iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 8h

Does anyone have any idea where this Judith Butler quote might come from? Susan Neiman provides no citation.

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I’m pretty sure most people just want to be able to afford groceries

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

What will it take for university administrations to actually take sexual assault seriously ffs? Everyone who has ever had to deal with Title IX offices knows that they exist to protect the institution and don’t really care about survivors.

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What… what do you mean you don’t know your own zip code? Our economy is run by morons.

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Headed to sunny Phoenix for the GSA

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

What the actual f. Have these people no shame?

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Depressing result in the election in Mecklenburg Vorpommern. Another victory for the AfD. And a five alarm fire for the CDU. Their worst result in history.

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

That it somehow also manages to be wrong is the most unhinged part of this chart. The century begins at year 0, not year 1.

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The Gaily Show @thegailyshow.org · 15/09/2026

The far-right, anti-immigration, and anti-LGBTQ rights political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) just won a key election in Germany's eastern state Saxony-Anhalt. Paradoxically, AfD is co-led by an out Lesbian. @schuneke.bsky.social breaks it down for us. thegailyshow.org/the-contradi...

thegailyshow.org

The Contradiction of Alice Weidel: Inside Germany's Ascendant Anti-Immigrant Party Led by an Openly Lesbian Politician

To understand what AfD's victory means to Germany and Europe, we spoke with Dr. Samuel Clowes Huneke, associate professor of history at George Mason University.

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Finally reading this exposé about how the AHA has been using funds to hire a corporate lobbyist to quash its own members’ views. It’s entirely dystopian and I hope for the day when we have leadership that is actually responsive to the views of its membership. www.chronicle.com/article/a-sc...

chronicle.com

Opinion | A Scholarly Association’s Secretive Washington Playbook

Did the American Historical Association ask a corporate lobbying firm for advice on how to silence its members?

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

New name just dropped. I’ll be answering to Ethan from now on 😛

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Megan L. Cook @meganlcook.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Come for the batshit cover art on this 1970 Mentor ed of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, stay for the incredibly bitchy annotated bibliography

Cover of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Burton Raffel

SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Several books cited only in the Afterword are here included; however, in all cases the annotations are by the translator.
Benson, Larry D., Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Rutgers University Press, 1965.
Sensitive and learned discussion of sources; literary convention and characterization; style; narrative and descriptive techniques; meaning. The book is modest in tone but richly informative; much the best study in print.
Blanch, Robert J., ed., Sir Gawain and Pearl: Critical Essays, Indiana U.P., 1966. Very much a mixed bag: six essays, some of them horrendously awful, some spottily intelligent. Not recommended.
Borroff, Marie, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study, Yale U.P., 1962. A rather ponderous, wordy, and frequently insensitive study of difficult matters; sometimes useful, but to be consulted with caution, despite the heavy scholarly apparatus.
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44 Selected Bibliography
Burrow, J. A., A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Gren Knight, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965. Literary dully effective. Not recommended.
criticism on a very low level, though sometimes Fox, Denton, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, Prentice-Fall,
1968. A brief but sometimes rewarding collection; some of the essays are at best spottily intelligent, but the selection is distinctly superior to that in the Blanch compendium. Recommended, with due cas-tion.
Howard, Donald R. and Christian Zacher, eds. Critical
SIR GAWAIN A GREEN
Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Useful; fuller than the Fox collection; sometimes a bit pedantic.
Kittredge, George Lyman, A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight, Peter Smith, 1960 (first printed in
1916). A highly speculative, well-written study de voted exclusively to literary sources, actual, pos-sible, and imaginary. Of moderate interest, it used both sparingly and appropriately.
Longnon, Jean, and Raymond Cazelles, eds., The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, George Bra-ziller, 1969. No direct connection with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but many of the illustrations beautifully reproduced-are vivid evocations of the spirit, and often much of the detail, of the poem.
Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Development of Arthurian Romances, Harper Torchbooks, 1964. Biased and crotchety, but clear and, for the beginner, modestly informative; deeply traditional, hostile to much in contemporary criticism, Recommended, if used with due caution.
Savage, Henry L., The Gawain-Poet: Studies in His Personality and Background, University of North Carolina Press, 1956. A set of crotchety historical essays having no proven connecti a to the Gawain-poet and no relevance whatever to the poem. Na recommended.

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American Prestige @amprestigepod.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Video Exclusive — Queer Conservatives and Timid Democrats w/ @schuneke.bsky.social Historian Sam Huneke is back on the program, this time to talk about performative conservatives, cautious Democrats, and much more. youtu.be/lFB4c6jCDC0

youtu.be

Queer Conservatives and Timid Democrats w/ Sam Huneke

YouTube video by American Prestige

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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

there are entire adults walking among us who believe the point of books is to extract the answers to SAT reading comprehension questions about them

Ш I really got into using Al while reading James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." The text was far too dense for casual vacation reading. My first prompt asked:
• "I'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?"
• The robot agreed: "Cooper's sentences are long and his diction is archaic."
• It promised to give me "a recap of what's happened so far and clarify anything confusing... I'll stick strictly to what you've read. No hints about what's coming."

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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Axios writer: I melted my brain with AI. Not only can I no longer read, but I don't even understand the purpose of reading anymore. Here's how you can also do this. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...

Axios: AI has become my reading buddy as I've plowed through my summer book list, helping me keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.

Why it matters: The way many of us actually read books — a few pages before bed, a chapter at the beach, another on a plane — makes it easy to lose the thread. AI can help you pick it back up without starting over.
📖 I really got into using AI while reading James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." The text was far too dense for casual vacation reading. My first prompt asked:

"I'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?"
The robot agreed: "Cooper's sentences are long and his diction is archaic."

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I keep wondering how people like this deal with questions at conferences or from their students, since they clearly don’t put in the effort to learn or ponder anything themselves. Or do they have the LLMs handle those too?

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I literally don’t use AI for anything. And where it’s forced down my throat (eg automated receptionists) it’s made my life strictly worse. I would welcome it disappearing overnight.

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Terrence Peterson @tgpeterson.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

You will still certainly not regret assigning my book

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

The waning appetite for book reviews is really depressing. I used to write tons of them and slowly over time, each publication I used to write for seems to have lost interest in them.

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Mrs. Detective PikaBOO, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 31/07/2026

Personally as a Jewish American I would appreciate if “Protestant unspecified” candidates kept us out of their mouths

Haley Stevens O @HaleyforMI
Abdul, we were both on the ballot in 2018. I was capable of winning my competitive primary and general election. You lost.
You lost by over twenty points to Gretchen Whitmer and you will lose to Mike Rogers by talking like this.
Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.
But buddy, let me be very clear, I will lower the costs of groceries, ban stock trading for elected officials, stop Trump's abuses of power, and protect Michigan manufacturing.
And you'll just be a celebrity whining and writing books to get even richer. You're part of the complainer class, looking for their next book or podcast deal.
Bro, I just want to work for Michigan.

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I also appreciate Emily Wilson as a woman in a male dominated role, by which I don’t mean translator or classicist or public scholar but rather “curmudgeon.”

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Apparently Emily Wilson has reached the hey kids get off my lawn stage of her career.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 08/07/2026

jeeeesus

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Thank you for having me! It was a wonderful conversation with a lovely audience

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Dr Anna Hájková @ankahajkova.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Das Land des Lächelns: queer German history. @schuneke.bsky.social

Sam (left) and Anna (right) grinning because they had a good breakfast

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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Happy Fourth and happy 250th. I find myself re-reading FDR’s third inaugural address often these days. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/th...

Lives of Nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is threescore years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a Nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.

There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is an ebbing tide.

But we Americans know that this is not true.

Eight years ago, when the life of this Republic seemed frozen by a fatalistic terror, we proved that this is not true. We were in the midst of shock—but we acted. We acted quickly, boldly, decisively.

These later years have been living years—fruitful years for the people of this democracy. For they have brought to us greater security and, I hope, a better understanding that life's ideals are to be measured in other than material things.

Most vital to our present and to our future is this experience of a democracy which successfully survived crisis at home; put away many evil things; built new structures on enduring lines; and, through it all, maintained the fact of its democracy.

For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions come to naught.

No, democracy is not dying.

We know it because we have seen it revive—and grow.

We know it cannot die—because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise—an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.

We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.

We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.

We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still spreading on every continent—for it is the most humane, the most advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human society.

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🌈 Dr Ross Brooks @rossbrooks.co.uk · 01/07/2026

My book baby has arrived! 🤩 Not for the first time, my wonderful editors @yalebooks.bsky.social have delightfully surprised me: the colours on the jacket catch the light (I'm told it's called 'spot gloss')! It really is a thing of beauty. #books #booksky #histsci #queerhistory 🌈📚🗃️

An open box containing copies of my book, Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life: A History of Sex and Science. The jacket features a drawn image of a gynandromorph gypsy moth, with distinctive female patterning on its left side and male on its right. Against a black background, the image and text (title and author's name) are brightly rendered in a spectrum of colours resonant of the Progress Pride Flag.

A copy of my book placed on a wooden table in a shaft of light, the colours of the jacket design reflecting the light.

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Im so exhausted by this pattern. Historians spend years in the archives to write detailed accounts of the past. Only for journalists, doctors, podcasters, and now cartoonists, to swoop in and get paid a lot of money to trot out the same work, "uncovering hidden histories" that are not at all hidden.

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

An open letter, to readers, about Charity and Sylvia. I am very pained to feel the need to write this. #queerhistory #pride

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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Why did this journal retract two 1940s papers by Max Planck? Clicking on the links now reveals blank pages and empty PDFs. “Intellectually, it’s not acceptable,” two science historians argue. arstechnica.com/science/2026...

arstechnica.com

Why did this journal retract two 1940s papers by Max Planck?

Clicking on the links now reveals blank pages and empty PDFs. "Intellectually, it’s not acceptable.”...

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

One thing I’ve noticed after 6 months as co-editor of the Journal of Social History: younger scholars at less wealthy institutions and with less secure employment are more likely to say yes as reviewers. Senior scholars at elite institutions rarely do. Smdh

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

TBH I feel like Mamdani has bent over backwards to demonstrate that he's not remotely antisemitic, and guys like Frum who will call him an antisemite anyway on the basis of his religion and anti-Zionism are doing the work of bona fide antisemites

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

This kind of thing is exactly why tenure is supposed to exist. Professors aren’t supposed to fear they may lose their job if they say something politically unpopular.

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The Baffler @thebaffler.com · 23/06/2026

The Supreme Court is rolling back Americans’ rights to bodily autonomy and privacy. Samuel Huneke asks whether it’s time to rethink staking the former in the latter.

thebaffler.com

Privation Nation | Samuel Huneke

The right to privacy was always an unsteady foundation on which to advance protections for queers.

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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

25% is enormous! If it were 5% we'd be justified in pulling the plug on the whole thing

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Utter nonsense. Once again AI exists for people too lazy to think for themselves.

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Dr. Michelle Lynn Kahn @michellelkahn.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Excited to share the cover of "Racism and Antiracism in Divided Germany," a forthcoming book I co-edited with Lauren Stokes. A history of racism and antiracist activism in East, West, and unified Germany—and why it matters today. 30% off from Cornell UP with code 09BCARD: tinyurl.com/RADGcornell

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Samuel Huneke @schuneke.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I’m sorry, Republicans are literally banning Plato on college campuses, but it’s the *left* that has ruined the humanities? Get a grip.

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Sunkissed Peaks @sunkissedpeaks.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

It’s really frightening.

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