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Shannon McSheffrey

@medievalmcsheff.bsky.social
5.2K followers 4.1K following 627 posts

Professor of Medieval History, Concordia U, Montreal. Spend most waking hours thinking about London riots early 16thc., Dutch immigrants, sex, gender, and the like. Knitster. She/her.

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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 57m
He was terrific in BB. Such a sad loss www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/a...
nytimes.com
RJ Mitte, Who Played Walter White’s Son on ‘Breaking Bad,’ Dies at 34 (Gift Article)
Mr. Mitte was born with cerebral palsy and brought his own experience of living with the disability to the role of Walter White Jr. on the Emmy-winning show.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Dr Saad having a sad because the Nobel Laureate is a woman who doesn't smile prettily enough for his liking

Gad Saad
@GadSaad
I’ve been watching clips of Anne Carson pop up on my feed. She is the Canadian author who was just awarded the Nobel for literature. In every single clip, she exudes a dark and nasty aura. Am I missing something here?
8:30 AM · Oct 9, 2026
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Frog and Toad Bot @frogandtoadbot.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Frog got a ladder. He put the box up on a high shelf. “There,” said Frog. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.” “But we can climb the ladder and take the box down from the shelf and cut the string and open the box,” said Toad. “That is true,” said Frog.
Frog climbs a ladder and hides the cookies high on a shelf.

From "Cookies"
In *Frog and Toad Together*
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Kathleen E. Kennedy @themedievaldrk.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Many people like to laugh at medieval illuminations of stag-snails, oh those funny medieval artists making up anim...
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
You’ll find this thread by my colleague @kfduggan.bsky.social useful. In fact the early modern period saw much more spectacular executions than the medieval, not to mention 20th-century public lynchings. It’s all cruelty; I’m just not ignoring modern culture’s culpability. bsky.app/profile/kfdu...
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JudithFlanders @judithflanders.co.uk · 10/10/2026
'Men will be the earners' the same day a Meta researcher extols the value of AI telling you to drink water when you're thirsty. Toddlers who want mommy at home forever to wipe their noses & behinds, & plan to ensure she stays there by keeping her financially dependent. SCREAMING SCREAMING SCREAMING
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
It’s fascinating how everyone remembers that Foucault bit from D&P as medieval: it just fits so well the anglophone idea of cruelty (cuz the Ren & Ref got rid of all the bad stuff), while for the French it’s just all Ancien Régime!
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
I published an article in JMEMS about how rare such spectacular executions actually were in late medieval England compared to later periods and very much made this point about how the ascription of “medieval” to what is in fact the modern theater of cruelty serves to absolve us.
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Yes, exactly: and I have just been thinking about finding an article for my students on this and will find yours! Sounds exactly what needs to be said.
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
And I think it was in 1936 for the US; in Canada it was the 1860s but there were public executions following a Métis rebellion in the 1880s. So yes, hardly medieval!
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
It’s complicated! and I don’t have a satisfactory answer, though saying such actions somehow defined another era, and not ours, is to ignore how this is woven into our social fabric.
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Susan Wabuda @susanwabuda.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Thanks Shannon, @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social Building on your observation, let me add that yes, we need to own what is happening now, and own what has happened in the past 125+ years. We need to COUNT THE COST: and then WE NEED TO CHOOSE not to let this define us any longer. No more cruelty.
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Picking up on @susanwabuda.bsky.social‘s comment below, the problem w/ calling this “medieval” is the implication that only the deep dark past was cruel. Surely the events of the last 125 yrs demonstrate that mediatized cruelty is thoroughly modern & American/Western. We need to own it: This is Us.
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Excellent thread. To add: by the 15th century if not before, the state execution of Jesus & the Christian martyrs was implicitly & sometimes explicitly juxtaposed with current judicial executions in church wall paintings. Lots of people doubted the virtue of the crown’s use of capital punishment.
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Kenneth F. Duggan 🇨🇦 @kfduggan.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Medieval Executions 🧵 Hi there. One of my areas of expertise is medieval crime and punishment. If you’re interested, here are some comments on medieval executions. Note that, just as today, practices and perceptions varied widely across medieval Europe... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
‘Medieval’ and ‘disturbing’: US plan to livestream execution elicits global condemnation
Pentagon said execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be broadcast live
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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
gregor samsa awoke one morning to discover he had been transformed into a sickass beetle. fuck yeah he said scuttling all over the walls and ceiling like no dumbfuck traveling salesman could ever do. this is the best day of my life he said
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Rory Naismith @rorynaismith.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
(Shared from various people on FB) RIP Chris Wickham
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I’ve just realized where Greengrass got his ideas abt medieval farming in *The Uprising*: just as the Ploughman, covered in mud, fruitlessly ploughs an assart in a salt marsh, so Dennis & his mother harvest “lovely filth” from their field. Equally accurate depictions of medieval English peasants.
Still from the film The Uprising, a long shot showing a large expanse of salt marsh with a small field, on which is a ploughman and ox, working the field.A still from the sketch Constitutional Peasant from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, showing the character of Dennis’s mother, wearing rough woolen garments covered with mud, kneeling in the mud of a field while she harvests the mud, as medieval peasants did.
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Uncharismatic Megafauna @liminalitea.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Once again, as someone whose literal and actual dayjob involves reading to small children semi-regularly, it's not just "information from page to brain". It's the play with sounds, it's the guessing, it's getting them to engage with the world. It's showing a little bit of love and care, you shits.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 08/10/2026
It's telling that men would rather try to invent tech to replace humans' role in caregiving than step up as equal partners in parenting. Telling, that is, in that it shows how financial capitalism and patriarchy work together to dissuade men from doing "unprofitable" labor, like the work of care.
X post from AI industry insider Alvin Sng :

My wife: Can you read our baby a book?
Me: I can just play an audiobook from my phone.
My wife: But then it won't be in your voice.
Me: I can train a voice model.
Parenting hits different when you work in Al.
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
In case you hadn't been following this disturbing sequence of events, here's a recap: RFK Jr wanted to fund a randomized trial, run by Danes, involving newborn babies in Guinea-Bissau Ethicists across the world, including in Nigeria, Cameroon, & Ethiopia, were horrified: it's an unethical study
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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
#MedievalSky This from the New York Times, minutes ago: "Has plague ever been used as a bioweapon? Maybe — but it’s been a while. In the 14th century, according to one account, a Mongol army catapulted plague-infested bodies into the Crimean city of Caffa." Please don't let this nonsense persist!
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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
@nytimes.com: Please engage w/ historians. This account comes from ONE source, someone who never set foot out of Italy, let alone witnessed the plague outbreak at Caffa. The fiction was definitively refuted in 2021: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... #BlackDeath #historiography
journals.uchicago.edu
Laying the Corpses to Rest: Grain, Embargoes, and Yersinia pestis in the Black Sea, 1346–48 | Speculum: Vol 96, No 1
Abstract:When, how, and why did the Black Death reach Europe? Historians have relied on Gabriele de’ Mussi’s account of Tatars catapulting plague-infested bodies into the besieged city of Caffa on the...
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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
How sheepish is Europe? This map shows the distribution of sheep across Europe. Source: buff.ly/dSfHDOe
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I think I’d say the same of AB, though I’m on the side of the sexual allegations being trumped up. But a calculating woman rather than a virtuous one, I’d say
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Are Henry VIII and Cromwell saints in the CofE? Their foundational roles are surely more significant than Anne’s. Personally, I doubt anyone at the Henrician court was saintly, but if a foundational role and/or supporting/realizing the biblical translation project are the criteria…
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”
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Alan Lester @alanlester.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Ahmed Reid on the wall of silence that’s prevented us appreciating a key part of our history and the Black scholars who knew. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/oc...
theguardian.com
The Register that shatters the myth of Britain’s role in profiting from enslavement
In this month’s newsletter: for Caribbean scholars, the evidence of how deeply slavery shaped Britain’s wealth has never been in doubt. Plus, heritage walks in Manchester
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Christine Kooi @christinekooi.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The late Yale medievalist John Boswell famously gave a class lecture where he read aloud the first few paragraphs of an article in a popular science magazine about neutrinos, but he substituted the word "angel" for "neutrino" every time it appeared in the text. And it still made perfect sense.
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The Royal Society of Canada // La Société royale du Canada @src-rsc.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Congratulations to @concordia.ca’s newly elected Members of the RSC’s Class of 2026! Félicitations aux nouvelles personnes membres de @concordia.ca élues au sein de la cohorte de 2026 de la SRC !
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Justine Peres Smith @redroomrantings.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
One of the worst parts of the QC election is that I will be forced to endure PSPP for the foreseeable future
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Sandra Toffolo @toffolosandra.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
📢Fully funded PhD position in #earlymodern history! At University of Roma Tre, in collaboration with the Italian-German Historical Institute in Trento, in the framework of my project "Travellers' interactions in early modern Italy." isig.fbk.eu/en/news/deta... Deadline 16 October 2026! #skystorians
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Dr Jo Edge 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @hagenilda.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
LOOK WHAT I GOT MY HANDS ON @thorntonsbooks.bsky.social! AND, now available Open Access completely free to read and download online! #EarlyModern. Also a lovely arvo catching up with the lovely @cordeliabeattie.bsky.social on Portobello beach! www.routledge.com/Alice-Thornt...
Me in my dirty dogwalking togs on Portobello sea front holding a copy of Alice Thornton's Books: Reassessing the Life Writings of a Seventeenth-Century Woman ed Cordelia Beattie, Suzanne Trill and me
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Striking paper from researchers at Anthropic using a randomised control trial to look at the effects of AI use on skills acquisition. TL:DR ‘We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.’ www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
anthropic.com
How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
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julia 🌋 @hypv.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
endnotes are a plot by big bookmark to sell twice as many bookmarks
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Many congratulations! 🥳
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Yup, in London by the early 1520s; up in Liverpool by the 1960s
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
whoops, should be 1521
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for? [Eleanor's ancestor, Elena Rigby, widow, appears in London record 1520, Letter Book N fol. 173r]
Manuscript handwriting, with words "Elena Rigby, vidua," which means Ellen Rigby, widow.
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"If anything, cases like the alleged incident at Chi Phi – & many others – show that rape can be a bonding activity for men, a way they celebrate their own shared status as men." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The horror of the Cornell rape case is how ordinary it is | Moira Donegan
Many men rape; many men giggle encouragingly, or shrug indifferently, when their friends rape. Many men rape, and few seem to think that it’s a very big deal
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Jacqueline Murray @jacquelinemurray.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Greetings early medievalists. I am wondering if there is an English translation of Gregory of Tours History of the Franks that has superseded Thorpe's Penguin version and is easily/widely available? Many thanks. #medievalsky
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Le Troupeau @letroupeauqc.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
La chose la plus stupide avec la loi sur la laïcité c’est que cette candidate du PCQ pourra porter une croix à l’assemblée nationale alors qu’une mère qui porte le hijab ne peut pas être bénévole dans une école 🤷‍♂️
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Richard Bell @richardbell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
My new book, Imprisonment in Early Modern England: Politics, Debt and the Origins of a Carceral Society, is (sort of) out now! Currently available online for anyone with institutional access: www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...
Book cover of Richard Thomas Bell, Imprisonment in Early Modern England: Politics, Debt and the Origins of a Carceral Society
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maura quint @mauraquint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Yes every woman has been harassed, many assaulted. But every woman has also experienced invisible loss from moments she avoided harassment. She felt a space becoming unsafe, so she left, while men stayed on. And in leaving, she lost: opportunities, experiences, learning, promotions, even simply fun.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Time for this classic again.
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U of T Centre for Medieval Studies @uoftcms.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Congratulations to Shannon McSheffrey and Walid A. Saleh, who have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada. www.medieval.utoronto.ca/news/shannon...
Walid Saleh, Shannon McSheffrey
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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Thanks, Lucy!
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
Screenshot of Times Literary Supplement note on Anchit Sathi’s article “AI and the crisis of the author” stating that “We have removed this essay. AI was used in its preparation. The TLS editorial guidelines prohibit the use of AI in the writing and editing process. The author states that he was unaware of the policy.”
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Michael Warburton @michaelwarburton.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
In 1972 this was the sort of gig you could go to at a Pub in suburban London. Incredible.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Democrats defend "science," but what they really should be defending is "wissenschaft." No major social problems - from global warming to AI - can be solved without non-commercial research across multiple fields, including the social sciences and humanities. Really wish the party understood this.
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