Michael Hancher
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michaelhancher.bsky.social
Michael Hancher
@michaelhancher.bsky.social

Sometime English professor, JHU and UMN; past president, Dictionary Society of North America. Victorian literature and art, book illustration, speech acts, interpretation, law. Macaulay and English in India (Routledge, 2026). https://z.umn.edu/M-H. .. more

Michael Hanchard, often published as Michael G. Hanchard, is an American political scientist, currently the Gustave C. Kuemmerle Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of the Marginalized Populations Project there. He studies comparative politics and political theory, focusing on understanding the causes and consequences of nationalism and xenophobia, particularly within democracies. .. more

Communication & Media Studies 26%
Art 25%

"Re: Search and Close Reading" hdl.handle.net/11299/181603
Re: Search and Close Reading
hdl.handle.net

Once more, with feeling
Ad Reinhardt 1913–1967 | Tate share.google/RQwdZIbv5kAv...

Much like “Repeal of prohibition midnight April 6, 1933” (www.perfectduluthday.com/wp-content/u...).
www.perfectduluthday.com

A few more recently popular ngrams, gleaned from this morning's Star Tribune: do the right thing, feel equipped to. people and businesses need, plain old, watch your mouth, we really want to make sure, what the data actually says. For context see z.umn.edu/Ngrams.
Hancher Ngrams data DSNA 20250527.pdf
z.umn.edu

Gehry's Weisman Art Museum speaks to the corrugated limestone cliff below. @weismanart.bsky.social

Gehry's Weisman Art Museum speaks to the corrugated limestone cliff below.

The word of the day is pre-order.

“ . . . from Los Angeles to Bilbao,” with Minneapolis in between: Weisman Art Museum (1993), before Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997). hga.com/john-cook-lo...

close reading, critical thinking
books.google.com/ngrams/graph...
Google Books Ngram Viewer
Google Ngrams: close reading, critical thinking, 1800-2022
books.google.com
U Minnesota Press's Spring 26 catalog, listing our new Critical Infrastructure Studies & Digital Humanities (in Debates in DH series), eds. Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, @jamessmithies.bsky.social): z.umn.edu/spring26. Table of contents: www.upress.umn.edu/978151791608... @uminnpress.bsky.social

Footprints in Minneapolis

Welcome to UMN. Ice cleats yes.

“The new forms cannot fully substitute for the actual physical objects in which those earlier texts were embodied at particular times in the past.” Thirty years old and ever more timely, regarding primary records: www.mla.org/content/down... @modernlanguage.bsky.social @paulakrebs.bsky.social
www.mla.org
It's #blackfriday here at the ILT: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (2nd Dublin edn.) Two single-sided black pages face each other at pp. 56-57.

"The ‘blackness’ is printed on both sides of the leaf with what appears to be a solid woodblock." The Laurence Sterne Trust

"Painting, turkey cock, by Mansur, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Mughal, ca. 1612." Victoria and Albert Museum, IM.135-1921. collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17088/...
Painting | Mansur | V&A Explore The Collections
Painting, turkey cock, by Mansur, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Mughal, ca. 1612
collections.vam.ac.uk

"For this reason, the concept of a textual source must involve attention to the presentation of a text, not simply to the text as a disembodied group of words." MLA, "Significance of Primary Records" (1995): 27. www.mla.org/content/down...
www.mla.org

"Texts are inevitably affected by the physical means of their transmission; the physical features of the artifacts conveying texts therefore play an integral role in the attempt to comprehend those texts.
New issue of my newsletter: "The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition" — One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved, and it's a good use of AI newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-...
The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition
One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved
newsletter.dancohen.org

Reposted by Michael Hancher

If you live in Minnesota you have access (no login required) to thousands of journals and ebooks, the full text of the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Star Tribune (all the way back to the 80s), and much more. All thanks to eLibrary Minnesota. Libraries rule! 2/4 elibrarymn.org
eLibrary Minnesota
elibrarymn.org

Despite the recent banner, not actually on sale yet: Macaulay and English in India (Routledge: March 2026). www.routledge.com/Macaulay-and....
Macaulay and English in India
This book traces how the English language emerged from the nineteenth century as not only an imperial and bureaucratic language but also as a global one. It highlights the role of Thomas Babington Mac...
www.routledge.com

Scribe ready to transcribe what Homer says. Detail of Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus, engraving after Raphael by Marcantonio Raimondi; c. 1517–20. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Well antedates the OED for jaywalk ("1957 C. Brooke-Rose"). More at books.google.com/ngrams/graph...

Hjeriñ sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlichen Proportion durch Albrechten Dürer von Nürenberg erfunden und beschriben (Nürenberg: Jeronymum Formschneyder, 1528). primo.lib.umn.edu/permalink/01...

Reposted by Michael Hancher

Dictionaries 46:2 (2025) is now available (open access!) on
@projectmuse.bsky.social
Read here about: Arabic in China, Wittgenstein & Austrian German, etymology, Georgian learner-lexicography, antedating & linguistics pedagogy + Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary review

muse.jhu.edu/issue/55471
Project MUSE - Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America-Volume 46, Number 2, 2025
muse.jhu.edu

"It's an ill wind," etc.: "Before the introduction of the zebra mussel, visibility of only 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m) was usual, slightly decreasing as the years passed. Water clarity improved markedly in the mid-1990s with the arrival of zebra mussels, which feed on algae."
Thousand Islands - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
VPR is seeking an Associate Editor to oversee book reviews and assist the editor with special features. This is a great opportunity for a #periodicals scholar looking to develop editorial and leadership skills. Applications are due December 15. Details at rs4vp.org/vpr-seeks-as... @rs4vp.org