Brandon W. Hawk
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brandonwhawk.bsky.social
Brandon W. Hawk
@brandonwhawk.bsky.social
2.9K followers 1.4K following 1.8K posts
Professor of English at Rhode Island College (views my own). I’m a nerd for medieval things, biblical apocrypha, Star Wars, LotR, & Magic (TCG). He/him.

“Read some fucking apocrypha.”

https://linktr.ee/brandonwhawk
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
drewjakeprof.bsky.social
This is a late ancient (5-7th c.?) Greek account of the life of a rich woman who was raised Jewish, converted to Christianity when her parents died, lived for 20 years as a male monk named John, was discovered & made head of a woman's monastery, & was later martyred
drewjakeprof.bsky.social Andrew Jacobs (he/him) @drewjakeprof.bsky.social · 55m
well, what the heck. it's the tuesday before thanksgiving, and whoever is on here deserves a treat: the first new translation I've posted in a long while: the Life and Martyrdom of Susanna:

andrewjacobs.org/translations...
Life and Martyrdom of Susanna
andrewjacobs.org
November 25, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
drewjakeprof.bsky.social
well, what the heck. it's the tuesday before thanksgiving, and whoever is on here deserves a treat: the first new translation I've posted in a long while: the Life and Martyrdom of Susanna:

andrewjacobs.org/translations...
Life and Martyrdom of Susanna
andrewjacobs.org
November 25, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
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
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
downham.bsky.social
Today's knowledge commons free download "Vikings' Settlements in Ireland Before 1014" (2014) #ireland #vikings #medievalsky #history #archaeology
works.hcommons.org/records/4ae7...
November 24, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Wow! @lollardfish.bsky.social & @profgabriele.com going all in on a new study using pollen to document biodiversity at & around the Abbey of St Gall in the Carolingian Age. buttondown.com/ModernMediev... #MedievalSky #interdisciplinarity
Carolingian Biodiversity
How Interdisciplinary Can and Should Work
buttondown.com
November 24, 2025 at 4:43 PM
brandonwhawk.bsky.social
Shout out to M.R. James! Good stuff right here.
November 22, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
judithflanders.co.uk
Still free.
Two posts. —‘What a horrible day to have eyes.’ —‘Oedipus’
November 22, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
dimitrafimi.bsky.social
Looking for Christmas presents? For book lovers who may also appreciate fantasy + myth, two of my books are on sale right now!

Tolkien, Race and Cultural History is £21.75 (down from £24.99)! amzn.to/48eaiF1

Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy is £23.99 (down from £28.99)! amzn.to/47WXvIb
November 22, 2025 at 5:58 PM
brandonwhawk.bsky.social
I usually don’t really post about personal things much, but this seems like both a victory & something that I hope helps anyone else out there who is struggling with alcohol & sobriety.
Screenshot of app badge that reads: You’ve Been Sober For: 30 days “If you didn’t drink today, you were successful.”
November 22, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
greenleejw.bsky.social
We're at the Middle Earth map.
We're at the subway map.
We're at the combination Middle Earth and Subway map!

And you could be too! These maps and more are for sale on my Etsy page! They make great presents for yourself and others!
#LOTR #maps #subway

www.etsy.com/shop/Surpris...
Art. Subway style map to go with The Lord of the Rings, showing the different pathways of various parties throughout the book. The title reads: "Lord of the Rings Transit Map: One Does Not Simply Walk Ino Mordor When One Can Ride." The map takes up the middle part of the page, and there are two keys. The one on the left is titles "Standard Service Lines, and has color keys matched to the subway lines on the map. Lines are named: "Shire-Bree Commuter Line Old Forrest Crescent Wildland Scenic Line Fellowship Line Gollum / Sméagol Line Uruk Hai Express Three Hunters Line Fangorn Slow Service Rohan to Gondor Business Line Black Ships Ferry Service Oliphant Direct Line Army of the West Line Gandalf Express A smaller key on the right side of the map is labeled: "Limited Service Lines" and has color keys matched to the following names lines: "Eagle Express Paths of the Dead Line Nazgûl Search & Resuce Valinor Ltd." A note at the bottom reads: "* Mount Doom station only accepts Rings of Power in payment. Plan accordingly." Art. Subway-style map of the itinerary in The Hobbit. The main journey is show in three different lines: red (Hobbiton to Goblin Town); green (Goblin Town to the Elvenking's Halls); and blue (Elvenking's Halls to Erebor). There are multiple stops on these lines. There is a yellow line going back from Erebor to Hobbiton, making stops at Beorn's Hall, Rivendell, and the Troll's Lair. There is an orange line directly from the Iron Hills on the map's right side to Erebor, and a purple line from Gundabad directly to Erebor. The map's title reads: "Hobbit Transit Map" and there are directions for both There and Back Again listing the lines and transfer points. Between them, in the middle of the page, is a dragon drawn to resemble the dragon on Thror's Map from The Hobbit. A key shows the names of each colored line: Red: Western Lands Line Green: Mountains and Forests Line Blue: Barrel Line Yellow: Gandalf Express Orange: Iron Hills Business Line Purple: Orc and Goblin Reserve Line Text at the bottom right reads Surprised Eel Maps, 2025
November 21, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
sentantiq.bsky.social
PSA:

M-M: Hyphen (-), to make compounds

M–M: En-dash (–), to separate spans of numbers (i.e., 1–9)

M—M: Em-dash (—), to separate ideas instead of using parenthesis. Seducer of authors; scourge of copyeditors; darling of LLMs

Eminem: Rapper; grandfather; Mariah Carey punching-bag
November 21, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
komldsp.bsky.social
And the news is... We're recruiting! Applications are now open for our 2026 @leverhulme.ac.uk Doctoral Scholarships. So, if you want to study at PhD level pre-modern handwritten cultures and the organisation of knowledge and power within them, do investigate our refreshed website.
November 21, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
plach.bsky.social
Funny how, in our time of institutional austerity in which our instructional budget is getting slashed, we can’t hire more faculty/staff, and course caps are rising, there’s still plenty of money for AI initiatives 🤔
November 20, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
drewjakeprof.bsky.social
Greek paleography bat signal!

Acta Sanctorum reads the sentence below as: ὁ δὲ ὅσιος
ἐπίσκοπος [Κλεώπας] περιβομβηθῆναι αὐτὴν & translates it as "sanctus episcopus Cleopas curavit infamiam ejus
vulgari" but περιβομβηθῆναι is veeeeeery rare word & it also doesn't look like that here? any ideas?
November 19, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
bibliojenni.bsky.social
If you love insular manuscripts & have always wanted to visit Hereford Cathedral's chained library, 2026 is the year to come! Shaping Early Medieval Faith: The Hereford Gospels will run 30 March-12 September 2026. More details, including about the manuscript's palimpsest, coming soon.
Mappa Mundi & Chained Library Museum. Shaping Early Medieval Faith: The Hereford Gospels. Monday 30 March-Saturday 12 September 2026. Discover the inner life of the oldest manuscript at Hereford Cathedral, the Hereford Gospels. Made circa 800AD, the Hereford Gospels symbolise the continuity of the the community at Hereford Cathedral. Shaping Early Medieval Faith explores how the Gospels were created through the centuries. It shares the results of new scientific imaging which has revealed secrets hidden within the manuscript's pages. Alongside the Gospels themselves are some of the oldest texts in the chained library, chosen to show what early medieval Christians might have been listening to or reading. Monday-Saturday, 10am-5 pm.
November 19, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
kateheartfield.com
Mary Shelley: I subtitled my book The Modern Prometheus as a cautionary tale

Tech company: At long last,
November 17, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
yaleclassicslib.bsky.social
New issue of Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the @sims-mss.bsky.social Vol. 10, No. 2 (2025) muse.jhu.edu/issue/55895 #openaccess @pennpress.bsky.social @projectmuse.bsky.social @lisafdavis.bsky.social @borizzle.bsky.social @teachingcodex.bsky.social
Front and back cover image: Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, LJS 459, fol. 1r (front cover) and fol. 128v (back cover).
November 17, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
Please believe me when I say that this meaningless, historically suspect slogan is being used to sell "AI." Here it is in the just-released November 2025 report on AI by Microsoft. www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...
The history of human progress is, in many ways, the history of technology's diffusion. Among these advances, a few-what economists call general-purpose technologies-have had the greatest impact on humanity. The printing press democratized knowledge. The steam engine powered industry. Electricity transformed daily life and enabled computing. And the internet connected the world, accelerating the exchange of ideas, trade, and collaboration across borders.
November 15, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
thomasfuchs.at
“AI” is truly the perfect crime

Plausibly presenting a magic slave to consumers, businesses and investors when it depends on criminal and unethical behavior to create and operate and is ultimately irretrievably broken and can never work as you promise (and you know it).

It’s fascinating and scary.
November 15, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
parkermolloy.com
Hold up
ner experience of texting with vesus. Here s everytning she shared. What is Text With Jesus? Text With Jesus offers users an interactive experience with a religious deity. In other words, us s can text questions to Jesus and get a response. (Premium users can also converse with Satan.) While testing the app, Thompson was curious to ask Jesus why bad things happen to good people.
November 15, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Congratulations to @rachelschine.bsky.social for winning the Best Book Award from the Middle East Medievalists association for her book, Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race! Brava!!! 🍾🍾🍾

Here's the link, if you haven't already read it: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Black Knights
A new account of racial logics in premodern Islamic literature.   In Black Knights, Rachel Schine reveals how the Arabic-speaking world developed a different form of racial knowledge than their Europe...
press.uchicago.edu
November 14, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Brandon W. Hawk
thedaybooks.bsky.social
We could solve like half the problems in education with smaller class sizes (like 15 instead of 30 kids crushed in a room). Including that it would be easier to find teachers b/c they wouldn’t get so burnt out.
ebonyteach.blacksky.app Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.blacksky.app · 10d
Every decade, we hear "the kids can't read or write!"

Interventions that don't work are proposed. Those that do work are ignored: reducing class sizes, making kids & families feel safe at school and welcome, becoming a community resource.

When their expensive reform fails, they yell at us again.
November 15, 2025 at 1:29 AM
brandonwhawk.bsky.social
I cannot wait to see this film, & this is a cool preview. #apocrypha
November 13, 2025 at 9:29 PM
brandonwhawk.bsky.social
Now is a great time to order some translations of #apocrypha in the Westar Tools & Translations series, including my translations of The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary!

wipfandstock.com/search-resul...

Get 50% off plus free shipping (if you choose media mail) with code CONFSHIP.
November 12, 2025 at 4:35 PM