Maria Damkjær
@mdamkjaer.bsky.social
Dr.Dr. (no, really!) Victorianist and knitter; Fiction on the Page in Nineteenth-Century Magazines (OUP) out now
Pinned
Maria Damkjær
@mdamkjaer.bsky.social
· Jan 6
My book, Fiction on the Page in Nineteenth-Century Magazines, is out now with Oxford University Press!
academic.oup.com/book/58989
It’s a book about page fillers, product placement, and strange hybrid fiction. It asks how the page of the magazine became a spur for new, odd genres.
academic.oup.com/book/58989
It’s a book about page fillers, product placement, and strange hybrid fiction. It asks how the page of the magazine became a spur for new, odd genres.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
“Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before. Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad. What does reading offer to pupils except tears?”
this guy has his finger on the pulse amirite
www.history-uk.ac.uk/history-in-p... 🗃️
this guy has his finger on the pulse amirite
www.history-uk.ac.uk/history-in-p... 🗃️
‘Doing the Readings’
Dr Will Pooley (Associate Professor in Modern History), University of Bristol The students, we often grumble, don’t read the secondary readings we set for class. Every year, we find ourselves press…
www.history-uk.ac.uk
November 28, 2025 at 6:13 PM
“Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before. Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad. What does reading offer to pupils except tears?”
this guy has his finger on the pulse amirite
www.history-uk.ac.uk/history-in-p... 🗃️
this guy has his finger on the pulse amirite
www.history-uk.ac.uk/history-in-p... 🗃️
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
The entire purpose of building research on a citational structure is that the inevitable flaws are traceable and stable enough in their location that the overall field structure can take those mistakes/debates into account as part of the field discourse.
November 28, 2025 at 2:28 PM
The entire purpose of building research on a citational structure is that the inevitable flaws are traceable and stable enough in their location that the overall field structure can take those mistakes/debates into account as part of the field discourse.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Reading a gloomy thread about students who won’t or can’t read or learn and then thinking about the conferences I’ve been having with my students who are writing essays on David Copperfield. Anecdotes are not data and these are upper year majors but they seem generally keen and engaged.
November 29, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reading a gloomy thread about students who won’t or can’t read or learn and then thinking about the conferences I’ve been having with my students who are writing essays on David Copperfield. Anecdotes are not data and these are upper year majors but they seem generally keen and engaged.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Boosting this reference to Trish Loughran’s important chapter.
Hell yes. Trish Loughran's "Books in the Nation," in The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Leslie Howsam (Cambridge University Press, 2015) is a killer riposte to Anderson on this score.
November 28, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Boosting this reference to Trish Loughran’s important chapter.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
'These days, I stress that close reading is not magic. Its power lies in argument: always vulnerable, nothing simpler and yet nothing harder.'
Loved this both tender and sobering defence of close reading:
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
Loved this both tender and sobering defence of close reading:
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review
Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.
www.bostonreview.net
November 27, 2025 at 7:47 PM
'These days, I stress that close reading is not magic. Its power lies in argument: always vulnerable, nothing simpler and yet nothing harder.'
Loved this both tender and sobering defence of close reading:
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
Loved this both tender and sobering defence of close reading:
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
In this week’s @strangehorizons.bsky.social, one of my favourite pieces I’ve edited this year — on orientalism from Star Trek to Game of Thrones.
Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence,” by Tanvir Ahmed —
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence,” by Tanvir Ahmed —
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence
Dragon fire on white bodies is sad. Dragon fire on not-Muslim bodies is cheered on the screen. We ache when the scimitar prows of not-Muslim ships cleave through a white human captain’s ship. But b…
strangehorizons.com
November 28, 2025 at 9:24 AM
In this week’s @strangehorizons.bsky.social, one of my favourite pieces I’ve edited this year — on orientalism from Star Trek to Game of Thrones.
Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence,” by Tanvir Ahmed —
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence,” by Tanvir Ahmed —
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
A *huge* vaccine victory. I've been writing on this for years; Australia has seen remarkable progress in cervical cancer prevention with the HPV vaccine. I love seeing science triumph like this.
Australia recorded ZERO cases of cervical cancer in women under 25 for the first time since they started tracking the cancer in the 80s.
This is the power of vaccines.
The HPV vaccine is extremely effective at preventing cancer.
Viruses can be oncogenic. Get your vaccines and protect yourself!
This is the power of vaccines.
The HPV vaccine is extremely effective at preventing cancer.
Viruses can be oncogenic. Get your vaccines and protect yourself!
newsGP - Australia set for world-first cervical cancer elimination
Vaccination programs have played a key role, and GPs remain ‘instrumental’ in boosting screening rates to reach the 2035 target.
www1.racgp.org.au
November 27, 2025 at 6:12 PM
A *huge* vaccine victory. I've been writing on this for years; Australia has seen remarkable progress in cervical cancer prevention with the HPV vaccine. I love seeing science triumph like this.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
RIP Michael Slater www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/fel...
Professor Michael Slater - Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Michael Slater, Fellow of the College.
www.bbk.ac.uk
November 27, 2025 at 4:56 PM
RIP Michael Slater www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/fel...
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
My students said they love my rants on it. Taught The Time Machine. Told them OpenAI wants them to become Eloi.
This is why OpenAI is selling so aggressively to education at all levels—they want to create entire generations of users incapable of reading, writing and thinking without ChatGPT to hold their hands
And teachers and professors should call this out for what it actually is
And teachers and professors should call this out for what it actually is
To bear out this rosy projection, HSBC assumes that OpenAI will become "as ubiquitous [...] as Microsoft 365" (345mm users worldwide) while bringing in 10x the number of users (3bn).
November 26, 2025 at 6:09 PM
My students said they love my rants on it. Taught The Time Machine. Told them OpenAI wants them to become Eloi.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
"oh, you research literature? you must get to read all the time, how fun!"
*me, going through every single (digital) issue of an 18th century daily newspaper to make a spreadsheet listing number of advertisements and the portion of them that were for books*
*me, going through every single (digital) issue of an 18th century daily newspaper to make a spreadsheet listing number of advertisements and the portion of them that were for books*
November 27, 2025 at 2:30 PM
"oh, you research literature? you must get to read all the time, how fun!"
*me, going through every single (digital) issue of an 18th century daily newspaper to make a spreadsheet listing number of advertisements and the portion of them that were for books*
*me, going through every single (digital) issue of an 18th century daily newspaper to make a spreadsheet listing number of advertisements and the portion of them that were for books*
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
*small embarrassed voice*
A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s.
doi.org/10.1093/libr...
A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s.
doi.org/10.1093/libr...
A Provincial Market in Second-Hand Books: Book Sales in Devon, 1688–1725
Abstract. Comparatively little is known about England’s early book-auction trade outside of London and the university towns, with few catalogues surviving
doi.org
November 27, 2025 at 9:31 AM
*small embarrassed voice*
A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s.
doi.org/10.1093/libr...
A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s.
doi.org/10.1093/libr...
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Here’s Here Is a Figure! It’s about the lying-down figures that are ubiquitous in contemporary lit. It shows how they remediate apparently-opposed precedents: the dead body, the odalisque, the protester & the patient in bed. It’s about what they’re doing & what we’re asked to do in continuation.
November 27, 2025 at 1:29 AM
Here’s Here Is a Figure! It’s about the lying-down figures that are ubiquitous in contemporary lit. It shows how they remediate apparently-opposed precedents: the dead body, the odalisque, the protester & the patient in bed. It’s about what they’re doing & what we’re asked to do in continuation.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
i wrote a book about ye olde porn. thanks @annakornbluh.bsky.social for this lovely holiday treat!
www.sup.org/books/litera...
www.sup.org/books/litera...
November 26, 2025 at 10:17 PM
i wrote a book about ye olde porn. thanks @annakornbluh.bsky.social for this lovely holiday treat!
www.sup.org/books/litera...
www.sup.org/books/litera...
Thank you, I will!
I wrote a book about fiction as you’ve never seen it before: squeezed, stretched, compromised by advertising, and constantly addressing its imaginary readers with dreams of print culture heroism
academic.oup.com/book/58989?l...
I wrote a book about fiction as you’ve never seen it before: squeezed, stretched, compromised by advertising, and constantly addressing its imaginary readers with dreams of print culture heroism
academic.oup.com/book/58989?l...
November 27, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Thank you, I will!
I wrote a book about fiction as you’ve never seen it before: squeezed, stretched, compromised by advertising, and constantly addressing its imaginary readers with dreams of print culture heroism
academic.oup.com/book/58989?l...
I wrote a book about fiction as you’ve never seen it before: squeezed, stretched, compromised by advertising, and constantly addressing its imaginary readers with dreams of print culture heroism
academic.oup.com/book/58989?l...
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Society is a construct. You can just ask someone to do a ska cover of Faith of the Heart and they'll say "$300 please" and you give it to them and then you have it.
Everyone, give
@skatunenetwork.bsky.social
your money. They deserve it.
Everyone, give
@skatunenetwork.bsky.social
your money. They deserve it.
November 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Society is a construct. You can just ask someone to do a ska cover of Faith of the Heart and they'll say "$300 please" and you give it to them and then you have it.
Everyone, give
@skatunenetwork.bsky.social
your money. They deserve it.
Everyone, give
@skatunenetwork.bsky.social
your money. They deserve it.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Handing back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”
Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’
Even God Is Worried About ChatGPT
Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’
www.vulture.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Handing back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
So this happened in Oslo yesterday. Four articulated buses got stuck in a roundabout.
November 25, 2025 at 8:23 AM
So this happened in Oslo yesterday. Four articulated buses got stuck in a roundabout.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
“Where everything else felt exhausted, the classroom was overflowing, plentiful. All we needed was a poem, a few hours each week, and trust in what we could do, in what we did do, together.”
@johannawinant.bsky.social on the real power of close reading in a growing age of austerity:
@johannawinant.bsky.social on the real power of close reading in a growing age of austerity:
The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review
Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.
www.bostonreview.net
November 26, 2025 at 3:12 PM
“Where everything else felt exhausted, the classroom was overflowing, plentiful. All we needed was a poem, a few hours each week, and trust in what we could do, in what we did do, together.”
@johannawinant.bsky.social on the real power of close reading in a growing age of austerity:
@johannawinant.bsky.social on the real power of close reading in a growing age of austerity:
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Er nu igennem mit semesters opgavesæt og kan melde følgende om de unge danskstuderende og AI: De gider det ikke.
Deres gnavenhed over for vores GAI-erklæring (Generativ AI) er udtalt, og de vil helt tydeligt selv lære at skrive.
Det giver en mindre glittet overflad i opgaverne, men det giver […]
Deres gnavenhed over for vores GAI-erklæring (Generativ AI) er udtalt, og de vil helt tydeligt selv lære at skrive.
Det giver en mindre glittet overflad i opgaverne, men det giver […]
Original post on mastodon.world
mastodon.world
November 26, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Er nu igennem mit semesters opgavesæt og kan melde følgende om de unge danskstuderende og AI: De gider det ikke.
Deres gnavenhed over for vores GAI-erklæring (Generativ AI) er udtalt, og de vil helt tydeligt selv lære at skrive.
Det giver en mindre glittet overflad i opgaverne, men det giver […]
Deres gnavenhed over for vores GAI-erklæring (Generativ AI) er udtalt, og de vil helt tydeligt selv lære at skrive.
Det giver en mindre glittet overflad i opgaverne, men det giver […]
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
1/9 I LOVE the intro chapter of this book on close reading. We do close reading in law, too. It shows concretely how close reading is done, in 5 steps: scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation and global theorizing.
Am I the first law professor wanting to assign parts of this book to law students, esp. the Introduction by @johannawinant.bsky.social and @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social
November 25, 2025 at 12:01 PM
1/9 I LOVE the intro chapter of this book on close reading. We do close reading in law, too. It shows concretely how close reading is done, in 5 steps: scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation and global theorizing.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Same for literary studies. Non-tenure-track lit studies scholars I know you're out there and publishing articles and books. And if you're tenure-track and know NTT authors, let me know about their work! I can reach out and confirm that they're cool with being listed.
Haven't received as many contributions as usual for this year's lists--could be many things, but one aspect is surely that our ability to get this in front of people is much diminished. If you know folks whose stuff should be on here, please suggest it! contingentmagazine.org/yearly-pub-l...
Publications by Non-Tenure-Track Historians
Since we began publishing in 2019, Contingent has published end-of-year lists of books and articles by non-tenure-track historians released in the past calendar year. To submit something for inclusion...
contingentmagazine.org
November 25, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Same for literary studies. Non-tenure-track lit studies scholars I know you're out there and publishing articles and books. And if you're tenure-track and know NTT authors, let me know about their work! I can reach out and confirm that they're cool with being listed.
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥
We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
November 24, 2025 at 9:39 AM
💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥
We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
BREAKING: This is huge news, the EU's equivalent of the 🇺🇸Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.
🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states.
This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺
🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states.
This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺
www.reuters.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:10 AM
BREAKING: This is huge news, the EU's equivalent of the 🇺🇸Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.
🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states.
This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺
🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states.
This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
Reposted by Maria Damkjær
New publishing opportunity!
The London Record Society are looking for someone to edit a volume based on the archive of the Working Ladies' Guild, which supported impoverished women in late nineteenth-century Britain.
Further information and contact details in the text below.
The London Record Society are looking for someone to edit a volume based on the archive of the Working Ladies' Guild, which supported impoverished women in late nineteenth-century Britain.
Further information and contact details in the text below.
November 24, 2025 at 8:00 AM
New publishing opportunity!
The London Record Society are looking for someone to edit a volume based on the archive of the Working Ladies' Guild, which supported impoverished women in late nineteenth-century Britain.
Further information and contact details in the text below.
The London Record Society are looking for someone to edit a volume based on the archive of the Working Ladies' Guild, which supported impoverished women in late nineteenth-century Britain.
Further information and contact details in the text below.