doing research in the field of humanities is interesting because there isn’t necessary this paradigm of the most recently published studies are by definition the best that you get in the hard sciences, like sometimes that book published in 1909 really continues to be the best foundational text about 1590s amsterdam, but then again sometimes i’m reading a text published in the 60s and it starts describing italian culture as “oriental” with no further discussion and i’m like hmmm maybe i should find something a little more current














