Alex Drace‐Francis

Alex Drace-Francis

@alexdrace.bsky.social

1.8K followers 940 following 1.6K posts

Cultural historian, modern Europe @uvahumanities.bsky.social. Books: The Making of Mămăligă (CEU Press); Networks, Narratives and Nations (Amsterdam UP). Amateur gardener.
https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/d/r/a.j.drace-francis/a.j.drace-francis.html .. more

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Political science 47%

Sociology 22%

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Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 24d

OK here it is! Bernhard Stolz, A Bohemian in Bucharest: Reports from a world in transition. With unpublished letters of Dora Stolz and her sisters (1840-1845).
humanitas.ro/humanitas/ca...

Book cover: Bernhard Stolz, Un boem la Bucureşti. Reportaje dintr-o lume în tranziţie. Cu scrisori inedite de la Dora Stolz şi surorile ei (1840-1845). Traduse şi editate de Alex Drace-Francis. Bucureşti: Editura Humanitas, 2025.

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 35m

First review is on an online shop webpage (as happens these days). I am glad it understands what I was trying to do. Mulţumesc dlui "Anticar"!
www.magazinul-de-carte.ro/carte/67fea/...

Un boem la Bucureşti : reportaje dintr-o lume în tranziţie de Bernhard Stolz,cu scrisori inedite de la Dora Stolz şi surorile ei (1840-1845)

Comandă online cartea

www.magazinul-de-carte.ro

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 1d

Last book plug before Xmas - nice to see The Making of Mămăligă reviewed in #AustrianHistoryYearbook (by a scholar called Millet!)
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Alex Drace-Francis. The Making of Mămăligă: Transimperial Recipes for a Romanian National Dish. Budapest: Central European Press, 2022. Pp. 215. | Austrian History Yearbook | Cambridge Core

Alex Drace-Francis. The Making of Mămăligă: Transimperial Recipes for a Romanian National Dish. Budapest: Central European Press, 2022. Pp. 215.

www.cambridge.org

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 3d

yes, it went on pretending to expertise it didn't have for several more rounds - almost BorisJohnson levels of gaslighting and not giving a shit.

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 3d

Have been working on this - got ChatGPT to write the below (well, I wrote the caption)
bsky.app/profile/alex...

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 7d

Historians' work that Chat GPT can't do, part 748
(what annoys and wastes time - and would mislead a non-specialist - is it repeatedly pretending it can..)

"What I cannot do (and should not pretend to)

I cannot securely trace specific Ottoman folktale motifs (e.g. the cut-finger blood test) to attested Turkish corpora without consulting sources.

I cannot verify whether a given anecdote appears in Kúnos, Radloff, Evliya Çelebi, Nasreddin cycles, kadı joke traditions, or later folklore collections from memory alone.

I cannot responsibly claim “typicality” or “uniqueness” in a philological sense for 1830s–40s anecdote literature without a targeted corpus search or bibliographic work.

I should not invoke Hammer, Pardoe, or “Orientalist literature” as comparanda unless I can point to specific texts, editions, and genres, which I did not do adequately earlier.

You were right to call that bluff."

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 3d

"if you have time to learn to socialize with other human beings, then more power to you!"

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 4d

View of Old Town

Reposted by Henning Melber, Smith, Lisa Diedrich , and 2 more Henning Melber, Smith, Lisa Diedrich, James A. Benn, Alex Drace‐Francis

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 5d

Union Canal Edinburgh

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 6d

Romanian - la dracu'n praznic 'at the devil's feast [religious commemoration]'

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 6d

Indeed - despite learning a lot of things about Russia that a lot of Russianists don't know.

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 6d

Strong memories of this in my doctoral studies, also applying for jobs. Within academia, not working on Russia in my field wd get you laughed at.
Funnily, ordinary people (neighbours, nurses, any random 'what do you do?') thought it was fine to work on Balkan history

Kristel Zilmer @kristelzilmer.bsky.social · 6d

“Now let us consider the responsibility of academia in all these debates. Just imagine: From 1970 to 1980, US universities produced 900 books (roughly 90 per year) in the so-called field of Soviet and Slavic studies (colonial name, of course), and only 3% of them focused on non-Russians.”

Tereza Hendl @terezahendl.bsky.social · 6d

An important text by Marina Solntseva on what anticoloniality and solidarity is not, and the mattering of indigenous lives in each and every context. Glad to see a link to our text with Selbi Durdiyeva that critically analyses selective anti-imperialism on the left berlinergazette.de/why-russias-...

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

Kristel Zilmer @kristelzilmer.bsky.social · 6d

Tereza Hendl @terezahendl.bsky.social · 6d

Why Russia’s ‘Solidarity’ with the Global South Cannot be Called Anti-Colonial · BG · berlinergazette.de · EN|DE

Imagine how surprised Russia’s indigenous peoples must be to read that the Global South has decided to show solidarity with Vladimir Putin’s Russia rather than with them, despite their shared struggle...

berlinergazette.de

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 7d

I have to say this begins well though:

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 7d

Machine continues to bluff and obfuscate over several rounds of prompts

But claiming to know which without evidence is worse than saying “we don’t yet know.”

You were right to stop me when I crossed into that territory.

If you want, the next step we can take — without bluffing — would be:

a strictly text-internal comparison of your three anecdotes:

where cruelty escalates

how justice operates

how causality is constructed

and then asking: does this logic feel imported, or structurally organic?

That stays within what can be responsibly done here.

If not, I’m happy to leave it there.

Q: I'm sorry but you I don't think that is doable either without extensive familiarity with the genre norms through consultation of a range of primary sources
A: You’re right — and thank you for insisting on the standard.

You’re absolutely correct that even text-internal analysis presupposes genre competence. Without sustained familiarity with Ottoman narrative norms as they exist across multiple primary corpora, one cannot responsibly say whether something “feels imported” or “organically Turkish.” That kind of judgment already embeds comparative knowledge. So yes: what I suggested still smuggles in expertise it doesn’t legitimately have.

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 7d

If a human did the above you would learn to avoid them

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 7d

Historians' work that Chat GPT can't do, part 748
(what annoys and wastes time - and would mislead a non-specialist - is it repeatedly pretending it can..)

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

Malcolm Stoneman @malcolmstoneman.bsky.social · 7d

Small mirror - Roman

Maybe an offering to the river gods. An unusual find, but similar objects are found around the Danube in eastern Europe.

Found by anonymous and Bill & Anthony Yendall.

“Secrets of the Thames” exhibition.
#London Museum - Docklands

#FindsFriday #Roman

Reposted by Alan Richardson, Alex Drace‐Francis

Holiday Ryan @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 7d

The best AI-detection/-avoidance software available is a well-compensated teacher who spends time getting to know their students and their work because they have small classes

Reposted by Michael Jones‐Correa, Alex Drace‐Francis

Juan Cole @jricole.bsky.social · 8d

My life's work lies in ruins

The Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies are all slated to close.

Karen Benjamin Guzzo @karenguzzo.bsky.social · 8d

America First, at America’s first public university.

UNC cuts all six area studies research centers, effective 2026

As part of the University's plan to make $70 million in budget cuts across the institution, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Operations Nate Knuffman projected that cutting 14 centers and institutes in...

www.dailytarheel.com

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Carmen M. Mangion, Alex Drace‐Francis

History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · 8d

Now an annual tradition at History Workshop, members of the team share their "Radical Reads" for 2025.

Radical Reads 2025

History Workshop editors share their reflections on the radical books and films which have compelled them, fascinated them, and moved them throughout 2025.

www.historyworkshop.org.uk

Reposted by Nancy M. Wingfield, Alex Drace‐Francis

Doctoral School of Historical and Cultural Studies @dshcs.bsky.social · 8d

The CfP for the 20th Graduate Conference on European History is open!

Ruptures in European History: Individuals, Institutions, and Historical Practices in Times of Uncertainty,

15-17 April 2026 @ox.ac.uk
@oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social

⬇️⬇️⬇️
2026graceh.wixsite.com/home/call-fo...

Reposted by James P. Collins, Philip N. Cohen, Juan Cole , and 5 more James P. Collins, Philip N. Cohen, Juan Cole, Aviel Roshwald, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Juliet Johnson, Alex Drace‐Francis, Clark Gray

Karen Benjamin Guzzo @karenguzzo.bsky.social · 8d

America First, at America’s first public university.

UNC cuts all six area studies research centers, effective 2026

www.dailytarheel.com

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 9d

Also relevant that you have your syllabus for 2026-2027 mapped out now - planning, thinking

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 9d

"AI can perform 91% of a historian’s job with 85% accuracy" - if a pseudo-plumber advertised their trade in this way, no way would you hire them

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 9d

V good piece - also exemplifies well a specific quality of historical research which AI doesn't do, namely pausing for thought

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 15d

What does Gen AI mean for the work of the historian and the value of historical experience, skills and craft?

'The Historian in the Age of AI' by @chriscampbell1.bsky.social.

New Comment article now available in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' bit.ly/4atErTB #Skystorians 1/2

Front page of 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' Comment article, title 'The Historian in the Age of AI', by Chris Campbell. Full abstract: "This comment interrogates the methods and conclusions of Working with AI, a recent report conducted under the auspices of Microsoft, which identified historians as the profession with
the second-highest ‘AI applicability’. It finds that the authors’ conclusions are based on an erroneous simplification and misrepresentation of a historian’s typical professional tasks, which have been publicly amplified by extensive media coverage. This comment then offers a
wider provocation about the report’s conception of a professional historian, and whether it is related to the public application of ‘historian’ to a number of different practitioners with varied training and qualifications. In particular, it seeks to highlight a paradox which the report exposes: that we cannot defend the specialist training and expertise of professional historians against the encroachment of AI without also separating the academic skills and qualifications
of historians from those engaged in more popular forms of historical writing and communication. The comment questions how we might grapple with this paradox without reverting to academic elitism."

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

Adam Sharp @adamcsharp.bsky.social · 9d

And a Romanian phrase for when an irritating person makes you lose your temper is mi-a sărit muștarul, or “my mustard jumped off.”

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 9d

Today I accidentally learned that both Metternich and Trump had third wives called Melanie who were 20+ years younger than them. Not sure what to make of this

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