Alicia Spencer-Hall
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aspencerhall.bsky.social
Alicia Spencer-Hall
@aspencerhall.bsky.social
3.6K followers 1.9K following 6K posts
Writer. Researcher. Editor. Genderqueer femme. Crip. She/they.

// medieval lit / media / gender / disability / pop culture //

https://linktr.ee/aspencerhall
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aspencerhall.bsky.social
Alicia Spencer-Hall @aspencerhall.bsky.social · Nov 18
So I wrote a book about Twitter. Medieval Twitter to be exact---the interconnections between Twitter's textual modes & medieval literary culture(s), plus medievalists' use of Twitter and the #MedievalTwitter hashtag

www.arc-humanities.org/978194240195...

@archumanities.bsky.social #MedievalSky 🗃️
Front cover of "Medieval Twitter" by Alicia Spencer-Hall, published by Arc Humanities Press in October 2024. Series: Arc Impact. On a bright, textured blue background, neon pink birds from medieval manuscripts circle three medieval monks. The monk on the left reacts with a heart, the middle monk, agog, retweets, and the monk on the right wags his finger, tweeting a response. This pioneering monograph provocatively explodes current research paradigms for the modern and the medieval by showing that Twitter shares key similarities with medieval literary forms, texts, and narrative techniques. Analyzing tweets with medieval texts, and vice versa, Spencer-Hall initiates readers into an innovative methodology of interdisciplinary literary criticism, posing vital questions about the politics of medievalism today. Chapters include brand-new readings of The Owl and the Nightingale, the Chastelaine de Vergi, and Marie de France’s Laüstic, and arresting insights into troubadour style, Margery Kempe, and #MedievalTwitter. The book culminates in a medieval(ist) reading of Twitter’s premature demise, and Elon Musk’s medievalism. Throughout, points of contact and divergence are dissected, re-contextualizing the socio-cultural meaning of communication and texts across the temporal divide.
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
jakepaulsartre.bsky.social
Lol jesus, Liselotte, chill out
St German 16th November 1674 "I must tell you that a horoscope which has been cast for my younger son shows that he will be pope but I'm very much afraid he's more likely to be the Antichrist" Letter written by Princess Liselotte of Palantine
November 28, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
jakepaulsartre.bsky.social
Reading letters from the Princess Liselotte of Palantine, the German sister-in-law of Louis XIV, and it's wild because she had this super informal writing style that almost sounds like modern texts

Like at one point she goes "wish to god my son didn't love holding chunks of bread like a peasant"
November 28, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
timgaedke.com
look at him go
scribble art of Ragost cooking up a meal
November 27, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
erininthemorning.com
1. It would appear that in recent reporting, the BBC is now using the phrase "biological male who identifies as a woman" when they mean to talk about a transgender woman.

This is an incredibly demeaning way to talk about transgender women in news pieces.

Subscribe to support our journalism.
BBC Now Calling Trans Women 'Biological Males Who Identify As Women'
These stories come in the aftermath of allegations that a small but mighty cabal of “LGBT reporters” had somehow seized control of the BBC and “censored” right-wing views.
www.erininthemorning.com
November 27, 2025 at 1:13 AM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
pileofgarbage.net
lmao
November 26, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
pronounced-ing.bsky.social
TIL: the Netflix fireplace has closed captions and said closed captions are "[fireplace crackling]"
November 26, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
lottelydia.bsky.social
For a small fee, I will go to your historian enemy’s seminar presentation and say “I guess I’m just wondering what the “so what” of this paper is?”
November 26, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
lyz.bsky.social
I read the Cheryl Hines book so you don’t have to www.patreon.com/posts/144407...
What is Cheryl Hines thinking? Nothing, apparently | Men Yell at Me by Lyz Lenz
Get more from Men Yell at Me by Lyz Lenz on Patreon
www.patreon.com
November 26, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
doctorjonpaul.bsky.social
A reminder this holiday season:

Your fat friends/family can hear the way you talk about food. Please don’t let your disordered eating be our problem.
November 26, 2025 at 1:47 AM
aspencerhall.bsky.social
New parenting hack unlocked
ask.metafilter.com/388091/Gende...
Someone was recently telling me how their kindergartner boy has such a hard time with schoolwork because focused and sustained attention to detail and instructions isn't a "boy" strength. We'd otherwise been having a pleasant conversation, including regarding trans children(!) and it really threw me, so all I said was "Huh." as I geared up for something more coherent. But that "huh" did so, so much work for me! The speaker immediately started backtracking and downplaying what they'd said, someone else jumped in with "that hasn't really been our experience" about a girl, someone else offered examples of boys who are calm and studious, and the original speaker revised their statement to "it's not a strength of my boy at this age," allowing the conversation to move on reasonably satisfactorily. posted by teremala at 4:59 AM on November 26
November 27, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
baddestmamajama.bsky.social
There is literally a 20 year old West Wing episode about Molly Orchansky and exactly why the poverty line is a problem, and this is why it’s important to take humanities and the arts seriously. It is often oracular, because it’s written by research nerds with an obsession for human behavior.
leftoblique.bsky.social Dana Fried @leftoblique.bsky.social · 2d
This is an insightful but deeply upsetting article about why everyone in the US feels poor, and why the current political situation emerges as a direct result.

www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...
Part 1: My Life Is a Lie
How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America
www.yesigiveafig.com
November 26, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
guante.info
Lots of people sharing this clip because it's funny and cathartic but I also genuinely believe it's important.

We have to win the narrative battle between "I live in a corrupt society and that's just how it is" and "I live in a corrupt society and we are going to defeat and humiliate these ghouls."
miamidsa.org Miami DSA @miamidsa.org · 2d
Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷
November 26, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
ashleyfeinberg.bsky.social
everyone knows the number one quality of rigorous, responsible journalism is waiting months and months to reveal urgently newsworthy information until it can cause the most harm in your personal vendettas
November 26, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
bleakvision.info
yes my friends, it's raining. come up from the earth and spend time with me
November 26, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
lemieuxlgm.bsky.social
Hey, congratulations to all of Olivia Nuzzi’s horny media critic defenders. Heckuva job!
November 26, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
aspencerhall.bsky.social
So I wrote a book about Twitter. Medieval Twitter to be exact---the interconnections between Twitter's textual modes & medieval literary culture(s), plus medievalists' use of Twitter and the #MedievalTwitter hashtag

www.arc-humanities.org/978194240195...

@archumanities.bsky.social #MedievalSky 🗃️
Front cover of "Medieval Twitter" by Alicia Spencer-Hall, published by Arc Humanities Press in October 2024. Series: Arc Impact. On a bright, textured blue background, neon pink birds from medieval manuscripts circle three medieval monks. The monk on the left reacts with a heart, the middle monk, agog, retweets, and the monk on the right wags his finger, tweeting a response. This pioneering monograph provocatively explodes current research paradigms for the modern and the medieval by showing that Twitter shares key similarities with medieval literary forms, texts, and narrative techniques. Analyzing tweets with medieval texts, and vice versa, Spencer-Hall initiates readers into an innovative methodology of interdisciplinary literary criticism, posing vital questions about the politics of medievalism today. Chapters include brand-new readings of The Owl and the Nightingale, the Chastelaine de Vergi, and Marie de France’s Laüstic, and arresting insights into troubadour style, Margery Kempe, and #MedievalTwitter. The book culminates in a medieval(ist) reading of Twitter’s premature demise, and Elon Musk’s medievalism. Throughout, points of contact and divergence are dissected, re-contextualizing the socio-cultural meaning of communication and texts across the temporal divide.
November 18, 2024 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
tyleraking.com
Slop Evader is a tool from artist and researcher Tega Brain that lets you search the web for results exclusively before November 30, 2022—the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.
'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It’s 2022
Artist Tega Brain is fighting the internet’s enshittification by turning back the clock to before ChatGPT existed.
www.404media.co
November 26, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
kendrawrites.com
God this is so motivating.
miamidsa.org Miami DSA @miamidsa.org · 2d
Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷
November 26, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
ingloriousgigi.bsky.social
Just to note, it took me 6 years of consistently posting to get to $200 on Patreon. And I don't regret it but getting to this point was a lot of work.
November 26, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
dumplingmenace.bsky.social
forgot about this old book riot post because we’ve been having these conversations for so long bookriot.com/book-pirates/
Book Pirates Buy More Books, and Other Unintuitive Book Piracy Facts
Contrary to most depictions of book piracy, this extensive survey suggests that book pirates buy more books than the average reader.
bookriot.com
November 26, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
aetataureate.bsky.social
almost every novelist you read who's not from the airport fiction or bestseller sections is working a full on day job, including multi-award winners and absolute legends, or they have a spouse or trust that supports them. virtually across the board. just normalize in your mind that's how it works.
peterbcounter.com Peter Counter, Nightmare Host @peterbcounter.com · 3d
I know we know this, but authors need to get better at talking about how they actually make their money. Stop pretending it's from the books.
November 25, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
moryan.bsky.social
If you have ever thought that my journalism or my first book were net positives for the world, understand that they probably would not exist if I did not have a spouse who paid the mortgage. If I'd been a solo earner/parent, I likely would have left criticism, journalism or book writing long ago.
lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social thank u, hexed @lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social · 2d
And the folks who are actually writing full-time generally only got there after years of day jobs, family support, or both.

The point of sharing this is not to demoralize anyone, but to let emerging writers know they're not failing if they can't make a living off writing alone. Almost no one can.
aetataureate.bsky.social berserk du soleil @aetataureate.bsky.social · 2d
almost every novelist you read who's not from the airport fiction or bestseller sections is working a full on day job, including multi-award winners and absolute legends, or they have a spouse or trust that supports them. virtually across the board. just normalize in your mind that's how it works.
November 25, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
literaturegeek.bsky.social
Maybe it's mAIbelline, maybe it's vaporware? Finished my "Vaporware Luddites" print & it is very extra indeed:
Photo of a letterpress print on white paper with green and black ink. It says "VAPORWARE pointing out the (tech) emperor has no clothes >:c since (well before) 1811 / Luddites didn't "fear technology", they broke the machines that allowed the rich to enshittify livelihoods/ who's your tech for? / caution: no tech's adoption is inevitable (lol blockchain) / glitch their cistems" and is decorated with a historical Luddite, dancing skeleton kicking a computer, and a person trying to sell you things from inside his trenchcoat (the things are three $ symbols and a poison symbol). Some of the text is in green overprinted with black.
November 25, 2025 at 11:43 PM
Reposted by Alicia Spencer-Hall
fakehistoryhunter.net
In stead of sending a link to old threads every time someone uses the term "Dark Ages", I decided to put it all in an article.

Why most historians no longer use the biased misnomer “dark ages”.

Read it here:
fakehistoryhunter.net/2025/11/25/w...
or:
fakehistoryhunter.substack.com/p/why-most-h...
Why most historians no longer use the biased misnomer “dark ages”
This is not YET another article on why calling the early middle ages the dark ages is iffy, it’s a list of sources & references. These days most historians no longer use the term “D…
fakehistoryhunter.net
November 25, 2025 at 5:33 PM
aspencerhall.bsky.social
Recently, Blake Gutt and I had the great fortune to sit down with @eocieslik.bsky.social & record a converation for the Whiplash pod with @maxwellkuzma.bsky.social on medieval trans & genderqueer saints--and why they matter today, more than ever

#MedievalSky 🗃️
November 25, 2025 at 2:54 PM