iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Not the logical fallacy of assuming the answer to the question in the terms of the question; not the common sense of demanding or prompting the question to be asked; but some new, third thing.

Screengrab from the BBC website, reading:

"Perhaps Mitchell and Webb's best known sketch, which sees them both dressed as Nazis while begging the question: "are we the baddies?", remains online."

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Chloe Ireton @chloeireton.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

v. honored to learn that Society for Renaissance Studies awarded the Biennial 2026 Book Prize to *Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic.* Very grateful to the judges for their work, & congratulations to fellow shortlisted authors. More here: rensoc.org.uk/srs-book-pri...

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Chloe Ireton @chloeireton.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Thank you so much to Ana Lucia Araujo, Toby Green, and Marcus Rediker for these generous words about my forthcoming trade book *Plotting for Freedom.* It has meant so much to read these over the last few days. Out in November, More info & Pre-Order here hurstpublishers.com/book/plottin...

Reviews

‘A moving portrayal of one couple’s tenacity and pain in the quest for securing freedom from Atlantic slavery. Unusual and distinctive because of the early period which it deals with, Plotting for Freedom is a remarkable act of historical rescue.’ — Toby Green, author of The Heretic of Cacheu

‘A poignant lesson in resilience, Plotting for Freedom beautifully shows how love drove an enslaved couple to fight for their freedom, while exposing how deeply slavery and the trade in enslaved Africans were ingrained in Spain—a country that still refuses to fully confront its role in these human atrocities.’ — Ana Lucia Araujo, author of Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery

‘Chloe Ireton has brought to vivid life a love story in Plotting for Freedom and thereby made a unique, moving, deeply human, and lasting contribution to Atlantic history.’ — Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

An excellent weekend, in which I saw both a pine marten and a Beckett play live for the first time.

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Society for Renaissance Studies @srsrensoc.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

And the winner of the biennial book prize is 🥁 🥁 🥁 Chloe Ireton and her book Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic! 🎉 Congratulations @chloeireton.bsky.social!! Find authors’ videos and our judges’ comments for all shortlisted books here: rensoc.org.uk/srs-book-pri...

Chloe L. Ireton, Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025)
Rigorously researched, Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic is a model for how to excavate the archive and how to find and reanimate the lives and hidden voices latent in letters, trials and petitions. It uncovers the rich and varied experiences of those whom European legal codes racialised as Black in the Iberian world. Ireton attends sensitively to the violence and trauma of the history of slavery while unearthing how those with African heritage negotiated the legal ecologies of enslavement and liberation in Spain, its colonies, and other Atlantic colonised spaces. The book brilliantly uncovers a conceptual and intellectual history of Black thought in the evidence of these legal and logistical documents. Its command of materials is impeccable and its blueprint for approaching archival research will be felt across disciplines for many years to come. The committee were unanimous in its decision to award this book the prize.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

My friend James Womack has a new, hot pink, book out! Or very nearly out. His house, as he told me this morning, is full of Ash.

Publisher's webpage (Carcanet, that is) for New Selected Poems by John Ash, ed. James Womack.

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Kristin Grogan @kristingrogan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

RIP Annie Dillard. A bit of "The Writing Life" I keep with me: One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Discovered yesterday, after years of making weird and wonky photocopies, that I have access to pdfs of all of my art essays in Apollo, via my university library. DM me, as they say, shd you require.

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Adam Smyth @adamwithbooks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Record what you're doing on our phone 5.35pm BST on Friday 2 October and be part of an international collage of one minute on the planet 📽️ ⏱️ 🌍 adamsmyth.substack.com/p/be-part-of...

adamsmyth.substack.com

Be part of a film!

An invitation!

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Simon Kővesi @kovesi.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Colin Burrow, defining literary criticism, brilliantly, in the LRB: @lrb.co.uk

In the LRB, Colin Burrow writes:

But to return to the point of it all. Literary criticism is primarily about learning to read very complex creations and situations carefully. That requires a willingness to think and rethink, to take a thought and run with it until it either ceases to be viable or (ideally) generates its own internal impetus. It requires accepting that sometimes you get it wrong and that sometimes other people get it wrong. It makes you pull together a whole range of messy human bits and pieces, from autobiography to philology to counting lines and underlining letters and seeing almost invisible patterns, through histories of individuals and of peoples. All of this can go towards understanding the way a poem might cohere or interestingly not cohere. You’ve got to be bold sometimes in pushing a point and sometimes you’ve got to be humble about things you can’t see or haven’t seen. There’s a dash of politics, or more than a dash if you want that, and there could be a dash of religion too, if that’s your thing. But there has to be a great measure of self-awareness, about where you stand or sit or the corners into which you have been pushed by where you come from. Literary criticism is a supremely occasional skill, where you have to be bold enough to operate where there aren’t any clear rules and make up your own, and decide for yourself what you think, and maybe set that beside what other cleverer people have thought. Someone else might come along and see it differently, but if you’ve made them argue with you then you’ve done something worthwhile. If that doesn’t have a point to it, just in itself, then probably living doesn’t have a point to it either, because making ad hoc judgments on the basis of a mosaic of information and misinformation about people and about what you should say on a particular occasion, even a difficult one, is what we all need to do every day. Literary criticism is like the mess of life, an exercise in tact and understanding.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I wrote about this once, though I think it might have retreated behind a paywall: apollo-magazine.com/cheese-meets... In short: cheese is alive, with unstill life.

apollo-magazine.com

More to cheese than meets the eye?

How Dutch meal still life paintings captured the great intellectual preoccupations of the 17th century

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I am still the googlewhack for "goropizes". Perhaps it has not all been in vain.

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Ellie Collins @elleccollins.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Yesterday we published Mary Ann Lund’s new edition in the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne - a project known far and wide for its editorial rigour and immaculate presentation, under the general editorship of @mcculloughp.bsky.social global.oup.com/academic/pro...

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Searching for a quick checking text of Herbert's "Jordan (II)", instead advertised a tonne of trainers, 'as if it were to sell'.

Google links to a lot of hi-top Nike trainers.

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Peter McCullough @mcculloughp.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Congratulations to the wonderful Mary Ann Lund (Leicester) on publication of her second (!) vol. in the Oxford Donne Sermons edition. Fantastic textual and critical scholarship on his mid-career at St Paul's.

Looking down into a box of author's copies of volume 13 in the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne: Sermons Preached at St Paul's Cathedral, 1626-1628, in their trademark Oxford English Texts light blue dust jackets.

Tondo portrait in gold frame of John Donne when Dean of St Paul's; thick dark hair and beard and draped in what looks like a very un-clerical black satin toga, channeling Roman orator (latter day preacher). V&A and a contemporary copy in St Paul's Cathedral Chapter House.

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Society for Renaissance Studies @srsrensoc.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

SEVENTY-ONE SUBMISSIONS. #Earlymodern studies alive and kicking. Our poor book prize committee slightly less so...

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Society for Renaissance Studies @srsrensoc.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Congratulations to our #SRSlyGood Book Prize 2026 shortlist: @jwscolley.bsky.social, Colby Gordon, Chloe Ireton, Jack Hartnell, & Tiffany Jo Werth! 🎊🎊🎊💫💫💫👏👏👏💫💫💫 🥳🥳🥳💫💫💫👏👏👏💫💫💫🎊🎊🎊 #Skystorians #EarlyModern rensoc.org.uk/srs-book-pri...

A Banner of BEAUTIFUL BOOK Covers, detailing all the shortlisted books:

John Colley, Humanism, English Literature and the Translation of Greek, 1430-1560, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025)

Colby Gordon, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2024)

Jack Hartnell, Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press,2025)

Chloe L. Ireton, Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Alantic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025)

Tiffany Jo Werth, The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)

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Tamara Atkin @tamarajatkin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Working on and with fragments is always an excitement and privilege, but as a scholar who sometimes writes about drama, identifying one of these fragments as derived from a fifteenth-century secular play text has been particularly thrilling.

bbc.co.uk

Medieval Guernsey reading habits revealed in hidden manuscripts

Archivists discover 17 manuscript fragments from medieval times were repurposed as book covers.

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Dr Ian McCormick @wokestudies.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

*** Lecturer in British Romantic Literature *** £41,064 to £46,049 per annum University of Glasgow #English #poetry #romanticism #Literature #HigherEd www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSS069/l...

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Kathryn Rose @artsyhonker.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Good morning weird church Bluesky! This fundraiser for admin support for my lovely church has stalled a bit. We have a PCC meeting tonight, and one of the agenda items is how much support we can afford. If you can, today would be a great day to contribute. ✝️⚓ www.justgiving.com/page/whatsacoo

justgiving.com

What's a Coo to Do? for St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park

Help Kathryn Rose raise money to support St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park

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Kathryn Rose @artsyhonker.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Good morning, weekend Bluesky! This silly fund for admin and maintenance support for my beloved small weird sending church is at £890 which is amazing, thank you so much. I would love it if we could get to £1000 today. If we do: another Highland Coo picture! ✝️⚓ www.justgiving.com/page/whatsacoo

justgiving.com

What's a Coo to Do? for St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park

Help Kathryn Rose raise money to support St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

First time I've found The Anatomy of Melancholy and a Justin Bieber hairball in the same sentence.

Screengrab from a Wikipedia page describing how the Bidoun booth at the 2015 Frieze art fair in New York sold artists' objects, including a Justin Bieber hairball and a copy of the Anatomy of Melancholy defaced by Orhan Pamuk.

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Anna Cusack @annacusack.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

If anyone needs an early modernist for lecturing, consultation, copy editing, or freelance work. I have a lot of experience and would appreciate any work sent my way for the next academic year! #EarlyModern Things are looking a little grim!

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Rachel Willie @racheljwillie.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Who’s a Wikipedia editor? I feel Helen Gardner’s entry needs updating to include this vital piece of information about her and the Spanish Steps.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Is it alarming or reassuring to start taking notes on something, belatedly realize you have already taken notes on it, and then discover that you copied the same passages five years ago, and had the some thoughts in response?

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

This has to be high on the list of oddest footnotes I have read.

Photograph of a footnote in which it is explained that the Italian scholar of the Baroque Mario Praz was supposed to have psychokinetic powers, and to have used them to precipitate Dame Helen Gardner down the Spanish Steps.

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Kathryn Rose @artsyhonker.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Good morning #CofEPeeps! I am leaving my role as churchwarden to go away to Mirfield, and my church is in a precarious financial position. For every £250 raised on this page there will be more pictures of Dilemma, the Highland Coo, and some more coo puns. www.justgiving.com/page/whatsacoo

justgiving.com

What's a Coo to Do? for St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park

Help Kathryn Rose raise money to support St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

This was not what that alert was for.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Last weekend for Olivia Plender's wonderful exhibition 'Little Fennel's Complaint' at Modern Art Oxford: a contemporary, feminist take on of the history of medicine. We made a video about it, in which I lost all sense of syntax, and indeed of sense: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qn-...

youtube.com

Art from the Archives

YouTube video by University of Oxford

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Just in case anyone was wondering. (Wild, wild essay. The pitch she lives/writes at!)

Screenshot of an essay by Annie Dillard called _Total Eclipse_, with the epigraph "Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.”

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Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

So my @manchester.ac.uk colleagues will have their slides, lecture plans stolen and students work will be plagiarised. Is everyone OK with that? And if so, why???

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Avi Lifschitz @diderotesque.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

'Enlightenment Decentred': moving on from the centre-periphery paradigm and national Enlightenments to focus on connections and multi-directional transfer. Join us in Oxford, 30 Sep - 2 Oct: intellectualhistory.web.ox.ac.uk/event/enligh...

intellectualhistory.web.ox.ac.uk

Enlightenment Decentred: Networks, Media, Practices

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Just realized a talk I delivered in March, at the Barnes Philosophy Club, on distraction & AI & early modern prose, has been up on YouTube. I post it mostly for the incongruity of imagining, from this August heatwave, that I could ever wear trousers, or a polo neck. m.youtube.com/watch?v=-iyu...

m.youtube.com

The Tottering Universal - 17th century thinking: Kathryn Murphy at Barnes Philosophy Club, Feb 2026

YouTube video by Barnes Philosophy Club

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Pascale Aebischer (she/her) @pascaleexeter.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Just in case you haven't signed this yet: The crisis in Exeter is not over. It's just in that dangerous phase where people forget about it unless they're affected. We're waiting to find out the results of the 'consultation'. There's still time to change course. Share and sign! c.org/VZDjrbTybJ

c.org

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

...I said 'tolerating' -- but a friend pointed out to me that she talks about frustration & difficulty as pleasure; a challenging kind of pleasure, but valuable, & one which increases our toleration of difficulty, complexity, and, yes, frustration. I tried to write about this for my students /1

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Lots of people have been posting Katherine Rundell's article against AI, which is good, because it's good. Two things I especially liked: the stress on writing as thinking, and therefore of the necessity of tolerating difficulty and frustration, through which you and your ideas are changed; and /1

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I mean: among other things. (Le cloporte, c'est moi.)

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Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Amazing detail I just learned from a discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ student diaries: he once gave up looking at the sky for Lent

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Lily Freeman-Jones @freemanjones.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

***job klaxon!*** Postdoctoral Research Associate on ERC-funded project TextDiveGlobal at QMUL 12 month post from 1 September 2026 Apply by 28 July: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSG130/p...

jobs.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Research Associate - 'TextDiveGlobal' at Queen Mary University of London

Apply now for the Postdoctoral Research Associate - 'TextDiveGlobal' role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Going to try to make this accidental 'livelihoo' on the OUP website into a thing: capricious quality of life and lifelikeness, essayistic esprit, careless brilliance.

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

This petition needs as many signatories as the Exeter one. Please sign and share — don’t let Hertfordshire managers get away with this just because a Russell Group one took the spotlight. #UKHE

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Simon Kővesi @kovesi.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Change the Higher Education funding model. No other sector of such quality, economic heft & foundational national significance, would be left to rot the way Universities are.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I’m very pleased that the trade press is giving space to the Exeter horror. Next challenge is for them to look a little further down the league tables - Northumbria perhaps, or my own place. We have feelings too.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Devastating & infuriating news from Exeter, & from Glasgow, & from so many universities. The humanities foster critical thought, articulate values, imagine alternative ways of being & acting, create possibility, & curate & revitalize history & culture. Never more needed, never more threatened.

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Two-year early modern English job, at Oriel College and the Oxford English Faculty, starting October. Happy to field any questions! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

my.corehr.com

Job Details

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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Two-year early modern English job, at Oriel College and the Oxford English Faculty, starting October. Happy to field any questions! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

my.corehr.com

Job Details

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Avi Lifschitz @diderotesque.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Why was the 18th century the heyday of prize contests on virtually everything? Many answers in this new book, now available with a discount from @livunipress.bsky.social: mailchi.mp/e854e1290516...

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