Dr. Rachel Schine
banner
rachelschine.bsky.social
Dr. Rachel Schine
@rachelschine.bsky.social
~*Award-winning author*~

Pretty mid otherwise.

Professes Arabic and History @ UMD
Now haunting @ IAS at Princeton
Pinned
My article shows how we can use postcolonial lenses to navigate something we as yet don't know how to acknowledge or talk about well: premodern, non-European people doing things that look a lot like what we now call blackface.
read.dukeupress.edu/jmems/articl...
Performing Blackness in the Medieval Muslim Metropolis: Arabic Literature and Tropicalization
This essay aims to chart a path between premodern blackface performance and postcolonial theory that escapes colonial teleologies. It analyzes moments from the Abbasid through Mamluk era (ca. 750–1517...
read.dukeupress.edu
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
so I'm glad that this is getting more attention - the far right's obsession with the crusades is way more than just Hegseth's white supremacist tattoos

in this THREAD I'll collect some of my own recent work on how the American right has used the crusades

1/
🧵 Every year since Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest event in Phoenix began, there has been an afterparty hosted by the Republicans for National Renewal fascists which brings together more of the extreme right that hangs around AmFest and multiple local elected officials. This year is no different…
December 1, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
Sunrise over Central Park, NYC, Monday Dec. 22, 2025
December 22, 2025 at 2:31 PM
I'm really glad I blocked that Sibawayhi dude before he started giving Bad Talmud Opinions.

Big tell, dude, biiiig tell.
December 22, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
Grateful for these kind and thoughtful recent reviews of my book from Finbarr Barry Flood and Usman Hamid in the Journal of Islamic Studies and in Medieval Encounters.

doi.org/10.1093/jis/...

brill.com/view/journal...
Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam, By Adam Bursi
The past two decades have seen an extraordinary efflorescence of scholarship on the history of relics in Islam and the practices associated with them. Rele
doi.org
December 22, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Respectfully, AHA, what am I looking at here?

I've got a review essay coming out with the AHR soon of three new books in my field, you're telling me if I'd had AI summarize those books for me before I read them and didn't cite that that would be acceptable practice?
December 21, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
So when the AHA says it's OK to use AI to summarize scholarship, the greatest risk this guideline poses isn't simply to the quality or accuracy of research; the hazard it poses is to the communal nature of the knowledge production. A pursuit that puts people across time & space into conversation 4/n
December 21, 2025 at 5:26 PM
!!!

Also in some cases it
means milk/cloudy—cataracts in the eyes are often described as azraq
Oh hell YES.
I've long maintained that based on the result of ink recipes, the word "azraq" couldn't mean "blue" in early Arabic texts but seems instead to be yellowish. Now I have textual proof: "Take red arsenic [realgar] or if you wish, azraq"—no such thing as blue arsenic, this means yellow!
December 21, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
Today’s prized find in Cairo: One of Ahmad Adawiya’s early records featuring “Salametha Umm Hassan.”
December 21, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
Getting a lot more people on this list for sharing antisemitic lies about the Talmud over the past couple of days.

Reminders:

1. The entire Talmud is public and freely available online. This Anyone claiming to know about "secret" or "hidden" Jewish teachings from it is lying to you.
December 21, 2025 at 12:26 AM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
I feel like I'm going to get a lot of use out of this Pluribus screencap
December 21, 2025 at 12:59 AM
A Lord of the Rings cover band called EntSYNC
A Lord of the Rings cover band called Flock of Smeagols
A Lord of the Rings cover band called Chappell Rohan
December 21, 2025 at 1:23 AM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
Congratulations to the ADL for deciding to go all-in on working with this administration because of some college student protestors who used intemperate rhetoric.
Weird how this keeps happening.
December 20, 2025 at 8:40 PM
So the gimmick is we just put his name + memorial on everything now, right? I personally think that every sewage outlet in the city should now say Trump Memorial Sewage Outlet

Trump Memorial DMV
Trump Memorial Adult Store
Trump Memorial Dick's Sporting Goods
December 19, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
After the major technical difficulties last time, me and Gabriel Reynolds decided to do another Live Q&A. So, of course, the first thing that happened was that my WiFi died, and then we got audio issues.

After some editing it is now put back online!

www.youtube.com/live/vkiji1e...
Qur'an Manuscripts and Qur'anic Arabic: Live Q & A with Dr. Marijn van Putten!
YouTube video by Exploring the Quran and the Bible
www.youtube.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:59 PM
People lying through their teeth about the nature of academia don’t deserve your rebuttals, go write a footnote or something.
December 19, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
THERE ARE NO JOBS IN ACADEMIA! NO JOBS! DOZENS OF HYPER QUALIFIED APPLICANTS PER JOB!
December 19, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
so I broke out the Nambé menorah and it occurs to me that some of you may not know about Nambé which is one of the most American stories I know
December 18, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Writing an explanatory summary of my teaching evals for my tenure file and how do I explain the statement “S-tier professor!” to anyone over the age of 42?
December 19, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Awwwwwwwwesome!
My forthcoming book—
For which I began research in 2006.
Is now posted on the website for Princeton University Press.

Cover will be added soon.

The King’s Slaves: The British Empire & the Origins of American Slavery
The King's Slaves
A provocative account of how empire and absolutism institutionalized slavery in America
press.princeton.edu
December 18, 2025 at 11:54 PM
A particularly irksome form of peer review is the kind where a reviewer makes several good points but in an unnecessarily rude or snarky way. Like I wanna hate bro, but I can't.
December 18, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
We have an opening for "big cat trainer." Must be faster than our previous big cat trainer.
December 14, 2025 at 7:53 AM
“Excuse the cough, baby’s tickling my throat”
Musacchio says that medieval bestiaries cite ancient texts to explain a belief that weasels conceive through the ear and give birth through the mouth [!].

Certainly there was a consensus the process was miraculous – so weasels become a talisman for pregnant women.
December 18, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Dr. Rachel Schine
No no no no! The Apple Store deal allowed the Historical Society of Washington (now the DC History Center) to stay and maintain its library, staff, and programming in the building without having to pay for the upkeep of the building. They had struggled for decades to find a sustainablle +
December 18, 2025 at 2:38 AM
No it’s ok we can cut all the area studies programs. We’ll just hire one “global studies“ Prof with a degree in English literature.
December 18, 2025 at 2:01 AM