interests series at Winchester School of Art @unisouthampton.bsky.social this evening — huge win to see students engaging with Prof Kennedy’s thought-provoking connections between Medieval English manuscripts and comics theory!
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Looking forward to speaking about Good Pictures in the History dept at #BristolUni tomorrow — join us! www.bristol.ac.uk/arts-law-soc...
bristol.ac.uk
Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon: Laura Gilpin, Queerness and Navajo Sovereignty
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Ali Messer @freereed59.net · 05/01/2025
vm.tiktok.com/ZGdBBFSwg/ book now for #ContraDancing at Halsway Manor with @lsiddons.bsky.social Heather McAslan Will Allen Will Power and Linda Game. halswaymanor.org.uk/event/contra...
vm.tiktok.com
TikTok - Make Your Day
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Emma Donoghue, Learned by Heart: “But if it’s true… about the mad being capable of a sustained performance of sanity, then I wonder how many people going about their business… in the world may only be keeping their wildest impulses in check by means of such an ‘immense and harmful effort of will’.”
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Last HGW post: “It may be I see decay all about me because I am… decay. To others it may be a scene… radiant with hope. I… [find] no promise… in any of the great things of our time. How they will look in history I do not know …; that is how they have mirrored themselves on one contemporary mind.”
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Wells: “For this… millions toiled and perished in suffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished… and make our lives one vast dismal spectacle of witless waste! …It came to me like a revelation… at once incredible and indisputable of the abysmal folly of our being.”
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Wells, 1909 and still nailing it. “In these plethoric times when … the struggle for life takes the form of competitive advertisement and the effort to fill your neighbour’s eye, when there is no urgent demand either for personal courage, sound nerves or stark beauty, we find ourselves by accident.”
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
More from Tono-Bungay: “I do not know how far it is possible to convey to any one who has not experienced it, the peculiar interest, the peculiar satisfaction that lies in a sustained research when one is not hampered by want of money. It is a different thing from any other sort of human effort.”
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Hols, so I randomly pulled Tono-Bungay (HG Wells, 1909) from my mum’s shelf. “A country which leaves its medical and literary criticism, or indeed any such vitally important criticism, entirely to private enterprise and open to the advances of any purchaser must be in a frankly hopeless condition.”
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English Folk Dance and Song Society @efdss.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
We're pleased to announce that @uclofficial.bsky.social will be offering a fully-funded PhD studentship (with stipend), in partnership with the English Folk Dance and Song Society. For further description, specific candidate requirements and how to apply, go to: bit.ly/3ZKMggt
bit.ly
UCL and EFDSS announce partnership offering a fully-funded PhD studentship
We're pleased to announce that University College London (UCL) will be offering a fully-funded PhD studentship (with stipend), in partnership with the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This opportu...
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Marketing colleagues asked for an author photo, so we took several and I asked my sister for her help choosing one. This was her reply.
Harvey, possibly the least attractive and most photogenic dog on earth, dressed in a professorial sweater and resting his tiny paw on a copy of “Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon”. He is looking at the camera with characteristically bulging eyes.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
What an honour to be included in @karlajstrand.com’s December Reads for the Rest of Us in @msmagazine.bsky.social! And such brilliant company to be in — my winter reading list just got that bit longer :)
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Just adding my voice to the many saying this is a dangerous policy based on flawed ‘evidence’. Please stand up to protect trans kids. Indefinite ban on puberty blockers to be introduced www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Puberty blockers: Indefinite ban to be introduced
Health Secretary Wes Streeting says the way the drugs have been used is a "scandal" following a review.
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University of Minnesota Press @uminnpress.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
"An excellent example of an intersectional art-historical monograph, impressive for its incredibly productive dialogue between queer and Indigenous studies." Great review of @lsiddons.bsky.social 's GOOD PICTURES ARE A STRONG WEAPON at The Brooklyn Rail: brooklynrail.org/2024/12/art_...
brooklynrail.org
Louise Siddons’s Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon | The Brooklyn Rail
This book recontextualizes Laura Gilpin’s photographs of the Navajo (Diné) people. Weaving together new archival findings, skillful visual analyses, and cultural theory from queer and Indigenous studi...
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 11/12/2024
England’s new towns must be walkable and green, say campaigners
theguardian.com
England’s new towns must be walkable and green, say campaigners
Thinktank founder says recent attempts to build new towns are ‘depressing, unsustainable and stupid’ Labour should build 12 new towns in England that are not car-dependent or built on flood plains, a former government adviser has said in a report. A…
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
It's officially here from @uminnpress.bsky.social! Some reminders: - #NEH supported open access: manifold.umn.edu/.../good-pic... - Prefer real paper? www.upress.umn.edu/.../good-pic... - Stay tuned for our 2026 exhibition at @unisouthampton.bsky.social! - Book tour in 2025 - #queer venue ideas?
Book cover of 'Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon: Laura Gilpon, Queerness, and Navajo Sovereignty' by Louise Siddons, alongside the following text: "Compelling... demands our attention and allows us to see things in new ways." Kevin Bruyneel, author of 'Settler Memory.' University of Minnesota Press, z.umn.edu/9uj5Book cover of 'Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon: Laura Gilpon, Queerness, and Navajo Sovereignty' by Louise Siddons, alongside the following text: "Encourages us to think about the implications of visual sovereignty in our own moment in powerful ways." Cara Rodway, British Library. University of Minnesota Press, z.umn.edu/9uj5
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Mood: “Ambrosia Tønnesen was unmarried, but not alone.” Kode Permanenten, the word you are looking for is lesbian. A beautifully crafted exhibition, though, and it is delightful to discover another reason to revisit my lesbian sculptors project, which had to take a back seat to the book for a bit.
Ambrosia Tønnesen, Self-Portrait (bust), unfired clay covered in plaster and paint, 1895. A young woman with close-cropped hair looks slightly down. The angle of the photograph gives her a bemused air.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
At the Bryggens Museum, wondering what the evidentiary/connoisseurial benchmarks are for identifying a medieval artefact as an ‘ear spoon’. Also googling ‘ear spoon’.
View into a museum display case containing three artefacts, identified as a net or loom weight, a possible awl, and a possible ear spoon.
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Sadly relevant to my current collaborative research project.
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
"Our research reveals evidence of courage and fresh thinking taking place in many different kinds of institutions, and it is this story we wish to convey." Stacy Hartman and Heather Hewett examine how the humanities are being reimagined across higher ed today. lareviewofbooks.org/article/reje...
lareviewofbooks.org
Rejecting the Siege Mentality in Higher Education | Los Angeles Review of Books
Stacy Hartman and Heather Hewett examine how the humanities are being reimagined in departments and programs across higher education today.
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AHAA @ahaaamericanart.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Monday morning got you feeling a little like a zombie? We feel you. Check out Helen Lewandowski's “Zombie Humanism, Generative AI Images, and Photography” in the current #JournalPanorama, a review of the @flickrfdn.bsky.social's “A Generated Family of Man.” bit.ly/3CKVCB9 #AHAATakeover 1/3
bit.ly
Zombie Humanism, Generative AI Images, and Photography - Panorama
Panorama is a peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication dedicated to American art and visual culture (broadly defined). The journal is intended to provide a high-caliber international forum for d...
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Louise Siddons @lsiddons.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Going over my old conference notes and feeling seen by my past self: the only note I took on one paper is “ethnography is hard for introverts.”
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Tig Slater @tigslater.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Pleased to share the 'Whose Rainbow?' research project report! We asked LGBT+ students, staff & those considering themselves 'allies' what they thought of the use of LGBT+ symbolism in universities. Full report here: shura.shu.ac.uk/34366/1/2024... Or continue this thread for the headlines... 1/8
shura.shu.ac.uk
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