
oozey mess
AnasAbdin
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

Love Begins
No title available
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

shark vs the universe
Xuebing Du
i don't do bad sauce passes
we're not kids anymore.
styofa doing anything
No title available
todays bird
noise dept.
Cosmic Funnies

blake kathryn
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

Andulka
Three Goblin Art
Jules of Nature
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Algeria
seen from South Africa
seen from Türkiye

seen from Colombia

seen from Colombia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
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@justclassicsplease
College friendship is sending one of your friends who's graduating soon a giant list of monster theory and gothic horror academic reading recs so they can download as many PDFs as possible before they lose their university database access
Got a request for some of the recs here, so here's a short-ish list of some of the reading recs -- I've made an effort to link open source and/or at least slightly more accessible databases like JSTOR wherever possible, but some of these are, admittedly behind various paywalls that I wish everyone luck with circumventing in whatever manner you deem fit
Monster Theory - Really great anthology to start with, especially the first reading, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's famous "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" which is a personal favorite
The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts - A general SF/F journal, but there are definitely a lot of great monster theory and gothic horror readings sprinkled throughout. Consider taking a look at Veronica Hollinger's "The Vampire and/as Alien," the special issue on Dracula, and Faye J. Ringel's "Genetic Experimentation: Mad Scientists and the Beast," among others
Werewolf Histories edited by Willem Blécourt - Phenomenal anthology on werewolf scholarship, especially if you're interested in the connections between werewolves and witchcraft and/or witch trials in Early Modern Europe
Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by Jack Halberstam - Of interest to those who are interested in the connection between the gothic and gender (among other topics). Halberstam has written extensively on both
The Journal of Dracula Studies - Exactly what it sounds like.
Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural - Another journal, which focuses on the connections between witchcraft and occultism, monsters, demonology, and the like.
Susan Stryker's "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix" - An absolutely landmark piece of writing on Frankenstein and the transgender (and in particular the transfeminine) experience; one of my favorite pieces of academic writing of all time.
Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology - Another solid monster theory anthology
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene - A really, really good anthology about the ecological gothic that I cannot recommend enough. As a known werewolf guy I especially like the piece "Wolf, or Homo homini lupus" by Carla Freccero
The Vampire Lectures by Lawrence Rickels - So many vampires
Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader - Another anthology, I in particular recommend Rosalind Sibielski's "Gendering the Monster Within: Biological Essentialism, Sexual Difference, and Changing Symbolic Functions of the Monster in Popular Werewolf Texts" in this one.
"The Trans Legacy of Frankenstein" by Jolene Zigarovich - Definitely a good read if you enjoyed the Stryker piece earlier; it's a more general survey of the idea but might give you some ideas for further reading
TransGothic in Literature and Culture - A whole anthology of works on transgender identity and the gothic!
Twenty-First Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion - Not to be confused with the other similarly named anthology earlier, this one is on various modern perspectives on the gothic.
"Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Werewolf Renaissance" by David A. Shyovitz - Stand-alone article but really really interesting
Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150-1750 by Lorraine Daston & Katherine Park - Incredible volume that gets into several different subjects surrounding the fantastical in the medieval and early modern eras, monsters among them. The same authors have written some other fantastic work, such as "Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England" and I honestly would recommend any of their work.
Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters - A more anthropology focused volume, I particularly like Rozanna Lilley's "Drawing in the Margins: My Son's Arsenal of Monsters—(Autistic) Imagination and the Cultural Capital of Childhood"
Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations - Another anthology, this time with a historical perspective
This isn't even everything I've dug into on the subject, but I hope it's enough to get folks started on some reading!
@poemsingreenink
Vincent van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo (Cuesmes, Belgium — Tuesday, 22 June 1880)
A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artif
An interesting game where you are presented with 10 artifacts from the MET. You have to place where the artifact is from and what time period it is from. Each artifact scores up to 10,000 points, and you lose points the further away your guess is and how far off in time you are. You can only play once a day. Thanks to @baebeylik for showing this to me.
Today I scored really well. Yesterday ... not so much.
Anthropeum.com · Jun 8 2026 🟩🟦🟦🟩🟩🟩🟥🟦🟦🟩 79,001 · top 3% of players today!
oh this is extremely fun. i did NOT do all that well but i can see myself getting good. i will be doing this regularly.
Anthropeum.com · Jun 8 2026 🟩🟦🟦🟨🟨🟦🟥🟩🟩🟦 68,088 · top 12% of players today!
Anthropeum.com · Jun 9 2026
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77,134 · top 9% of players, baby!
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Anthropeum.com · Jun 10 2026
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In my defense that red one is where I accidentally flicked the map marker to the wrong side of the planet
Anthropeum.com · Jun 10 2026
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Oh, I’m going to play the heck out of this.
A well read women is a dangerous creature.
modern media in a nutshell
you think that you're so alone in the world then you read literature from hundreds of years ago and you realize that other people have always felt this way
My Shakespeare students (they are 12) wanted to summarize the lessons they learned this semester. If. Um. Anybody would like to see.
I cannot emphasize enough that they made these with very little input from me.
Henry the Fifth
- ALWAYS encourage others to do their best.
- NEVER talk about people behind their back.
Antony and Cleopatra
- ALWAYS check your produce for pests. [They liked this one so much made a rap about it.]
- NEVER count your chickens before they hatch.
Hamlet
- ALWAYS act decisively
- NEVER tell your girlfriend to go to a convent and become a nun [Oh boy they REALLY liked this one]
Romeo and Juliet
- ALWAYS collect all the important information before making an important decision
- NEVER bite your thumb at us, sir. [They enacted this scene in the original language a lot, except they swapped every “sir” for “bro.”]
The Merchant of Venice
- ALWAYS pay your debts.
- NEVER judge based on appearances, because “all that glisters is not gold.”
The Tempest
- ALWAYS try to forgive others.
- NEVER be a colonizer. [Yes, a middle schooler said this]
Midsummer Night’s Dream
- ALWAYS stay on forest trails
- NEVER fall in love with an ass. [They were excited about this one for obvious reasons.]
Twelfth Night
- ALWAYS stay in touch with those important to us
- NEVER read other people’s mail
Macbeth
- ALWAYS wash your hands. [One of the girls performed Lady Macbeth’s entire Out Damn Spot monologue at the end of the semester]
- NEVER succumb to peer pressure.
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
under 18, AI is a net positive
under 18, AI is a net negative
18-29, AI is a net positive
18-29, AI is a net negative
30-45, AI is a net positive
30-45, AI is a net negative
46-60, AI is a net positive
46-60, AI is a net negative
over 60, AI is a net postive
over 60, AI is a net negative
Question 2/3
How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?
Frequently (multiple times per month)
Often (multiple times per year)
Occasionally (a couple times per year)
Rarely (once every couple of years)
Never :(
Question 3/3
If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?
under 18, more inclined
under 18, less inclined
18-29, more inclined
18-29, less inclined
30-45, more inclined
30-45, less inclined
46-60, more inclined
46-60, less inclined
over 60, more inclined
over 60, less inclined
Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!
🫶
what if we all explode
This very production of Orpheus & Eurydice is now available to stream, free, for the month of June.
for the last time: if there's a sexy naked lady with long flowing hair and MAYBE a diaphanous sheet or flower crown; lots of swirlies and ribbon like curving LUSCIOUS shapes; very lush foliage (acanthus leaves, elegant flowers) and all kinds of fauna — both especially waterside (lily pads, lotuses, reeds, cranes, dragonflies); lots of green; everything is a lot of iron, stone, stained glass, mosaic, and carved wood; the windows or their frames are very Shaped; the lights are soft yellow; or it's a font with lots of line weight variation; feather tips are rounded; everything reminds you of france, vienna, or japan and something vaguely mediterranean; OR it's literally a Parisian metro station
— then it's art nouveau
and if the sexy lady has a bob cut or a hair cap and is wearing a column or flapper dress; there's a lot of geometry like rectangles, arches, rays, and diamonds; angels have super sharp wings and a lot of muscles; everything is steel, concrete, marble, gold, and red velvet seats; everything is VERY angular; and all the foliage is basically papyrus fronds; things feel vaguely Egyptian or Turkish or Mesopotamian; the fonts play with being very skinny or very thick and are sans serif with extra lines; or Gatsby would be found floating dead in that pool
— then it's art deco
And if looks kinda like art nouveau
— with lots of lush flora, tiny insects (like dragonflies) or graceful birds, stained glass, iron, warm golden lighting, lots of wood and wood carving (but now it's more wood paneling), a stylistic fondness for Japan, line weight variation in the font, and tile (but this time it's carved or sculpted on, not tiny mosaic)
but you're worried it's art deco
— because the forms (especially foliage) are very symmetrical and slightly more angular or blocky and graphic looking, things are more rectangular than circular or curvy in architecture, the patterns repeat more often, and more of the lamps are pyramids or rectangular, and there are nods to Egyptian or Ottoman style, and they used the color red (probably in an accent chair or carpet rug)
BUT there's no steel, concrete, gold plating or gilding, marble, big muscles, spiky or radiating diamond shapes, angular people, or flappers,
AND the vibes are jacobean, gothic, or spanish mission revival; they love some brick and stone; the wallpaper is an explosion of colorful pattern that could give you arsenic poisoning or help depict a descent into postpartum psychosis in a famous short story; but there are NO people to be seen, not even sexy ladies,
— then THAT is the arts & crafts movement.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), poem 85 from “The Gardener”, 1914 Translated by the author from the original Bengali. New York: The Macmillan Company.
It is an hundred years hence now. Go open your doors.
100 open access books on JSTOR
African American Studies
An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, Revised and Updated Edition
Disrupting Colonial Pedagogies: Theories and Transgressions
J. A. Rogers: Selected Writings
The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny
African Studies
Ethnicity, Identity, and Conceptualizing Community in Indian Ocean East Africa
Lagos Never Spoils: Nollywood and Nigerian City Life
American Indian Studies
Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History
The Urgency of Indigenous Values
Anthropology
Graceful Resistance: How Capoeiristas Use Their Art for Activism and Community Engagement
Lacandón Maya in the Twenty-First Century: Indigenous Knowledge and Conservation in Mexico's Tropical Rainforest
Maya-British Conflict at the Edge of the Yucatecan Caste War
Neobugarrón: Heteroflexibility, Neoliberalism, and Latin/o American Sexual Practice
Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America
Power and Place: Preservation, Progress, and the Culture War over Land
Voices of Indigenuity
Archaeology
Living Ceramics, Storied Ground: A History of African American Archaeology
New Deal Archaeology in the West
The Cretan Collection in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, volume III: Metal Objects from Gournia
Violence and Inequality: An Archaeological History
Architecture
Waterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos
Asian Studies
Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics and Informality, 1963–1985
Communication Studies
Covid and…: How to Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic
Hillary Clinton's Career in Speeches: The Promises and Perils of Women's Rhetorical Adaptivity
Influential Machines: The Rhetoric of Computational Performance
Migrant World Making
Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting
Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now
Stories of Our Living Ephemera: Storytelling Methodologies in the Archives of the Cherokee National Seminaries, 1846-1907
Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives
Cultural Studies
Cultural History of British Alternative Cabaret (1979-1991)
Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect: Online Reading Communities of the New Nigerian Novel
Reconstructive Memory Work: Trauma, Witnessing and the Imagination in Writing by Female Descendants of Harkis
Toward a Gameic World
Development Studies
Hottest of the Hotspots: The Rise of Eco-precarious Conservation Labor in Madagascar
Urban Indigeneities: Being Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century
Education
Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland
The Vulnerability of Public Higher Education
Environmental Studies
Ecologies of Imperialism
Unsettling Agribusiness: Indigenous Protests and Land Conflict in Brazil
Feminist & Women's Studies
Reclaiming Time: The Transformative Politics of Feminist Temporalities
Recovering Women’s Past: New Epistemologies, New Ventures
Film Studies
Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema
Monsters on Maple Street: The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream
The Rise of Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century
Mapping the Stars: Celebrity, Metonymy, and the Networked Politics of Identity
Food Studies
The Visible Hands That Feed: Responsibility and Growth in the Food Sector
Gender Studies
Masculine Pregnancies: Modernist Conceptions of Creativity and Legitimacy, 1918-1939
Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770–1940
Women, Nationalism, and Social Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918
History
Captivity's Collections: Natural History and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade
Our People Are Warlike: Civil War Pittsburgh and Home-Front Mobilization
Reimagining the Educated Citizen: Creole Pedagogies in the Transatlantic World: 1685-1896
Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi
Language & Literature
Abraham Lincoln and the Bible: A Complete Compendium
Blood and Ink: The Barbary Archive in Early American Literary History
Ethical Crossroads in Literary Modernism
Faking It: Victorian Documentary Novels
Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China
The Lost Texts of Confucius’ Grandson: Guodian, Zisi, and Beyond
Understanding Agatha Christie
Latin American Studies
Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution
Law
Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America
Linguistics
Cantonese Since the Nineteenth Century
Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry: Transnational Exchange in the Italian Publishing Field
Middle East Studies
Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces
Music
Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism
Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson
Lieder in America: On Stages and In Parlors
On Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone
Peace & Conflict Studies
Remaking the World: Decolonization and the Cold War
The Coup and the Palm Trees: Agrarian Conflict and Political Power in Honduras
The End of the Future: Trauma, Memory, and Reconciliation in Peruvian Amazonia
Uniting Against the Reich: The American Air War in Europe
Unwilling to Quit: The Long Unwinding of American Involvement in Vietnam
Performing Arts
Sonic Strategies: Performing Mexico's War on Drugs, Mourning, and Feminicide
Staging Existence: Chekhov's Tetralogy
Philosophy
Phenomenology in an African Context: Contributions and Challenges
Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious: Vol. 2 The Affective Hypothesis
Violence and the Oedipal Unconscious: vol. 1, The Catharsis Hypothesis
Political Science
Beyond Othering: A Gandhian Approach to Conflict Resolution in India and Pakistan
Local government and democracy in the United Kingdom
Paradoxes of Emancipation: Radical Imagination and Space in Neoliberal Greece
The Cost of Voting in the American States
The New Star Chamber and Other Essays: Annotated Edition
Population Studies
Central American Migrations in the Twenty-First Century
Psychology
Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe
Public Health
Irish Fever: An Archaeology of Illness, Injury, and Healing in New York City, 1845–1870
Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011
Religion
Christan Colleges and Universities: An Empirical Guide
From Jesus to J-Setting: Religious and Sexual Fluidity among Young Black People
The Hispanic Faculty Experience: Opportunities for Growth and Retention in Christian Colleges and Universities
Science & Technology Studies
Composting Utopia: Experimental Infrastructures for Organics Recycling in New York City
Sociology
Apartheid’s Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence
As Legend Has It: History, Heritage, and the Construction of Swedish American Identity
Continuous Pasts: Frictions of Memory in Postcolonial Africa
Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana
Research as More Than Extraction: Knowledge Production and Gender-Based Violence in African Societies
The Souls of Jewish Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois, Anti-Semitism, and the Color Line
Technology
Transnational Families in Africa: Migrants and the role of Information Communication Technologies
Urban Studies
Living Politics in the City: Architecture as Catalyst for Public Space
FYI, all of these books were made open access as part of our Path to Open program, where included books are set to become open access three years after their publication date.
Many of the above books can be downloaded as PDFs in full!
“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
— Bertrand Russell, philosopher, b. 18 May 1872
Too bad the prophet Cassandra never met Odysseus
They say if she made a prophecy Nobody would believe her
I’ve gotta say, that is exactly the kind of stupid thing that probably would circumvent a curse.
Cassandra: YOU ARE ALL GOING TO REGRET THIS SO MUCH YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW.
Odysseus: Regret it why?
Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.
Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in.
*A couple of months later*
Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit.
Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure.
Cassandra: *in tears* I love you, new family.
Cassandra: Penelope, I’ve had another vision.
Penelope, sighs: Go tell your father.
the original? on my dash?
Apollo: you’re the one who unleashed your little freak of a trouble maker on my Greek tragedy! You don’t get to blame me for this.
David Cusick was a Tuscarora (Haudenosaunee) artist who self-published the first known English-language record of Indigenous stories told BY an Indigenous writer-illustrator. His book is called David Cusick’s Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations and you can read it for free online.