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Mackenzie Cooley

@mackenziecooley.bsky.social
85 followers 31 following 50 posts

Renaissance woman by profession. Associate Professor @HamiltonCollege. Director of the New World Nature Project mackenzie-cooley.com

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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
A model like GPT-5 or Claude that is told to “act like Lincoln” will throw in some 19th century diction, but underneath the top hat it remains a 2026 chatbot optimized to be helpful to contemporary users.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
2. “Chat with Abraham Lincoln” is a ruse The second false start is a variant on one that is currently being pursued by a range of educational-focused AI startups: the idea that you can “talk to Abraham Lincoln” or “ask Cleopatra why she did what she did.”
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
1. Vintage LLMs do not replace historical sources The most obvious false start here would be to assume that talking to a historical language model can somehow replace real reading in primary sources. ... they are best thought of as offering new ways into a reading of the actual sources.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
"More than this: I suspect that by sometime in the 2030s, they will be part of an entirely new field of humanistic research."
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
3. Standalone chatbots are just the tip of an iceberg for what Historical LLMs will be able to do. When combined into simulations (of debates, historical decision-making, legal cases, etc) they have the potential to become valuable research tools.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
2. In this sense, language models are historical texts themselves. Ghostly digital palimpsests, if you will. The idea of a Historical LLM might sound niche, but in truth, history is inherent to what they are.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Ben writes that "1. Academics like myself have tended to systematically underrate just how humanistic the frontier of AI research actually is.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
A must-read post by @ResObscura on whether vintage LLMs mark the beginning of a new humanistic field. Certainly they are changing the way we must think about archiving and collective voices accessible from past documents. resobscura.substack.com/p/are-vintag...
resobscura.substack.com
Are "Vintage LLMs" the start of a new humanistic field?
Thoughts on Historical Language Models and Talkie-1930
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Very excited about work by Nick Levine, Alec Radford, and David Duvenaud on "talkie" - a vintage LLM. Here's their post introducing it: talkie-lm.com/introducing-...
talkie-lm.com
Introducing talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
So often in awe of the way that people in the past were prescient - but sometimes it's fair to think "they thought WHAT?" contingentmagazine.org/2026/04/16/t...
contingentmagazine.org
They Thought What?
Unpacking the history (and present) of science
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
weird research encounter of the day: someone looked at the alphabet and thought, “great, but it needs more goblins.” honestly, correct. sammlungenonline.albertina.at/objects/1064...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
The Carletti book is out (www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...), and with it my very raunchy article. Here reviewed in the Corriere Fiorentino (Corriere della Sera)! Enjoy (but not too much!).
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Doing research using pharmacopeias, drugs, or the history of medicine? Tomorrow's First Fridays Pharmacopeias features Stuart Anderson about his recent book, Pharmacopeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968. dm mcooley@hamilton.edu to join
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Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley
Daphna Oren @daphnao.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
Competition for the best essay focusing on early science, medicine, technology, and other forms of natural knowledge across the globe before 1800. #EarlyModern 🗃️
Cambridge Early Modern Science and Medicine Essay Prize
2026 Competition

For the fourth year, Early Science and Medicine and the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society are joining together to run a prize competition for the best essay focusing on early science, medicine, technology, and other forms of natural knowledge across the globe before 1800. We welcome submissions from early career research and also from more senior scholars. The author of the winning essay will receive a $200 award and the piece will be published as an article in Early Science and Medicine subject to peer review; the committee will provide mentorship throughout the process. The winner will be strongly encouraged to attend the 2026 History of Science Society Conference in Edinburgh on July 13-16, 2026 as the prize will be awarded at the Early Sciences Forum Meeting. The prize is sponsored by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.

We invite you to submit unpublished essays between 6,000 and 10,000 words in English that are not under consideration at another journal. Please follow the ESM style guide and make sure that your paper has been anonymized. ESM publishes images in color and black-and-white; the author will handle permissions. Please submit essays via email to earlysciencesforum@gmail.com by February 15, 2026 with a cover letter stating your name and the title of the article; the winner will be notified in the spring of 2026, in plenty of time to arrange for travel.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
hahah oops
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Please submit essays via email to earlysciencesforum@gmail.com by February 15, 2026 with a cover letter stating your name and the title of the article; the winner will be notified in the spring of 2026, in plenty of time to arrange for travel.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Please follow the ESM style guide and make sure that your paper has been anonymized. ESM publishes images in color and black-and-white; the author will handle permissions.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
The prize is sponsored by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. We invite you to submit unpublished essays between 6,000 and 10,000 words in English that are not under consideration at another journal.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
The winner will be strongly encouraged to attend the 2026 History of Science Society Conference in Edinburgh on July 13-16, 2024 as the prize will be awarded at the Early Sciences Forum Meeting. ...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
The author of the winning essay will receive a $200 award and the piece will be published as an article in Early Science and Medicine subject to peer review; the committee will provide mentorship throughout the process. ...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
focusing on early science, medicine, technology, and other forms of natural knowledge across the globe before 1800. We welcome submissions from early career research and also from more senior scholars...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
spreading the news about the Cambridge Early Modern Science and Medicine Essay Prize 2026 Competition! Early Science and Medicine and the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society's prize competition for the best essay...
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Scott K Taylor @scottktaylor.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
New article in RQ where @mackenziecooley.bsky.social uses the relaciones geograficas so show how the Columbian Exchange was, at a local level, uneven and idiosyncratic emspanishhistorynotes.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/c...
emspanishhistorynotes.wordpress.com
Cooley, “A Patchwork Colombian Exchange,” RQ Winter 2025
Mackenzie Cooley, “A Patchwork Columbian Exchange: Ecological Imperialism, Animals, and the Relaciones Geográficas  of New Spain,” Renaissance Quarterly 78.4 (2025).
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Thank you for the shout-out!!
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Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Oh, so you mean present-day exhibitions of early modern objects? I'll have a think. This volume co-edited by @mackenziecooley.bsky.social, @annatoledano.com, and @duyguyildirim.bsky.social (someone needs to encourage them to hang out here!) may have leads: www.routledge.com/Natural-Thin...
routledge.com
Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds
The essays and original visualizations collected in Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds explore the relationships among natural things - ranging from pollen in a gust of wind to a carnivorous pitche...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
The first meeting is this Friday and features mini-presentations on our new Special Issue (hopp.uwpress.org/content/66/2) and meet-and-greets with new collaborators.
hopp.uwpress.org
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Have an odd pharmacopeia that you’d like to consult on? Could the platform assist you in your studies of related materials? Interested in contributing to the growing dataset? We meet on the first Friday of the month at 9:30 am NY time via Zoom. Email mcooley@hamilton.edu for the link.
hopp.uwpress.org
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Join the Historical Pharmacopeias community for our monthly conversation - “First Friday Pharmacopeias.” Conducting research on materia medica? Interested in HP (dalme.org/collections/...)?
hopp.uwpress.org
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Liverpool Distribution Services at Liverpool University Press @lupdistribution.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
A new week means a brilliant selection of new titles from our distributed presses. First up, "Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" from Lever Press's ASIANetwork Books collection. Find it here: bit.ly/3Vcoc47 @leverpress.bsky.social @mackenziecooley.bsky.social
Promotional graphic for "Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue". The graphic shows the book's forest green cover on the far left, flanked on the right by a summarising paragraph which says: "A comparative study showing how early modern China and Spain built and balanced their empires through parallel systems of local knowledge, governance, and global exchange."
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
The first two chapters - by Maria Portuondo and Joe Dennis - show the making of two different guidelines.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
We go back in time with @lxslcs.bsky.social's elegant chapter on the precedents for the guidelines, "Imperial Territorial Data before the Age of Print: “Illustrated Guidelines.”
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
How did states a world apart develop similar documentary techniques to know the dominions under their control, and how do these techniques help us understand the state in question?
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, centrally appointed imperial officials in both China and the Spanish Americas were instructed to gather, compile, and submit information about the locales they administered, following a centrally issued, itemized compilation guideline or questionnaire.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
A mini-intro to the first part of our book, "Knowing an Empire" with @leverpress.bsky.social services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Sources drawn from the originals, and artwork designed by Olivia Buckton and June Lee, mentored by Zoë Sadokierski, University of Technology Sydney School of Design.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
"Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" unveils how these two vast empires developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield knowledge about their local worlds in the process of empire-building. services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Thank you to everyone who took part in the conversation at the core of this book.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Last but not least, we need global histories that aren't all about loose connections. World history is full of similar inventions to solve similar problems.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
As a Europeanist by training, may I also say that we need to take seriously the scale of Chinese history, and what we can learn from scholars who have navigated its incredible documentary troves.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
We need more serious conversations about the early modern world that take seriously the deep knowledge of area studies without missing parallels and connections.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Barbara E. Mundy, Qun Che, He Bian, Jeremy Mikecz, Mårten Söderblom Saarela, Marcella Hayes, Zhang Xianqing, Stuart M. McManus, Niping Yan, and Dejanirah Couto.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Please check out the great chapters by María M. Portuondo, Joseph Dennis, Alexis Lycas, Shih-Pei Chen, Patricia Murrieta-Flores, Diego Jiménez-Badillo, Mariana Favila-Vázquez, Mario Cams, ...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Over the next few days, I'll be posting about each part of the book: Knowing the State, Structures of Knowing, Knowing Space, Knowing Nature, Knowing People, Connections and Transfers, and Empires of Informal Knowing.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Through a new methodology of “juxtapositional comparison,” we read the difangzhi 地方志 (local gazetteers) of China and the relaciones geográficas of the Spanish world in parallel.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, officials in both empires compiled large quantities of structured data on the climate, topography, natural products, languages, religions, and more of their locales, creating a vision of their empires as diverse yet unified.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
This is a book about how two vast empires, separated by thousands of miles, developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield knowledge about their local worlds in the process of empire-building.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
It has been a delight to work with Huiyi Wu, The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and @leverpress.bsky.social during the research, writing, and publication of this book.
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
"Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" is now out! It's open-access via Lever Press. Please check it out here: services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...
services.publishing.umich.edu
Knowing an Empire
Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue unveils how these two vast empires, separated by thousands of miles, developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield kno...
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Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Such a pleasure to work with Lever on this book!
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Lever Press @leverpress.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
KNOWING AN EMPIRE by @mackenziecooley.bsky.social & Huiyi Wu is now available! This ASIANetwork Books collection reveals the dynamic dialogues between early modern China and Latin America through a new methodology. Start reading: services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...
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