Rachel Monsey
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rmonsey.bsky.social
Rachel Monsey
@rmonsey.bsky.social
History PhD candidate at Boston University
🪦Mourning 👑 Monarchy 🧠 Memory
1680s-1820s | Britain
Reposted by Rachel Monsey
Armed Britannia Surveying Her Navies [reverse of a medal of Charles II], 1667 by Jan Roettiers (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
November 25, 2025 at 2:11 PM
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can't believe jurgen habermas is alive. when i read that guy in college i just sort of assumed he was dead because everyone else i read in college was, too
November 25, 2025 at 2:11 PM
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Big news! The groundhog is back at my sister's and she gave him a plum
November 25, 2025 at 12:39 PM
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November 25, 1818: While Mary Shelley draws sketches of the Colosseum within the amphitheater during their Rome trip, Percy begins to pen his prose fragment, "The Coliseum." It is a romantic look at the ruins, overgrowth of plants & human hands that made the arena. Story: archive.org/details/essa...
November 25, 2025 at 12:23 PM
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Doing all I could this morning to keep the few undergrads who even turned up awake, & even this ghastly but interesting image, a prop to my discussion of the female Gothic & "Get Out" didn't quite do the job.
So I'll try with YOU.
It's an illustration to Bluebeard by Winslow Homer, of all people.
November 24, 2025 at 9:45 PM
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📽️ The recording from our widely popular #RSVPDigiEvent "How to Get Published in an Academic Journal" is now live. We had a record-breaking 101 registrants for this panel! Since we did not quite hit that number in attendance, we know many will be interested to watch/re-watch: youtu.be/sP5Y1iicKJ0
How to Get Published in Academic Journal
YouTube video by Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
youtu.be
November 24, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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THATS RIGHT!!!! AND I UNLEASH MY FURY AT THE WORST THING PETARCH EVER DID (to me).
THIS THURSDAY ON TGS: I’m joined by David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social to get justice for Laura 700 years after this weirdo first wrote a poem about her.
November 24, 2025 at 6:01 PM
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There is a post circulating on Bluesky encouraging the moving of a frozen turkey straight into a pot of hot oil. We are combating this misinformation the best way we know how - through the power of dance music.
November 23, 2025 at 1:31 PM
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the multi-year lack of a truly functional manuscripts catalog at the BL is finally over!!!!
Latest update from @britishlibrary.bsky.social says they are launching a new version of their main catalogue on Monday 8 December and around that time also launch an interim version of their Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue. Hooray!
www.bl.uk/stories/news...
Restoring our services – November 2025 update
In the coming weeks and months we will be restoring a number of key functions.
www.bl.uk
November 22, 2025 at 2:32 PM
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I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...
The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care?
The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity
www.cityam.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Woke up to the news that my first article has cleared the reviewing stage and is going to be published next year!!!
a woman wearing glasses is dancing in a restaurant
ALT: a woman wearing glasses is dancing in a restaurant
media.tenor.com
November 18, 2025 at 2:16 PM
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My latest cartoon for @theguardian.com books pages.
November 16, 2025 at 4:15 PM
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She was always THE woman. Looking right at you from 1590: Infanta Catalina Micaela (almost surely), painted by Sofonisba Anguissola (probably). Surely one of the greatest renaissance portraits.
November 16, 2025 at 7:52 PM
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Gustav Klimt, Beech Grove I, 1902, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm (Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)
November 16, 2025 at 5:25 PM
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In 1582, a papal bull introduced the Gregorian calendar, still used today by most of the world. Because it’s 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, countries introducing it simply skipped a third of October, and if you scroll back far enough in the iPhone calendar app you can see it change
December 31, 2024 at 2:41 PM
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Once upon a time in a university near you, in-person teaching was a thing, as you can see in this image of 1612. Young people with hats came together, regularly and voluntarily, prepared for classes, and enjoying a lively learning situation of *checks notes*, a 90 minutes monolog of someone else ...
November 11, 2025 at 9:16 AM
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preparing a class on animal histories
November 10, 2025 at 7:20 PM
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The central chapter, 'Inky cloak', considers cloaks, mourning dress & funerals, prologues & paratexts, black pages, black wrappers, & the inky traffic between page & stage. Mostly Hamlet, but framed with Middleton's Black Book, with cameo appearances by the Field brothers (Nathan & Theophilus) 6/10
November 11, 2025 at 11:21 AM
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Today is the OFFICIAL publication day for TEXTILE SHAKESPEARE! Please indulge me: I want to say a little (perhaps rather a lot) about it and share my acknowledgements - and a discount code! Appropriately,🧵1/10
November 11, 2025 at 11:21 AM
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9/ "So, there we were. A group of Black Americans confronted with all these dead white Americans… When they were alive, we couldn’t sit in the same room."
November 9, 2025 at 9:23 AM
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1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️
November 9, 2025 at 9:23 AM
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My theory about Joyce Carol Oates is that all her bad posts are her charging up like Godzilla's spines until she lets loose with a radioactive blast that leaves the world's richest Nazi a pile of ash
November 9, 2025 at 2:31 PM
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Loving today's news that the mysterious "fedora man" outside the Louvre heist was actually a 15-year-old museum visitor who dresses like a 1940s French detective all the time, just because. apnews.com/article/louv...
Fedora man unmasked: Meet the teen behind the Louvre mystery photo
Fifteen-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux has become an internet sensation after an Associated Press photo captured him outside the Louvre on the day of a crown jewels heist.
apnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 12:16 PM
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Wonder why this scene looks so familiar...
#WildlifeWednesday 🐦🐕
November 5, 2025 at 6:57 AM
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Omg Ben Jonson told William Drummond that Donne should be hanged for this poem and Drummond wrote that shit down and published it???? 💀💀💀💀💀

Thank god Ben and Bill did not have social media??
November 4, 2025 at 11:49 PM