Antonija Primorac
@antonijap.bsky.social
A professor on sabbatical. Victorian literature & culture on screen and in translation, neo-Victorianism, postfeminism, the real and fake Sherlock Holmes, World Literature and periodical press. I also dabble in DH. 🌱 🧶 🧵 🗃🪡🎬.
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
Since I heard Penn State launched a course called "One Book Slowly" this year (Eric Hayot is teaching Madame Bovary) I can't stop thinking about it
I think the greatest gift college professors in the humanities can give to students right now is a seminar room where, for 80 minutes twice a week, nothing that happens to them is a sales pitch for an AI product.
February 11, 2026 at 9:26 PM
Since I heard Penn State launched a course called "One Book Slowly" this year (Eric Hayot is teaching Madame Bovary) I can't stop thinking about it
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
I "know" without having to articulate it to myself that injecting LLMs into the experience of learning to write is bad for learning how to write. It changes writing into something else. Whether this other thing has value or not I can't say and don't think we'll know for a while. I also know that...
January 28, 2026 at 3:11 PM
I "know" without having to articulate it to myself that injecting LLMs into the experience of learning to write is bad for learning how to write. It changes writing into something else. Whether this other thing has value or not I can't say and don't think we'll know for a while. I also know that...
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
I just signed to edit a new strand for Cambridge Elements Publishing and Book Culture called "Periodicals and Print Matter." More details to follow but I look forward to your ideas on anything connected to periodicals, catalogues, zines, and ephemera.
www.cambridge.org/core/publica...
www.cambridge.org/core/publica...
Publishing and Book Culture
Welcome to Cambridge Core
www.cambridge.org
January 19, 2026 at 4:34 PM
I just signed to edit a new strand for Cambridge Elements Publishing and Book Culture called "Periodicals and Print Matter." More details to follow but I look forward to your ideas on anything connected to periodicals, catalogues, zines, and ephemera.
www.cambridge.org/core/publica...
www.cambridge.org/core/publica...
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
Clothing ad, 1896.
These are are very cool, and that looks like a very impractical amount of sleeve going on!
🗃️ #c19th #fashionhistory
LOC
www.loc.gov/resource/sn8...
These are are very cool, and that looks like a very impractical amount of sleeve going on!
🗃️ #c19th #fashionhistory
LOC
www.loc.gov/resource/sn8...
January 19, 2026 at 9:25 PM
Clothing ad, 1896.
These are are very cool, and that looks like a very impractical amount of sleeve going on!
🗃️ #c19th #fashionhistory
LOC
www.loc.gov/resource/sn8...
These are are very cool, and that looks like a very impractical amount of sleeve going on!
🗃️ #c19th #fashionhistory
LOC
www.loc.gov/resource/sn8...
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
I used to teach an autobiography of an AI engineer in my robots in literature class where he supposed that all medieval monks could imagine as progress would be a bigger pen and parchment, but we know that the monks were conceiving of worlds insane enough to melt your eyeballs out of your head
This failed capacity to imagine the future is a logical result, ironically, of a generalized condescension towards the past. Whole sets of ppl have been told that the history of human culture doesn’t matter, & that for anything to be worthwhile it needs to be “new.” It is a special form of naïveté.
Every future imagined by a tech company is worse than the previous iteration.
January 12, 2026 at 9:45 PM
I used to teach an autobiography of an AI engineer in my robots in literature class where he supposed that all medieval monks could imagine as progress would be a bigger pen and parchment, but we know that the monks were conceiving of worlds insane enough to melt your eyeballs out of your head
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
Born on this day in 1905, Anna-May Wong was a trailblazing Chinese American actress in the early years of Hollywood when cultural diversity was not very common. She wore this 1934 gown by Travis Banton in the film Limehouse Blues @metmuseum.org #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡
January 3, 2026 at 7:59 PM
Born on this day in 1905, Anna-May Wong was a trailblazing Chinese American actress in the early years of Hollywood when cultural diversity was not very common. She wore this 1934 gown by Travis Banton in the film Limehouse Blues @metmuseum.org #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over
January 1, 2026 at 4:43 AM
Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.
Seems like it's worth posting this one again.
Why Do Historians Still Have To Go To Archives?
Why do historians go to archives? Hasn’t everything already been digitized?
contingentmagazine.org
December 22, 2025 at 1:40 AM
When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
Sounds like they need humanities majors…..
Are these the same companies that told us the robot could do it?
December 18, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Sounds like they need humanities majors…..
O tempora, o mores
Just so I'm clear on this, computer memory has tripled in price because a bunch of it that hasn't been produced yet has been ordered to populate GPUs that aren't installed in data centers that aren't built yet in order to service a demand that doesn't exist to make profits that don't happen.
December 15, 2025 at 4:01 PM
O tempora, o mores
A view from Brseč. So quiet, you can hear the bees fly by and the ferry putter along slowly in the distance.
December 14, 2025 at 2:11 PM
A view from Brseč. So quiet, you can hear the bees fly by and the ferry putter along slowly in the distance.
A December morning.
December 10, 2025 at 8:52 PM
A December morning.
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
It's wild that there appears to be more current concern for the Lost Library of Alexandria than for the British Library. The BL's crisis exemplifies the accelerating destruction--through apathy as much as by design--of human knowledge & learning. I'm not even being dramatic.
‘No one seems to care’: scholars decry plight of British Library
Historian Peter Mandler said it was “a sorry state when a major piece of public infrastructure like this is hit so badly and no one in authority even seems to notice, much less care”.
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...
Historian Peter Mandler said it was “a sorry state when a major piece of public infrastructure like this is hit so badly and no one in authority even seems to notice, much less care”.
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...
‘No one seems to care’: scholars decry plight of British Library - Research Professional News
Humanities researchers suffer amid “agonisingly slow” recovery from 2023 cyberattack, as strikes cause further delays
www.researchprofessionalnews.com
December 9, 2025 at 10:01 AM
It's wild that there appears to be more current concern for the Lost Library of Alexandria than for the British Library. The BL's crisis exemplifies the accelerating destruction--through apathy as much as by design--of human knowledge & learning. I'm not even being dramatic.
This late #Victorian dress by Jacques Doucet looks magnificent - and ready for a #neo-Victorian hommage in contemporary fabrics: botfrens.com/collections/...
December 9, 2025 at 10:11 AM
This late #Victorian dress by Jacques Doucet looks magnificent - and ready for a #neo-Victorian hommage in contemporary fabrics: botfrens.com/collections/...
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
AI is a climate issue. AI is a climate crisis.
A few important points here
- Generative AI supercharged data centre growth: lobbyist and substacker lines pretending like this is just streaming are false
- Even when you consider much of the projected growth is speculative, the *likely* projects are still MASSIVE
media.licdn.com/dms/document...
- Generative AI supercharged data centre growth: lobbyist and substacker lines pretending like this is just streaming are false
- Even when you consider much of the projected growth is speculative, the *likely* projects are still MASSIVE
media.licdn.com/dms/document...
December 4, 2025 at 5:55 PM
AI is a climate issue. AI is a climate crisis.
December 2, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
Boats leaving the port of Le Havre, France, ca. 1855
Gustave Le Gray
Gustave Le Gray
December 2, 2025 at 8:24 AM
Boats leaving the port of Le Havre, France, ca. 1855
Gustave Le Gray
Gustave Le Gray
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
December 2, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
What happens when @bavs-uk.bsky.social and @qaqv.bsky.social join forces?
This: qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/wlm14/
You've got almost 3 months to submit your idea and then 2 more to complete your paper! Details in the CFP ⤴️
This: qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/wlm14/
You've got almost 3 months to submit your idea and then 2 more to complete your paper! Details in the CFP ⤴️
December 1, 2025 at 3:52 PM
What happens when @bavs-uk.bsky.social and @qaqv.bsky.social join forces?
This: qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/wlm14/
You've got almost 3 months to submit your idea and then 2 more to complete your paper! Details in the CFP ⤴️
This: qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/wlm14/
You've got almost 3 months to submit your idea and then 2 more to complete your paper! Details in the CFP ⤴️
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
My general feeling is that if something is called a “Revolution”, but there is no mention of the people and/or cultures destroyed in the process, it’s either not a revolution or it’s violences are being intentionally obscured
December 1, 2025 at 2:53 PM
My general feeling is that if something is called a “Revolution”, but there is no mention of the people and/or cultures destroyed in the process, it’s either not a revolution or it’s violences are being intentionally obscured
A morning surprise, or, new developments in the port of Rijeka.
November 30, 2025 at 8:24 PM
A morning surprise, or, new developments in the port of Rijeka.
November 24, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
I still stand by these, even as universities around the world, including my own, brainlessly capitulate to AI.
As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity.
TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄
TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄
November 14, 2025 at 9:51 AM
I still stand by these, even as universities around the world, including my own, brainlessly capitulate to AI.
Beach bodies online: a quick lesson
November 14, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Beach bodies online: a quick lesson
Reposted by Antonija Primorac
Died (alas!) on this day in 1494, Melozzo da Forlì. Painted beautiful works, many of them since lost or damaged. Alas again! Here, angel of the Annunciation, 1466, with some extreme drapery.
November 8, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Died (alas!) on this day in 1494, Melozzo da Forlì. Painted beautiful works, many of them since lost or damaged. Alas again! Here, angel of the Annunciation, 1466, with some extreme drapery.