iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Many thanks to Michael Burri for inviting me to write about my new article for the Blog of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies: botstiberbiaas.org/what-the-ame... 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Happy to share that my article—"An American Duel? Honour-Bound Society, Youth Morality, and the Life Cycle of Moral Anxiety in the Late Habsburg Empire"—is now forthcoming with the European Review of History. It offers a legal, cultural, and social history through one forgotten trope.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

When I first came to career choice as a topic for historical study, I was enchanted by George McClure's work on the "culture of profession in Late Renaissance Italy". Floored to see the article his work inspired–from which a dissertation grew–cited in his new book's conclusion. 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Today was the last day of my first semester on the tenure track. Tomorrow I'll be heading to Central Asia for 1.5 months of research. Given that I began making contingency plans for leaving academia around this time last year, I am both relieved and overjoyed. 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

My first semester on the tenure track has been quite an adjustment, but I am lucky to finish it with grad students doing fascinating work: anti-feminist women writing on motherhood and marriage c. 1900; the reception of Dickens in political speeches; cultural responses to shell-shock therapies...

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Ran into a student with her 5-year-old daughter. She said she wished I would be her daughter's professor, too—thus I realized that if our retirement age remains 70, I still have *41* years of teaching ahead of me. I might just still be there to teach her grandchildren...

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Reposted by Orel Beilinson

Karl Appuhn @appuhn.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Very excited to participate in evaluating applications for this year's Critical Language Scholarship program in Russian and Arabic. As long as there's at least some avenues open to funding language study...

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

I want to write about the history of real estate just so I can make a pun using, or at least a witty reference to, the fact that the Danish word lejlighed means both "apartment" and "opportunity."

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

I have some grant funding for research assistance in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. If you know (preferably) history grad students who might be interested in working with me on the history of STEM education/professions in Soviet Central Asia, please send them my way. 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

From the life of Parisian tenants: 1. Eviction, 1912 2. Association: the inaugural meeting of the 12th arrondissement's tenants association, 1924

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

From the life of renters in Paris: 1. Eviction of tenants, 1912 2. The inaugural meeting of the tenants' association of12 arrondissement, 1924

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

My preferred language is Ottoman Turkish but I can settle for English if we must

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

A lovely finance bro tried to summarize my work at the pub to make sure he got it: "So modernity is a panic attack; you are the psychologist; the book manuscript is your case notes. Right?" 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Please share this CFA with your graduate students. I am happy to sponsor applications. Nearby archives, including the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People (located at the National Library in Jerusalem), host valuable collections—including a newly indexed collection on Yugoslav Jewry.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Soviet Grandpa called and, without even exchanging pleasantries, asked (in a mildly agitated voice) why I hadn't gotten into a field that awards a Nobel Prize. "To what global recognition can historians aspire?" he inquired, deadly serious. "I mean a household-name award!"

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

After another brief chat with a friend who edits a journal can hardly find referees, let me remind the journal editors on here that I am rarely at capacity, usually happy to accept an assignment, and always return my feedback promptly... :) 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

The great thing about teaching a grad seminar: after I shared my excitement with them, the students committed to writing their term papers on Sven Beckert's new, much-anticipated global history of capitalism — and we'll dedicate a portion of each session to progress reports. 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Every time I add 2-3 adjectives/adverbs, I hear @nmw1.bsky.social's disapproval. Then, I am left with a one-adjective sentence. At that point, I can hear @marcishore.bsky.social marking the noun, asking if I intended to draw attention to it with the adjective. I then shake my head and remove it.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

The entrance ticket to the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza costs 1,450 EGP (30 USD, 26 EUR). My friend, a software engineer at an international company in Cairo, thus earns 22 tickets a month. Luckily, citizens pay 200 EGP (4 USD), so his salary buys 165 tickets...

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Reposted by Orel Beilinson

Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

About to kick off a peer review workshop with our brilliant @sriucl.bsky.social PhD students right now. Thanks to my colleague Alina Pelikh for hosting and I wish something like this was available when I started out.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

So, you think calculus is hard? Good luck making sense of the right to vote in Habsburg Austria (from a wonderful article by Birgitta Bader-Zaar) 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Halldór Laxness is my spirit animal. So relatable at such a young age.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Submitted my course proposals for next year, including a seminar on what Ibsen called "life-lies," the self-deceptions that sustain one's happiness, in nineteenth-century Europe: bourgeois, aristocratic, rustic idylls and those who tried to shatter them. 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I met with a university press editor 1.5 years ago -- and the advice she gave me for revising my dissertation into a book manuscript is one of the documents I use daily. It is really amazing how transformative these random strikes of generosity can be.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

הזכרתי בכיתה השבוע את הנריק פונטופידן, סופר דני שזכה בפרס הנובל ב-1917. הבטחתי לסטודנטים שאתרגם להם קצת כי אין בעברית. הנה קטע קצר גם לכם, קצת אחרי שהגיבור הנוצרי וארוסתו היהודייה, בטיול בלתי מתוכנן אל האלפים, מגלים שהם חולקים סלידה, עוד מילדות, מפעמוני כנסייה:

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

The mark of a great book: a write-up by the inimitable Holly Case.

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Reposted by Orel Beilinson

Hans Gutbrod @hansgutbrod.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

surrogacy in #Georgia has plenty of evidence of the slide in basic governance standards across the board -- yes, profits being made, and probably some happy stories, too, but also LOTS of women left very vulnerable. Helena Bedwell for @ocmedia.bsky.social oc-media.org/recent-contr...

oc-media.org

Recent controversies spark concern in Georgia’s booming surrogacy industry

In recent years, Georgia has emerged as a major global fertility hub — yet there is no proper regulatory framework, leaving surrogates at risk.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Today I spent hours crafting three paragraphs on a sermon that "hints at what other sermons do not even mention," only to do one more Google Books search, just to be sure, and find a sermon that addresses the topic clearly and forcefully. Time to call it a day.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Mini career milestone: signed my first form as someone's Ph.D. advisor!

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

The good news: My ESTA to enter the US was rejected due to a scribal error—some details I filled out did not match my previous visa, but that was because they entered the wrong data for my student visa. The bad news: "It might take a while for the request to fix the erroneous details to go through."

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

I personally find it very cool that the National and University Library of Iceland allows you to browse its catalog in English, Icelandic, and... Polish.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Due to consular issues and the university's reasonable concern about the inability to resolve them on time or being deported at the border, I will have to miss ASEEES. See you next year!

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Grammarly rarely understands the metaphors I try to inject into my writing--but this paraphrase is really remarkably off the mark. Also: chronology! (I was talking about the end of serfdom + paternalistic ideologies of ruler-subjects relations...)

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

I needed to add a reference to one piece of legislation by Joseph II, which I thought would be easy to locate -- until I opened this book, candidate for the world's least helpful Table of Contents, that seems to mock me directly 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Ever since I was 10 and got my first phone, I've been used to people calling and asking for Dr. Beilinson,"-- my dad. Today someone called, and I said, "That's his son." Turns out they were from my university's research authority, and I had to confess I am still new to being Dr. Beilinson, too...

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

The legacy of the Eastern Bloc is that today, as I struggled to find the right word in Arabic, I could retrieve its equivalent in Russian, and the ceramics seller in East Jerusalem understood: his father had studied in the USSR and had forced him to learn some Russian as a child.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

The best postdoctoral fellowship in Israel is now open for applications. The money is entirely sufficient for subsistence, the facilities are utterly stunning, and the administrative staff is friendly and supportive. I am happy to answer questions... 🗃️

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Dr Selena Wisnom @lswisnom.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

It is my book and I'll pluralize ethos as "ethe" or "ethea" but not "ethoses" if I'd like (but I'll definitely not insist on that when the editor pushes back), even though typing "ethe" made my computer think I was typing in Albanian (where "ethe" means fever).

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Surprisingly, I haven't been to Barcelona yet. I'll be expanding my article in JESHO, which asked whether guilds beyond Europe really had journeymen. Now I'll move from "Islamic" guilds to Russian guilds -- asking more explicitly how the Russian Empire shaped artisanal life in its borderlands...

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

This seems broadly applicable to me: perhaps I should let white ants serve as peer reviewers for my faltering article manuscripts... From the diaries of Swiss artist Alice Boner, Varanasi (India), 1941. 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Tomorrow's the first day of classes, and I am very excited to open the semester with a graduate seminar, "Global and World History: Approaches and Recent Studies." Here's our reading list! 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I am writing an article to convince American high school teachers to adopt recent historiography on nationalism in 19th-century Europe in their classrooms. This screenshot from an immensely popular test-prep book for AP World History demonstrates how confused and blurry the curriculum is.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Dominique and Peter are such a gift to our field.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

"Passing through here, one feels for the first time that this segment of Europe is interwoven with those unknown, secret mysteries of life which France, England, or Spain have never touched." -- The Indian writer Nirmal Verma on Central Europe, the 1960s.

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I even have a faculty photo and everything!

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Scanned all readings. Opened all course websites. Sent introductory emails -- I am officially ready to start Year 1, Semester 1, Week 1 as an Assistant Professor. Happy New Academic Year, everybody!

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

As a Habsburgist, I was *very* glad to find out during my walks around Delhi that some of my favorite buildings in the city, including the Yugoslav embassy and buildings in the Jamia Milli Islamia, were designed by an Austrian architect, Karl Malte von Heinz -- a Bauhaus refugee from Nazi Germany. 🗃️

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Orel Beilinson @orelb.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

My friend in Thekkady, too, is worried about the state of humanity.

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