Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Elyse Graham

@elysegraham.bsky.social

280 followers 80 following 290 posts

Spies and the archives. Professor, Stony Brook University. Four books, including BOOK AND DAGGER (Ecco, September 24, 2024).

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · Nov 20

This is the song "Boo Boo, Baby, I'm a Spy," which featured in casinos and nightclubs in Istanbul in the 1940's:

soundcloud.com/wartimeistan...

Boo Boo, Baby, I'm a Spy

Listen to Boo Boo, Baby, I'm a Spy by Wartime Istanbul #np on #SoundCloud

soundcloud.com

5 2 14

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 57m

I'm giving a ghost tour at Harvard at the end of the month! This is the vibe.

Someone (the poster) dressed like the Grim Reaper, with a scythe and skull mask, but wearing a doctoral tam and robe instead of the traditional hooded robe.

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 1h

It’s gothic nostalgia, isn’t it? All these shows about humanities profs with wood-paneled offices, fame, and enough autonomy to act like a diva. We’re doing it for the same reason cozy 1930s mysteries involved vicarages and viscounts with decaying mansions.

The Age of Unhinged-Professor Art

www.nytimes.com

5 9 56

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 1d

A professor's comment, jotted down in a college notebook. "The Middle Ages was a lot like the University of Pennsylvania. Broken up into a lot of little duchies, deans fighting each other. Princeton—that's the Holy Roman Empire."

A page in a notebook with writing in pencil that says the above.

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 1d

Ville Löppönen, "Untitled," 2014

A painting of a man in a dark cloak, and perhaps a tricorn hat, walking down a dark avenue in the evening

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 1d

ME
Blood work? I sure hope it does!

DOCTOR
Just bring back the completed lab form.

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 1d

A photograph of a mini-pumpkin, with a little smiley face, looking out the door of his pumpkin house.

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · Sep 21

Auch das ist eine Jahresangabe in einem Impressum: "Gedruckt in diesem Jahr, da alles verkehrt war."

A slightly unusual printer's imprint: "Printed in the year when everything was wrong".

#bookhistory #skystorians

Titelblatt der Flugschrift"Der Kluge Meyer, Wie er sein Gsind aufweckt, und zu der Arbeit antreibt : Ich bin genannt der kluge Mever, In die Stadt trag ich Haasen, Hüner und Ever. Samt Kurtzweiligen Klagsprüchen eines armen ausgehauseten Beltzstössels" (VD18 90882237).

6 48 160

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 2d

A cartoon of a vampire with a shepherd's crook, herding ghosts like sheep. A crumbling old castle stands in the background. The vampire looks warily at a gathering storm overhead. The caption reads, "It was time to get the flock back to the castle."

25 130

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 2d

North London, 1974

A brick wall with graffiti reading, "DADA IS EVERYWHERE"

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 2d

This was written in an odd way. I think it refers to a line in the "compact" he offered to a small group of universities, which MIT has already rejected. In other words, the universities would have to accept this demand.

1 2

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 3d

Victor ten years ago. Time flies!

A photograph of a Tibetan Spaniel with an enigmatic expression. It is almost a guilty expression, but this dog has never felt consciousness of guilt.

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 3d

Item uncatalogued and unavailable.

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 3d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand:

Archives banned making copies.

Natasha Simonova @philistella.bsky.social · 3d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand:

New library catalogue website.

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Janet Hill @saskajanet.bsky.social · 3d

Sometimes Crows look black and sometimes they don't #birds

26 77 650

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Richard Ovenden @richove.bsky.social · 4d

Honoured that my ‘Burning the books’ -
the @harvardpress.bsky.social edition - should feature in @thelibrariansfilm.bsky.social - a must- see for anyone concerned about the freedom to read and to think - it highlights the courageous libraries defending democracy in America

2 9 32

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Dr. Amanda Wyatt Visconti @literaturegeek.bsky.social · 5d

'Knit Hello is a typeface for hand knitting, the outcome of a series of Typographic Knitting—or Typeknitting—workshops...based on slipstitches & a simple letterform grid, offers a simple, frustration-free process for beginners, w/o floats or getting entangled'. By Rüdiger Schlömer. #DHmakes

Knit Hello – Typeknitting

Knit Hello is a typeface for typographic knitting.

www.knithello.com

10 33

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 5d

I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.

A painting of a beaver in an old-fashioned coat and cravat, wearing a crown.

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 6d

As the legend goes, the German Prof. Dr. Eduard Müller is still fighting Death over a giant book. This ex libris is pure excellence and of #bookhistory and #booksky fame. Go, Ede!

"Ex libris Professor Dr. Eduard Müller". This ex libris - showing a Man fighting Death on a giant book - is glued into a medical book from 1793. Source: http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?PPN1804462381

2 15 78

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Laura McGrath @lbmcgrath.bsky.social · 6d

I have made a critical blunder: the color I chose for my book cover looks absolutely terrible on me, gone are my aspirations for a coordinating Diane von Fursternberg wrap dress.

1 6

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Sasha the Furious Ghost 👻 @sashafury.blackskycomra.de · 6d

I love when the chapter evolves to a point where you realize a footnote needs to be brought into the text proper. Like, "Welcome, welcome, little one."

1 3 12

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 7d

RIP Walter Pater, you would have loved this

A Halloween decoration that portrays the Mona Lisa as a green, serpent-eyed Medusa, in an uncanny style that evokes Pater's famous passage about her: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her...."

Reposted by Elyse Graham

Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 9d

Fun story: in 1920 the Irish Republic loaned the Bolsheviks $25,000, who gave them as collateral the Romanov family jewels. For three decades, until the loan was repaid, these jewels were kept secret behind a fireplace in an unassuming house: 15 Marino Crescent—the birthplace of Bram Stoker.

4 22 160

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 9d

SWEATER WEATHER

4 36 180

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 10d

Covers I covet: "The Book of Were-Wolves," 1865

A red book cover with a stamped gilded illustration of a wolf crouching in a snarl. The title reads, "The Book of Were-Wolves."

The same book cover, now showing the gilded spine, which has faded with age.

Elyse Graham @elysegraham.bsky.social · 11d

The Anthropodermic Book Project tests and identifies books bound in human skin.

anthropodermicbooks.org

The Anthropodermic Book Project

A research project to identify the world's books bound in human skin

anthropodermicbooks.org