Thread by @avoiding_bears

THREAD: #eurovision acts as early modernists

Has a t-shirt with the frontispiece to Deaths Duell on it. Once sang the Willow song at a party. Humanities 2.

Hooked up at SAA. Are *that* couple in the reading room. Rare Books, but have no reason to be in there specifically.

Wrote a fucking great thesis on religious violence in the Valtelline. Attempts audience participation at conferences. Local archives that are only open by appointment.

Works on memory, has difficulty defining her corpus. Is going to change the field if she ever finishes her book. Overly invested in panel organisation. Manuscripts.

Extremely pure of heart. Works on Shakespeare but doesn’t understand why Shakespeareans can be so mean to one another. Excellent student evaluations. Journals room at Senate House.

Has a ‘conference wardrobe’. Surprises students with her ability to project her voice. You’re not sure exactly what she works on, but know that she’s racking up the publications. Leaves her suitcase in the corner in seminars. Humanities 1.

Very forward in the paper review session. Thinks he’s more popular with students than he is. Secretly extremely insecure about his perfectly good research on poetic form. Has a favourite seat in Humanities 2, is upset when someone else gets there before him.

Legal history power couple. Stage performances using church court depositions. Known to take down unsuspecting mansplainers at conferences with minimal mercy. Graduate students would follow them into battle. Local archives, where they charm and confuse family historians.

Resilient, despite having had a Bad Supervisor. Analyses accounts of natural disasters through an ecocritical lens. Feels her article on the Lisbon earthquake may currently be a bit on the nose. Alternates between Rare Books and Science.

Working on an ERC project about something intimidatingly theoretical. Always turn up at conferences together, never attend the dinner. Various libraries in the states, racking up the air miles.

Bibliographer. Learned to recreate sixteenth-century binding techniques, posts pictures of his pretty impressive work on twitter & is always surprised when people favourite them. Has a baby, who he sometimes posts photos of ‘reading’ the works of W.W. Greg. The Weston Library.

Theatre historian, reliable escaper to the pub at boring conferences. Has Stories about his youth in the regional music scene. Wears mildly rude slogan t-shirts when teaching. Has your back when needed. NT archive.

Shaking up historical linguistics since 1998. He was a spousal hire, but no one resents it. Extremely active both in department administration and in the local arts scene. Have one impeccably behaved child, who sometimes comes to their undergraduate lectures.

Research seminar nightmare child. Working on Hobbes, but not in an interesting way. Tries to best visiting speakers. Prefers to work in coffee shops, to be honest.

Part of a research group on rural political networks during the long seventeenth century. Left wing, prefer ‘proper pubs’. Accidentally intimidate people at conferences; actually cinnamon rolls. County archives, the more remote the better.

The funniest person in the literature cohort group chat. Greatest conference stories you’ve ever heard. Presents as hot mess, but monograph coming out with CUP in the spring. Writes in her office: if she goes to the BL she ends up spending all her time having coffee with people.

Digital Humanities powerhouse. Has been known to give keynotes at two different conferences in one day. Extremely supportive of graduate students. Very active on instagram, in a way that slightly daunts her head of department. Mostly works in her enviable home office.

Long-running writing accountability group. Were at grad school together, now mostly keep in touch on Slack. Enjoy pomodos, small plate dining, and sharing zotero bibliographies.

...just a department you probably don’t want to join, to be quite honest.

Digital Humanist, resolutely not a powerhouse. Gave a keynote once, made a thoughtless joke about Me Too and has never been invited to again. Is dismissive of anyone whose data he considers to be insufficiently big. Found in the Cloud, probably.

Gets into arguments online with certain public historians. Still upset about the Diggers. Revealed a previously-unknown talent for VC caricature during the strike. Usually found asking probing questions at IHR seminars.

Charismatic and Problematic™️. The first academic you followed on twitter; you desperately hope she didn’t notice your quiet unfollow a few months later. Is going to be the subject of a Chronicle article one of these days.

Just, like, the actual worst. No redeeming features. You suspect him to be Reviewer 2, which is just your luck.

Departmental record holder in teaching awards. Regularly screwed over re. research leave. Triumphantly queering the study of early modern epistolary discourse. Manuscripts room, whenever he can escape teaching admin.

Fashion historian, writing a trade book on gold thread in historical long-view. Consults for theatre companies. New Generation Thinker. Possessed of the best hair of any reader in the V&A archive.

Earnest social historians, co-writing a book on something worthy that you sadly tuned out because you got distracted. Tend to leave conference audiences feeling bored, & guilty for being bored. Tweets often include ‘please retweet’. Ask lots of questions at departmental meetings.

...why did I stay up and do this