Emma Merkling
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emmamerkling.bsky.social
Emma Merkling
@emmamerkling.bsky.social
2.9K followers 1.1K following 120 posts
Lecturer (Assistant Prof) in British Art @manchester.ac.uk‬ | Research Deputy @cncsi.bsky.social | Co-Host of @drawingbloodpod.bsky.social | Writing & teaching c19 British art and science | Victorian ecologies, bodies, occultisms, subjectivity | she/they
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Reposted by Emma Merkling
kristofsmeyers.bsky.social
Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely!

*to submit an abstract before 21/3
CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven. This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife. Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance. Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage performers, eyewitnesses. This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters? We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to: - making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures - making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation - performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory) - materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects - diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality - occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists) - affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.
January 27, 2026 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
nathankhensley.bsky.social
When engineered scarcity & competitive entrepreneurialism become defining features of intellectual life, terms for understanding material struggle tend to metastasize into tokens of prestige accumulation & self branding. This should be resisted.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
What do we talk about when we talk about extractivism? Imre Szeman & Jennifer Wenzel Pages 505-523 | Published online: 19 Feb 2021 1 Check for updates 66 Cite this article https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236.2021.1889829 B Full Article Figures & data 66 Citations Li Metrics @ Reprints & Permissions Read this article «Share ABSTRACT The term 'extractivism' has quickly become the name for every process and practice through which value is generated for capitalism. Given this conceptual ubiquity, what analytic function does this term actually serve? This Afterword to a special issue on Extractivism reflects upon possible reasons why scholars in the humanities have recently become interested in resource extraction, among which is the desire for one's scholarly work to respond to a gathering sense of planetary environmental crisis. Such engaged scholarship may, however, be premised on faulty assumptions about the realms of discourse and experience where it can have effects. Extending Stuart Hall's insights about the need for both commitment and circumspection regarding the work our research can do in the world, this essay considers the relationship between resource extraction as a moment and process under capitalism (or socialism), and extractivism as an ideology and cultural logic that permeates social imaginaries as well as literary and other discourse.
February 11, 2026 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
clairelanghamer.bsky.social
For anyone interested in our 18-month post in British Studies please follow the link below. @ihr.bsky.social

www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
Jacob Price Fellowship in British Studies (18 month FTC):London Senate House - Hybrid
The University of London is both the UK’s largest provider of international distance and online learning and the convenor of a federation of 17 renowned higher education institutions.
www.jobs.london.ac.uk
February 4, 2026 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
britishlibrary.bsky.social
Apply for our PhD placement scheme to get involved in extraordinary research at the Library. There are eight available placements exploring a variety of themes including war poetry, 21st-century digital tools, illustrated newspapers and decarbonisation.

Find out more: link.bl.uk/PhDPlacements
The front page of the Daily Graphic newspaper published Saturday 25 August, 1917, featuring portraits of 'Women in the Order of the British Empire', including Lady Byron, the honourable Mrs Alfred Lyttelton, Her Majesty the Queen.
February 4, 2026 at 10:55 AM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
factorygothic.bsky.social
Gave a little talk today for a colleague's class on historic images of mills & factories and was surprised again by the fact that this image is from 1881. It's a watercolor by Joseph Pennell depicting Bethlehem Steel Works in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a place I called home for a few years.
Image source here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g05734/ This is a grey-and-sepia-toned watercolor depicting a building made up of many odd towers and elements, along with several tall smokestacks belching a lot of dark grey smoke into the grey sky. The building is reflected in the water surrounding it.
February 3, 2026 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
vicmanch.bsky.social
Best novelist in PMG's 1885 '10 Greatest Living Englishmen' poll throws up more surprises, for a paper of the London clubland. Wilkie Collins on top (346), only just ahead of William Black, & Walter Besant. Hardy a distant 9th (a mere 20 votes), Meredith (9). 5 in desperation for the dead Trollope.
A table from the Pall Mall Gazette showing the list of votes for 'Best Living novelist'
January 31, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
rossbrooks.co.uk
My first book, Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life, will be published by Yale University Press on 11 August (UK) and 8 September (US). Please help spread the word! 🙏

UK: yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300... @yalebooks.bsky.social 🏳️‍🌈📚🐵

US: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300... @yalepress.bsky.social 🏳️‍⚧️ 🗃️🦋
Jacket design for Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life: A History of Sex and Science by Ross Brooks. It features a historic, drawn image of a gynandromorph gypsy moth, with distinctive female patterning on its left side and male on its right. Against a black background, the image and text (title and author's name) are brightly rendered in a spectrum of colours resonant of the Progress Pride Flag.
January 30, 2026 at 10:21 AM
emmamerkling.bsky.social
My essay 'The Sticky Sundew: Plant Carnivory and Queer Erotics' is out! Musings on Darwin’s writings on his 'beloved' Sundew & the erotics generated by his encounters w this carnivorous plant—making visible forms of relation in which pleasure & pain, desire & disgust, life & death stick together
meson.press
January 30, 2026 at 8:37 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
theverge.com
OpenAI’s president is a Trump mega-donor
OpenAI’s president is a Trump mega-donor
Greg Brockman said he started “getting involved politically” in 2025.
buff.ly
January 26, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
ayoub.bsky.social
The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions.

It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.
The Legislation Upon winning a general election, a Reform government under Prime Minister Nigel Farage will: 1) Leave the ECHR 2.) Repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. 3.) Pass The Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill: This Bill will: Create a legal duty to remove illegal migrants for the Home Secretary The Bill opens with a blunt obligation for the Home Secretary: "The Secretary of State shall ensure the removal from the United Kingdom of each person who does not have extant leave to remain and is not an Irish citizen or otherwise protected by regulations made under this Act." The following parts of the legislation are introduced on an emergency basis, with an in-built sunset clause after 5 years: Disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention (ECAT) Derogation is justified under the Vienna Convention doctrine of state of necessity: Britain faces a national emergency in which uncontrolled illegal migration undermines public order. These treaties will otherwise be used by activist judges to frustrate deportations, even after the repeals of the HRA and ECHR. Create Detention Power Without Hardial Singh Constraints This means illegal migrants can be detained until they are deported. Activist lawyers routinely use Hardial Singh to secure their client's bail, after which the client absconds. If you came to the UK illegally, you are ineligible for asylum. End of story All asylum claims will become inadmissible if made by a person within the Act's scope. If you came to the country illegally, you are ineligible for asylum in the UK. This strips the Home Office, the immigration tribunals and the higher courts of jurisdiction to even consider claims. A claim that cannot be considered cannot suspend removal and therefore, cannot delay a flight. Re-entering after deportation and destroying ID becomes a serious criminal offence Re-entry after deportation will be… The Operational Plan We will create an enforcement unit called UK Deportation Command, including an Illegal Migrant Identification Centre - harnessing cutting edge data fusion A Reform government will create a cutting edge enforcement data centre to relentlessly identify and detain all illegal migrants in the UK. Using powers granted by the new legislation, it will automatically share data between the Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and the police. It will power bulk warrants, including mandatory biometric capture during any police encounter. Each power addresses a failure mode observed over the past decade - for example, banks and GP surgeries unaware of a customer's status, or overstayers slipping through because a warrant covered only a single property. Secure Immigration Removal Centres (SIRC) will be built rapidly to detain up to 24,000 Detention capacity for up to 24,000 will be created within 18 months. The Home Office will build Secure Immigration Removal Centres. This will be modular accommodation built in remote parts of the country. Conditions are basic but not punitive: prefabricated two-person rooms, canteen catering, on-site medical suites. Robust perimeters and internal movement controls prevent escapes. This enables detention-on-arrest: no more bail. This capacity would allow for up to 24,000 illegal migrants to be deported per month. Initial Voluntary Return Window A six-month Assisted Voluntary Return window precedes large-scale raids. Illegal migrants will be offered a financial incentive to self-deport. An app will be launched to facilitate this. The Deportation Flights The Home Office will scale up charters to 5 flights per day. To guard against last-minute aircraft unserviceability, the RAF will keep one Voyager aircraft on six-hour 'hot-spare' readiness. If a commercial charter breaks down, detainees can still be flown out that night, preserving operational integrity. The legal reset will mean activist lawyers will no longer be able preven…
January 26, 2026 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
harrystopes.bsky.social
He chose his PhD topic based on what would provide him the knowledge necessary to sabotage Apartheid South Africa’s nuclear programme - which members of Umkhonto we Sizwe indeed did, based on the information he provided. 🫡
Renfrew Christie Dies at 76; Sabotaged Racist Regime’s Nuclear Program
www.nytimes.com
January 15, 2026 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
It was, quite honestly, the high point of the summer getting to put together this podcast with @nathankhensley.bsky.social for Studies in the Novel on his book ‘Action without Hope’

www.studiesinthenovel.org/interact/pod...
Podcasts | Studies in the Novel
Action without Hope
www.studiesinthenovel.org
July 23, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
tate.bsky.social
Lucien Pissarro, Boy and Pine Tree, 1894
https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1119753
Transferred from the Library 1982
January 11, 2026 at 6:15 AM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
joshuajfriedman.com
Thanks to @brianleiter.bsky.social, we can read an excerpt from Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson's initial letter to his department head, Kristi Sweet, as well as his syllabus. leiterreports.com/2026/01/06/t...
Dear Dr. Sweet, I hereby submit my S 2026 syllabus for PHIL 111, Contemporary Moral Issues, for mandatory censorship review. The syllabus has not changed much since I last taught the course. I have made some minor adjustments to the module on Race and Gender Ideology and to the lecture on Sexual Morality. These topics are commonly covered in this type of course nationwide, and the material is discussed in depth in the assigned textbook (Fiala and MacKinnon, 10th edition). I also ask my students to read a few passages from Plato (Aristophanes' myth of the split humans and Diotima's Ladder of Love). Please note that my course does not "advocate" any ideology; I teach students how to structure and evaluate arguments commonly raised in discussions of contemporary moral issues.
January 7, 2026 at 2:44 AM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
annakornbluh.bsky.social
on this sunday-est of sundays, syllabus-ing for a new term

you're not alone against the oligarch agenda of cognitive deskilling, data capture, surveillance, and bias:

we've got assignment ideas, memes, recommended readings, o' captain speeches, syllabus policies, and so much more against-a-i.com
AGAINST AI -
against-a-i.com
January 4, 2026 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
ceceliacancellaro.bsky.social
Thrilled about this new grant we are offering for under-represented early career scholars. The first cycle is for scholars in history and area studies. Please spread the word widely. @universitypress.cambridge.org

*********************************

Read more here: 🔗 cup.org/4pF5xvr
Amplifying voices
New Cambridge grant to help under-represented scholars publish
cup.org
December 17, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
greenmirandahere.bsky.social
Another delightful ICYMI - the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace get a new lease of life - great piece here from FT mag on the history of this crazy Victorian project (many hours of my SE London childhood spent staring at a muddy member of the troupe) www.ft.com/content/2451...
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are getting a glow up
Age, neglect and vandalism had spoiled the original Jurassic park, imagined into existence by a gang of visionary Victorians
www.ft.com
December 26, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
jasonheppler.org
A few days ago, I wrote up some thoughts on generative AI and the work of historians: “At best, we’re talking about software that’s very good at making sentences seem sentence-shaped.”
Generative AI and History
Generative AI lacks the ability to understand context, …
writing.jasonheppler.org
December 26, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
peterpaulrubens.bsky.social
Nativity by Piero della Francesca, 1470s. The angels are making music and yet the silence feels complete.
December 25, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
alicecann.bsky.social
So many aspects I could quote from this, but this was the first that stood out to me. read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...
Excerpt from Critical AI article: ‘As they promise gains in efficiency and productivity, LLM research assistants purport to “streamline”—or bypass—the challenging, recursive, and often messy work of identifying, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing the existing research on a given topic. Over decades of practice, educators have come to understand these processes as themselves integral to building students’ intellectual abilities and skills. Indeed, from the standpoint of learning, the process of research and writing is often more valuable than the final product handed in for a grade.’
December 23, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
vitruviuspike.bsky.social
The tech bros call us Luddites as an insult but they were, in their day and for just a moment, the voice of us all, crying out that the worst instincts of capitalism can and must be resisted. Change may be inevitable but suffering need not be.
#19thc #steampunk
johnrogers.bsky.social John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · Dec 18
"We don't want to be Luddites --" brother, Luddites were opposed to bosses concentrating wealth by using technology to make inferior product with warehouses fulls of starving exploited child labor. You don't have to wear the team jersey but respect the game.
December 19, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
dreframss.bsky.social
After a series of delays, my article "Harry Price and the Crawley Poltergeist" has finally been published in the Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research. A big thanks to @emmamerkling.bsky.social, who originally directed me to the case and digitised the requisite archival material.
December 19, 2025 at 8:12 AM
Reposted by Emma Merkling
frankiedytor.bsky.social
A few more days to get your proposals to us!
emmamerkling.bsky.social Emma Merkling @emmamerkling.bsky.social · Oct 20
Calling all c19 art and queer theory ppl! @frankiedytor.bsky.social and I are still welcoming proposals for our #AAH panel on c19 British art after trans studies: see CFP below. #c19 #lgbtqhistory
Call for papers: “The nineteenth century saw profound transformations in how being and embodiment were figured across British culture. Art and science were at the forefront of these changes. As new forms of subjectivity were being formulated, the relationship between the self and the body, and between the body and life itself, were being reconfigured in visual productions and scientific writings alike. These transformations were entangled with new, ambivalent, and profoundly modern ways of thinking about gender, sexuality, form, and the nature and limits of the human. In Victorian art, the body was opened up to forces and flows which constituted and exceeded it. This panel invites papers which centre trans studies as a lens through which to explore these turbulent transformations in nineteenth-century art. What modes of…” “… embodiment, being, or becoming come into view when Victorian visual culture is approached via trans theory? What kinds of subjects and materials come to matter differently? What are the uses of transness— attuned to transition, indeterminacy, multiplicity, and bodily change—as a theoretical and historical framework? We invite 20-minute papers exploring British art (broadly conceived) in the long nineteenth century through the lens of trans theory and/or from trans perspectives. Topics might include, but are not limited to: • The (un) making of the human; nonhuman bodies; monstrosity; animality • Ecology, metamorphosis, bodies and environments • Racialization of sex, gender, and embodiment • Coloniality of gender; imperialism and difference • Transness and disability; mutable, prosthetic, and anomalous bodies • Fairytales, folklore, myth, and transformation • Spirituality and immaterial bodies • Sexology and medical imaging”
October 31, 2025 at 9:23 AM
emmamerkling.bsky.social
Looking for something to do on the spookiest day of the year? @cncsi.bsky.social is running our annual online Halloween workshop tomorrow with the theme of ‘Gothic Afterlives’ — looking at media receptions of c19 gothic themes in tv, film, video games, & radio 👻 www.durham.ac.uk/research/ins...
Nineteenth-Century Gothic Afterlives - Durham University
www.durham.ac.uk
October 30, 2025 at 7:43 AM
emmamerkling.bsky.social
Calling all c19 art and queer theory ppl! @frankiedytor.bsky.social and I are still welcoming proposals for our #AAH panel on c19 British art after trans studies: see CFP below. #c19 #lgbtqhistory
Call for papers: “The nineteenth century saw profound transformations in how being and embodiment were figured across British culture. Art and science were at the forefront of these changes. As new forms of subjectivity were being formulated, the relationship between the self and the body, and between the body and life itself, were being reconfigured in visual productions and scientific writings alike. These transformations were entangled with new, ambivalent, and profoundly modern ways of thinking about gender, sexuality, form, and the nature and limits of the human. In Victorian art, the body was opened up to forces and flows which constituted and exceeded it. This panel invites papers which centre trans studies as a lens through which to explore these turbulent transformations in nineteenth-century art. What modes of…” “… embodiment, being, or becoming come into view when Victorian visual culture is approached via trans theory? What kinds of subjects and materials come to matter differently? What are the uses of transness— attuned to transition, indeterminacy, multiplicity, and bodily change—as a theoretical and historical framework? We invite 20-minute papers exploring British art (broadly conceived) in the long nineteenth century through the lens of trans theory and/or from trans perspectives. Topics might include, but are not limited to: • The (un) making of the human; nonhuman bodies; monstrosity; animality • Ecology, metamorphosis, bodies and environments • Racialization of sex, gender, and embodiment • Coloniality of gender; imperialism and difference • Transness and disability; mutable, prosthetic, and anomalous bodies • Fairytales, folklore, myth, and transformation • Spirituality and immaterial bodies • Sexology and medical imaging”
October 20, 2025 at 8:33 AM