Susan Amussen
sdamussen.bsky.social
Susan Amussen
@sdamussen.bsky.social

Historian @UCMerced, early modern Britain and Atlantic world; gender, race and class. Old. Does not represent employer.

Economics 37%
History 27%

The thread🧵
A Brief History of Children Today Are Growing Up Too Fast

🧵

Yes, but I don’t have backup singers and dancers!

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

In 1963 MLK supported a nationwide boycott of Xmas shopping. @jeannetheoharis.bsky.social notes that the NYT editorial board wrote a piece slamming the effort called “Strike Against Santa Claus” which they said would “put civil rights activists on the same level as those who did the church bombing.”
A Brief History of Children Today Are Growing Up Too Fast

🧵

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

The author, Gilad Edelman, covered tech for Wired and went to Yale Law. I would bet $$$$$ he wrote this because he’s friends with these guys
Last week the far right started peddling a narrative that the outrage over Epstein is a moral panic. Today, like clockwork, a more polite version of that narrative appears in the Atlantic.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"traditional Eurocentric perspectives .. have tended to focus primarily on empires & imperial agency as the dominant analytical category. [This book argues] instead that environmental factors played a much greater role in influencing the formation of trade routes." link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Long-Distance Trade in the Ancient World
This book presents a novel perspective on long-distance trade in the ancient world that integrates network theory and environmental analysis
link.springer.com

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

I wish we still did this grade of expert disdain in academic writing: "The act was passed with almost masterly inattention to draftsmanship."

(that's Harvey C. Mansfield [père, not fils] on the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921)

🗃️
Delighted to announce our seminar - 'Race and the Early Modern' - now has a full schedule of events. We'll be convening monthly to discuss research on race, racemaking, and racialisation across #earlymodern studies.

@kingsartshums.bsky.social @folger.edu

kingsearlymodern.co.uk/race-and-the...
Race and the Early Modern — CEMS KCL Blog
kingsearlymodern.co.uk

Looks terrific! Congratulations!

No examples, but I’ve certainly seen it speculated about a century earlier.

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

/4 I continue to think that the constant theme is elite pundits being hostile to trends or discussions that criticize or hold accountable other elites.

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

For this Black History Month, given the regime’s vile smearing of Ohio’s Haitian population, I think it’s a good time to remember a literary giant of Haitian descent, Alexander Dumas, père

He gave us the Three Musketeers, the Count of Monte Cristo & so much more

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexand...
Alexandre Dumas - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

A #Roman glass bowl in cobalt blue with white irregular swirls; it was made about 2000 years ago, probably in Italy, but ended up in a C1st AD grave in Roman Britain

#AncientBlueSky #Archaeology #RomanArchaeology #AncientRome

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

‘Tasting History: Researching and Experiencing the Development of the Cheese Trade’, with @cheesetastingco.bsky.social and @cheeseandpeople.bsky.social, hosted by Birkbeck's Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Feb 24th!

Register here: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

Also, book publicity is like the stories about some new science discovery by your colleagues which turns out to be a footnote to something everyone knows

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

The stories of all these men - and many more - are told in "Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation"!

The book is available for affordable preorder now :)

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

www.waterstones.com/book/belfast...

Sigh

Self-checkout is evil, and this is why.
Here’s the thing about self checkout. Companies have determined that it is more cost effective to take the loss from theft that automation eases than it is to pay people to work in their stores. When one puts it like that, the quality of the tech or the apparent convenience* are beside the point.+

Reposted by Susan D. Amussen

Here’s the thing about self checkout. Companies have determined that it is more cost effective to take the loss from theft that automation eases than it is to pay people to work in their stores. When one puts it like that, the quality of the tech or the apparent convenience* are beside the point.+

He lectured students in discussion sections about why the (female) professor was wrong about the British empire. So no discussion. Not cool, and the students were not happy.

Very useful thread
Every time I talk to someone outside of Minnesota, we always spend time on *really* basic things they have don’t understand about what is happening here.

So let’s do a Q&A. What are your most basic questions about what’s going on in Minnesota?
Every time I talk to someone outside of Minnesota, we always spend time on *really* basic things they have don’t understand about what is happening here.

So let’s do a Q&A. What are your most basic questions about what’s going on in Minnesota?

You did not want him as a TA!
Abolish DHS. If you can imagine a world before Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, you can imagine a world without the Department of Homeland Security. My latest at @startribune.com. (gift link)
Perry: Abolish ICE? How about DHS altogether.
"We have models for how to structure federal immigration oversight that doesn't rely on an unaccountable masked secret police force running rampant in our streets," David M. Perry writes.
www.startribune.com

Who doesn’t have enough assets.

I worry about all the stuff that is discarded because it was digitized, or all online publications. But there will still be some collections!

Proofreading my index, which is almost worse than doing it in the first place.

Assuming those exist still.