Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
@blindscholar.bsky.social
PhD in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East from Brandeis, postdoc at Stanford. Interests in disability, myth, economics, and materiality. More at www.blindscholar.com.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
You need to seriously consider sense modalities other than vision. Theorising about vision and assuming that it will generalise is not a good strategy. (Also, don’t conflate states, events and processes, but that’s another kettle of fish!) #PhilPerception
what's the thing in your subdiscipline that loads of people constantly mess up even though by your lights they really ought to know better? (for me it's clearly distinguishing contents and vehicles)
January 4, 2026 at 10:08 PM
You need to seriously consider sense modalities other than vision. Theorising about vision and assuming that it will generalise is not a good strategy. (Also, don’t conflate states, events and processes, but that’s another kettle of fish!) #PhilPerception
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Tomorrow’s a preview of 2026! A collection of clips from my conversations with Jonathan Sedlak, Sara Koenig, @mburtwrites.bsky.social & @kkramermcginnis.bsky.social, @blindscholar.bsky.social, Jennie Grillo, Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat, Kirk MacGregor, David Basher, & @alexianafry.bsky.social.
December 31, 2025 at 2:32 AM
Tomorrow’s a preview of 2026! A collection of clips from my conversations with Jonathan Sedlak, Sara Koenig, @mburtwrites.bsky.social & @kkramermcginnis.bsky.social, @blindscholar.bsky.social, Jennie Grillo, Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat, Kirk MacGregor, David Basher, & @alexianafry.bsky.social.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
I think it’s more the case that everybody is stupid sometimes, in some contexts. So we have to protect people for when it’s their turn to be stupid, since someday that will be us too.
December 27, 2025 at 9:18 PM
I think it’s more the case that everybody is stupid sometimes, in some contexts. So we have to protect people for when it’s their turn to be stupid, since someday that will be us too.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Whenever I led sections of undergrads, I found one of the most effective things was openly admitting I didn't have all the answers, but I could teach them how an expert (and them!) might find out. The content is often secondary to the scaffolding of knowledge creation and discovery
To pick Scalzi’s example: the goal of a clash on Joseph Conrad is to read and discuss and think hard and challenge and learn about Joseph Conrad and his craft and perhaps the things he wrote about.
The prof here designed a class to assess whether you knew the content. A waste.
The prof here designed a class to assess whether you knew the content. A waste.
December 27, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Whenever I led sections of undergrads, I found one of the most effective things was openly admitting I didn't have all the answers, but I could teach them how an expert (and them!) might find out. The content is often secondary to the scaffolding of knowledge creation and discovery
oh my.
I love this.
I love this.
December 27, 2025 at 5:49 PM
oh my.
I love this.
I love this.
Make a Bond movie academic:
Peer Review to a Kill
Peer Review to a Kill
Make a Bond movie academic:
Live and Let Dissertate
Live and Let Dissertate
Make a Bond movie academic:
For Your Peer-Review Eyes Only
For Your Peer-Review Eyes Only
December 26, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Make a Bond movie academic:
Peer Review to a Kill
Peer Review to a Kill
Make a Bond film academic:
GoldOpenAccessFinger
GoldOpenAccessFinger
Make a Bond movie academic:
Doctor No (not that kind of doctor)
Doctor No (not that kind of doctor)
December 26, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Make a Bond film academic:
GoldOpenAccessFinger
GoldOpenAccessFinger
Probably didn't even know the song the elves sang to Santa on his birthday last year. Youths.
Saw a kid wearing a Buddy the Elf shirt. He couldn't even name 2 of the elves' four main food groups or 1 rule of the Code of the Elves.
December 25, 2025 at 6:09 AM
Probably didn't even know the song the elves sang to Santa on his birthday last year. Youths.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
I don’t design my coursework with different ethics and principles than those I expect from myself. Deep reading, sincere effort, meticulous citations, a willingness to acknowledge mistakes, honesty and humility are all things I want from students AND myself. And that shapes how I see gAI.
December 21, 2025 at 3:32 PM
I don’t design my coursework with different ethics and principles than those I expect from myself. Deep reading, sincere effort, meticulous citations, a willingness to acknowledge mistakes, honesty and humility are all things I want from students AND myself. And that shapes how I see gAI.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Call this file “article cast offs” and then promptly save it to a piece of technology that will go obsolete a year later
Don't just delete it, though. Copy and paste it into a separate text file in case you need it later, then never look at it again.
The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.
December 20, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Call this file “article cast offs” and then promptly save it to a piece of technology that will go obsolete a year later
Don't just delete it, though. Copy and paste it into a separate text file in case you need it later, then never look at it again.
The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.
December 20, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Don't just delete it, though. Copy and paste it into a separate text file in case you need it later, then never look at it again.
This except the dismantling started in the late '60s
I feel like "academic hiring" discourse is always kind of downstream of the fact that in the 50s we started building a giant public system to make a college education almost universally available and in the 80s and 90s we started taking it apart to go back to the only-the-rich model
December 20, 2025 at 4:24 PM
This except the dismantling started in the late '60s
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies job with University of California, Santa Barbara
jobs.chronicle.com
December 19, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies job with University of California, Santa Barbara
I love academic research questions!
I have a weird question for the #bird people on here. Do you think someone could tell that a book was pooped on specifically by a sparrowhawk (or perhaps hawks generally) just from the feces? I'm looking at a 16th c. case where witnesses claim books were pooped on specifically by sparrowhawks!
December 19, 2025 at 5:04 AM
I love academic research questions!
"I'm pretty satisfied with it, but I can't escape the feeling that it suffers from a deficiency of hijinks and pratfalls. For the second edition, I suppose." - George Orwell, after publishing Animal Farm, probably.
I just learned that they are turning Animal Farm into a zany, quippy animated comedy and I just... You know what? This is probably what we deserve.
If you need me, I'll be walking slowly into the sea.
If you need me, I'll be walking slowly into the sea.
December 18, 2025 at 6:44 PM
"I'm pretty satisfied with it, but I can't escape the feeling that it suffers from a deficiency of hijinks and pratfalls. For the second edition, I suppose." - George Orwell, after publishing Animal Farm, probably.
I just learned that they are turning Animal Farm into a zany, quippy animated comedy and I just... You know what? This is probably what we deserve.
If you need me, I'll be walking slowly into the sea.
If you need me, I'll be walking slowly into the sea.
December 18, 2025 at 6:40 PM
I just learned that they are turning Animal Farm into a zany, quippy animated comedy and I just... You know what? This is probably what we deserve.
If you need me, I'll be walking slowly into the sea.
If you need me, I'll be walking slowly into the sea.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love.
Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.
Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.
December 17, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love.
Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.
Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
incredible that the oldest scam in the book — “look away from the greed and poor leadership that destroy your chance to make a career, it is the [blanks] that stole your job!” — still works
December 17, 2025 at 10:01 PM
incredible that the oldest scam in the book — “look away from the greed and poor leadership that destroy your chance to make a career, it is the [blanks] that stole your job!” — still works
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
🚨 JOB JOB JOB!!! 🚨
Late-breaking job! Indigenous history at University of Colorado Boulder. Assistant or eatly associate. Been trying to get this line for forever. It’s finally happening 🙏 Great place to live and work. Fabulous colleagues (ask me how I know!) networks.h-net.org/jobs/69637/u...
Late-breaking job! Indigenous history at University of Colorado Boulder. Assistant or eatly associate. Been trying to get this line for forever. It’s finally happening 🙏 Great place to live and work. Fabulous colleagues (ask me how I know!) networks.h-net.org/jobs/69637/u...
University of Colorado - Boulder - Assistant or Associate Professor of History | H-Net
The Department of History at the University of Colorado Boulder seeks a tenure-track Assistant Professor or early Associate Professor specializing in Native American history with a focus on the North American West, broadly defined. The successful applicant will have access to funds associated with the Walter and Lucienne Driskill Professorship in Western American History. Specialization is open, but the department particularly encourages applications from scholars whose research focuses on the early American West (pre-1920s) and engages with legal history, the history of women and gender, environmental history, and/or the history of medicine and public health. Scholars with demonstrated commitments to engaging Native American communities and/or supporting Native and Indigenous students are especially encouraged to apply, as are those who bring relevant lived and individual experiences and achievements to this position.
networks.h-net.org
December 16, 2025 at 10:14 PM
🚨 JOB JOB JOB!!! 🚨
Late-breaking job! Indigenous history at University of Colorado Boulder. Assistant or eatly associate. Been trying to get this line for forever. It’s finally happening 🙏 Great place to live and work. Fabulous colleagues (ask me how I know!) networks.h-net.org/jobs/69637/u...
Late-breaking job! Indigenous history at University of Colorado Boulder. Assistant or eatly associate. Been trying to get this line for forever. It’s finally happening 🙏 Great place to live and work. Fabulous colleagues (ask me how I know!) networks.h-net.org/jobs/69637/u...
Also, check out those commas in the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice!
Language rules belong to us, not the other way around!
Language rules belong to us, not the other way around!
Jane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.
December 16, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Also, check out those commas in the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice!
Language rules belong to us, not the other way around!
Language rules belong to us, not the other way around!
Reading through Tolkien's letters and I'm tired of signing emails "Best." Do you think I could get away with signing "Yours, etc., Eric"?
December 16, 2025 at 4:20 AM
Reading through Tolkien's letters and I'm tired of signing emails "Best." Do you think I could get away with signing "Yours, etc., Eric"?
So I saw the whole "running out of ideas" discourse, then I read a 1938 letter by JRR Tolkien where he laments that he has nothing more to say about hobbits after publishing The Hobbit.
Pretty clear he should have fed it into an LLM and let it come up with some good ideas for him, right? C'mon Ron!
Pretty clear he should have fed it into an LLM and let it come up with some good ideas for him, right? C'mon Ron!
December 16, 2025 at 4:01 AM
So I saw the whole "running out of ideas" discourse, then I read a 1938 letter by JRR Tolkien where he laments that he has nothing more to say about hobbits after publishing The Hobbit.
Pretty clear he should have fed it into an LLM and let it come up with some good ideas for him, right? C'mon Ron!
Pretty clear he should have fed it into an LLM and let it come up with some good ideas for him, right? C'mon Ron!
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
My book, _An Exotic Apocalypse: Revelation and the Appropriation of Judaism in the Roman Empire_, is officially forthcoming with Penn State University Press. It'll be the inaugural book in their _Religions in the Ancient Mediterranean_ series.
December 15, 2025 at 8:55 PM
My book, _An Exotic Apocalypse: Revelation and the Appropriation of Judaism in the Roman Empire_, is officially forthcoming with Penn State University Press. It'll be the inaugural book in their _Religions in the Ancient Mediterranean_ series.
Reposted by Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
The author was dead: to begin with.
December 2, 2025 at 8:40 PM
The author was dead: to begin with.
Iron Chef: Enuma Elish.
we just watched Iron Chef Morimoto hit a giant eel in the head with a knife like three times before cutting into its neck and then driving a large spike into it, at which time my son quietly goes "well. he's dead."
December 12, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Iron Chef: Enuma Elish.