Lucy Powell
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ljpowell.bsky.social
Lucy Powell
@ljpowell.bsky.social
I used to be a structuralist, but now I'm not Saussure. Bad puns/ good books/ eighteenth-century material culture/ feathers & prisons and their constitutive meanings/ global enlightenments. Trinity College, Oxf/ Leverhulme ECR / BBC new gen thinker. Tired.
Reposted by Lucy Powell
'Responding to the decision, Devine, 80, said: “In principle I am opposed to changing historic artefacts to suit ­today’s tastes. To do so is presentism, imposing 20th-century values on those of the distant past.'

'20th-century'? Bit of an own goal Sir T.
Historian attacks ‘ludicrous’ changes to statues with slavery links
Professor Sir Tom Devine, an emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, said he was opposed to changing artefacts to suit modern sensibilities
www.thetimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Very excited indeed to be speaking at this tomorrow. Do come by if you are in Cambridge at 5pm. I'll be rioting with Austen (and sure, obliquely with Dickens, too), at the English Faculty. @universitypress.cambridge.org, @cam.ac.uk, @bsecs.bsky.social
November 19, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
📣Our UofG Library Visiting Research Fellowships are now open for applications!

We’re delighted to invite scholars from across the globe to apply to work with our internationally significant collections.

Apply at: www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li...

📆Closing date: 5 January 2026

#UofGLibraryFellows
November 13, 2025 at 2:05 PM
@drbibliomane.bsky.social More exciting than new Pynchon? Possibly?
November 13, 2025 at 9:22 AM
So delighted that this long-gestated brain child is now out and in the real world. I'll be talking about it at the English Faculty in Cambridge, @cam.ac.uk on Thursday of next week at 5pm. Do please come along if you're in town!
November 12, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
@sophiecoulombeau.bsky.social Saw this and thought of you :)
August 10, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
It's not fair I mean when was the last time a white male novelist won a Booker. You'd have to go all the way back to 2023
Every time I read an article like this, I think, if male novelists are so endangered, how do I know so fucking many of them? Apparently the answer is, because we're all in "genre," which is the One Simple Trick for still getting published when you're a dude.

www.the-independent.com/arts-enterta...
Is it the end for male novelists? The lonely life of a man writing fiction in 2025
A long-overdue shift to female perspectives means male authors are being sidelined, or so says the founder of Conduit Books, a new publishing house that trades only in novels written by men. Nick Duer...
www.the-independent.com
July 20, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
Cambridge people! I’m going to be giving a talk on TJ Wise, detritus, stolen leaves, and made-up books on Thursday at 5pm. Do come along! www.english.cam.ac.uk/cmt/?cat=6
May 5, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
Check out our upcoming April titles, including "Unruly Comparison" by Alvin K. Wong, "Hemispheric Blackface" by Danielle Roper, and "The Future of Futurity" by Purnima Mankekar and Akhil Gupta.
buff.ly/0pkTAfs
April 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
Certainly another stimulating BBCFreeThinking from @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social & guests. Though I have my ‘Yes, but-s’ from the start for the guests inc @askwilliamblake.bsky.social
@ljpowell.bsky.social Kathleen Burk, Jim Hoare, Catherine Coldstream
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Isolation
Matthew Sweet explores ideas about being on your own.
www.bbc.co.uk
March 25, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
On tonight’s BBC Free Thinking on BBC Radio 4 right now we go into isolation (and isolationism) with Carmelite nuns, North Koreans and Covid citizens. bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…
March 21, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Returning to The Prelude today, and finding there a lovely dismissal of AI and discovering too a new spot of time: a magical Roman restaurant with excellent isecs colleagues...
March 18, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
At CECS, 2025 is a big year for us because 1775 was, too. We’ve been co-curating a 250th exhibition on Jane Austen and JMW Turner at Harewood House. More info in the coming weeks, so watch this space. #AustenTurner #18thC #JaneAusten Ticket info: harewood.org/events/auste...
March 5, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
To repeat: "A country so stupid it actively trashes one of things it's good at and famous for."
Today's university slashing and burning is Edinburgh, where about 10% of the budget will be cut. There'll be another case every single day until UK govts actually do something. A country so stupid it actively trashes one of things it's good at and famous for.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Edinburgh University to seek £140m in savings
Unions said the plans would result in "devastating cuts" and called for Edinburgh University to use some of its assets instead.
www.bbc.com
February 25, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
We're delighted to welcome Barney Ronay @barneyronay.bsky.social, Chief Sports Writer for The Guardian, to the English Faculty on 3 March. He'll be in conversation w/ Prof David Taylor discussing everything from the politics of sport to the changing nature of Britain’s media landscape. All welcome!
February 17, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Desperate to visit the new Byron museum in Ravenna, I read that: "one of the rooms contains tokens of love kept by the countess, including letters, jewellery, locks of the poet's curly hair and shards of his sunburned skin." Shards of what now? Shards of his burned skin? kept as tokens of ... love?!
November 26, 2024 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
Hello Bluesky! Did you know that we have 17 bursaries available for the BSECS Annual Conference?

To find out more and apply, please use this form: (forms.office.com/e/ZJAmgxRHLd

Applications close at midnight UK time on 20th November

@bsecs.bsky.social @asecsoffice.bsky.social #18thC
Microsoft Forms
forms.office.com
November 18, 2024 at 2:50 PM
Trust TJ Clark to immediately notice that Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, which he'd never read, begins with (another) fall of Icarus... ... ...
November 15, 2024 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
pls. RT

Global Equiano opens fresh conversations about enslaved & free Black people as they navigated spaces dominated by violent, colonial forces, & considers the Black Atlantic futures they imagined.

20-21 Sept
#18thc #romanticism

earlycaribbeansociety.org/events/globa...
Global Equiano
20-21 September 2024 - Online and free Click here to register Download our call for submissions:Download Submissions are invited by 1 MayEmail: [email protected] and [email protected] Global...
earlycaribbeansociety.org
April 15, 2024 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
🔔 Please share widely! A call for contributions for an edited collection _Reading the Queer Eighteenth Century_ which will be published by De Gruyter in early 2026. Submit a proposal or pass on to interested scholars! #Skystorians #18C #Queer #Disability #Ecocriticism #trans #transnational
April 25, 2024 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
The more involved I get with administrative work, the more I empathize with Francis Douce's absolute banger of a resignation letter.
March 25, 2024 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
You know how we suffer psychologically when people deny our reality and keep making up stuff; how disorientating that is?

That, but on university-level. Our finances are fine. The urgency and crisis mode is not needed. (sure, let's think how we do this thing, but we don't need the STRESS & lies)
We've joined never-ending list of unis where managers are pushing through redundancies.

Our reorganisation is an artificial one, abusing the real hardships other places are in (& which STILL shouldn't warrant shutting down important dept!) for an ideological attack.

post: qmucu.org/2024/03/19/h...
March 21, 2024 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
Applications now open for our @BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship. £4000 available to support a visiting scholar researching the culture, history, and identity of the North East of England and the Scottish Borders in the #18thC. DEADLINE 31 May.
www.bsecs.org.uk/news-and-eve...
BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship Application - BSECS
The Institute of the Humanities at Northumbria University, in association with the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, invites applications for the 2022/23 BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship. Th...
www.bsecs.org.uk
March 22, 2024 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
If you edit a UK Humanities book series, publish UK Humanities books, represent/belong to a Humanities scholarly society or hold a research advocacy role at your UK university, it's time to engage with REF 2029 Open Access Consultation - UK Research and Innovation - Citizen Space (ukri.org)
March 19, 2024 at 1:47 PM
Reposted by Lucy Powell
60s futurists: everything will be great, technology will help all humanity live in dignity and equality

current state of things:
February 1, 2024 at 9:38 AM