Kristin Franseen
@kmfranseen.bsky.social
Musicologist. Postdoc at Western University, prev. at Concordia. Current project: Antonio Salieri’s Intriguing Afterlives: Gossip, Fiction, and the Post-Truth in Musical Biography. I also wrote a book on the history of queer musicology! Holmesian. she/her
This sounds like a job for @amsafterdark.bsky.social
I'd watch a muppet show movie where the muppets infiltrate an academic conference.
February 7, 2026 at 4:33 PM
This sounds like a job for @amsafterdark.bsky.social
I just watched @acollierastro.bsky.social's YouTube video on this and--in addition to everything she says about this sort of person as an instructor and colleague--I can't help but think "what about the people who unsuccessfully applied for his position who don't use 'AI' to do their work for them?"
I would be so angry if the professor of a course I needed for my future career was doing all his teaching and grant writing and shit with chatgpt. so embarrassing. Jesus Christ. How did you get a phd if you need help writing an email? You're having 'conversations' with a chatbox?
When two years of academic work vanished with a single click
After turning off ChatGPT’s ‘data consent’ option, Marcel Bucher lost the work behind grant applications, teaching materials and publication drafts. Here’s what happened next.
www.nature.com
February 2, 2026 at 3:57 PM
I just watched @acollierastro.bsky.social's YouTube video on this and--in addition to everything she says about this sort of person as an instructor and colleague--I can't help but think "what about the people who unsuccessfully applied for his position who don't use 'AI' to do their work for them?"
Reposted by Kristin Franseen
I've written this blogpost on ICE protest chants & songs, w/ a large section of transcriptions of singing at protests by faith leaders and the Singing Resistance. It also includes songs about ICE agents' perceived masculinity issues and new songs protesting ICE. medium.com/@norikomanab...
ICE protest songs and chants, Minnesota general strike (January 23) and beyond
Transcriptions of singing at ICE protests by faith leaders and protesters. Songs about ICE’s masculinity issues. Other songs about the ICE…
medium.com
January 25, 2026 at 11:02 PM
I've written this blogpost on ICE protest chants & songs, w/ a large section of transcriptions of singing at protests by faith leaders and the Singing Resistance. It also includes songs about ICE agents' perceived masculinity issues and new songs protesting ICE. medium.com/@norikomanab...
Looking for something to read after watching (the 2025 television adaptation of) Amadeus? Here's a short thread! These aren't necessarily the most reliable sources--I might do a more scholarly thread next week--but they are the things I thought of at specific moments while watching the show.
January 15, 2026 at 2:51 PM
Looking for something to read after watching (the 2025 television adaptation of) Amadeus? Here's a short thread! These aren't necessarily the most reliable sources--I might do a more scholarly thread next week--but they are the things I thought of at specific moments while watching the show.
Me: Mozart fictions really do not do enough with Salieri's more meta operas, probably because they require dealing with questions of comedy and also linguistic identity
Both Mozart/Mozart and the new adaptation of Amadeus: so, how do you feel about unexpected references to Der Rauchfangkehrer?
Both Mozart/Mozart and the new adaptation of Amadeus: so, how do you feel about unexpected references to Der Rauchfangkehrer?
January 13, 2026 at 5:57 PM
Me: Mozart fictions really do not do enough with Salieri's more meta operas, probably because they require dealing with questions of comedy and also linguistic identity
Both Mozart/Mozart and the new adaptation of Amadeus: so, how do you feel about unexpected references to Der Rauchfangkehrer?
Both Mozart/Mozart and the new adaptation of Amadeus: so, how do you feel about unexpected references to Der Rauchfangkehrer?
I would pay good money I don't have to watch Ényì Okoronkwo star in a Lorenzo Da Ponte biopic.
January 13, 2026 at 3:18 PM
I would pay good money I don't have to watch Ényì Okoronkwo star in a Lorenzo Da Ponte biopic.
Franz Süssmayr, you are very much in the wrong kind of biopic to be making so much sense.
January 13, 2026 at 2:04 PM
Franz Süssmayr, you are very much in the wrong kind of biopic to be making so much sense.
Constanze Mozart (as played by Gabrielle Creevy) ca. 1823, accurately describing the experience of watching a production of Amadeus that doesn't make cuts to the monologues.
January 12, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Constanze Mozart (as played by Gabrielle Creevy) ca. 1823, accurately describing the experience of watching a production of Amadeus that doesn't make cuts to the monologues.
I have a lot of Amadeus-shaped thoughts, but it is already well after midnight on a Monday. So I will just say that I gasped when Pushkin showed up and also could not stop giggling at Constanze's reaction to him saying he was working on a new play.
January 12, 2026 at 5:32 AM
I have a lot of Amadeus-shaped thoughts, but it is already well after midnight on a Monday. So I will just say that I gasped when Pushkin showed up and also could not stop giggling at Constanze's reaction to him saying he was working on a new play.
One episode left to go in Amadeus and some marzipan-flavored rooibos seemed appropriate.
January 12, 2026 at 3:25 AM
One episode left to go in Amadeus and some marzipan-flavored rooibos seemed appropriate.
My book Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson is now open access! It originally came out in 2023 (based on my 2019 dissertation), but is now freely available as part of JSTOR's Path to Open initiative.
doi.org/10.2307/j.ct...
doi.org/10.2307/j.ct...
Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson on JSTOR
Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open intiative. It will be made available open access after three years. Imagining Musical...
doi.org
January 11, 2026 at 1:29 AM
My book Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson is now open access! It originally came out in 2023 (based on my 2019 dissertation), but is now freely available as part of JSTOR's Path to Open initiative.
doi.org/10.2307/j.ct...
doi.org/10.2307/j.ct...
Always on the lookout for interesting new ways to approach primary sources!
If you're looking for pieces for an undergrad classroom that help show how historians do their work, we've got you covered. For instance, there's David McKenzie's exploration of a shady dentist-cum-gold miner.
The Dentist Who Defrauded Two Governments—and a Historian, Part I
What happens when forged documents enter the historical record?
contingentmagazine.org
January 8, 2026 at 4:43 PM
Always on the lookout for interesting new ways to approach primary sources!
Not for the first time, I am questioning the wisdom of committing to a project so focused on narratives of professional envy, collegiality, national identity and belonging, and reputation while in a precarious situation that so often feels like shouting into a void.
January 6, 2026 at 10:38 PM
Not for the first time, I am questioning the wisdom of committing to a project so focused on narratives of professional envy, collegiality, national identity and belonging, and reputation while in a precarious situation that so often feels like shouting into a void.
I have just started the Amadeus limited series--don't have time to binge-watch for research while visiting family--but Salieri's mild exasperation with adaptating Tarare into Axur accurately describes my feelings searching both operas to find the bit Rimsky-Korsakov quotes in Mozart and Salieri.
December 26, 2025 at 1:56 PM
I have just started the Amadeus limited series--don't have time to binge-watch for research while visiting family--but Salieri's mild exasperation with adaptating Tarare into Axur accurately describes my feelings searching both operas to find the bit Rimsky-Korsakov quotes in Mozart and Salieri.
Not especially wild, but getting to read David Weiss's unpublished supernatural novels about (Alma) Mahler and Mozart and the early draft of Amadeus that Peter Shaffer told John Dexter he destroyed were fun!
I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.
December 23, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Not especially wild, but getting to read David Weiss's unpublished supernatural novels about (Alma) Mahler and Mozart and the early draft of Amadeus that Peter Shaffer told John Dexter he destroyed were fun!
Reposted by Kristin Franseen
Apropos of the weekend's conversations, a thread of some of our pieces talking about archives and research practices, just from this past year.
We start with frequent contributor @kmfranseen.bsky.social
We start with frequent contributor @kmfranseen.bsky.social
“HAVE QUOTES ABOUT SALIERI”
How someone already convinced of a conspiracy theory reads non-conspiratorial sources.
contingentmagazine.org
December 22, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Apropos of the weekend's conversations, a thread of some of our pieces talking about archives and research practices, just from this past year.
We start with frequent contributor @kmfranseen.bsky.social
We start with frequent contributor @kmfranseen.bsky.social
Reposted by Kristin Franseen
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders."
- Charles Darwin
I know how you felt, Charles; I know how you felt.
www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwins-bad-...
- Charles Darwin
I know how you felt, Charles; I know how you felt.
www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwins-bad-...
Darwin's bad days
Despite being a prolific worker who had many successes with his scientific theorising and experimenting, even Darwin had some bad days. These times when nothing appeared to be going right are well ill...
www.darwinproject.ac.uk
December 18, 2025 at 4:33 PM
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders."
- Charles Darwin
I know how you felt, Charles; I know how you felt.
www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwins-bad-...
- Charles Darwin
I know how you felt, Charles; I know how you felt.
www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwins-bad-...
Going through the initial reviews, I am currently in the odd place of both agreeing with critical reviews of Mozart/Mozart--it is aesthetically confusing, dramatically silly at times, and wildly historically accurate--and possibly being the show's ideal audience. 1/6
December 14, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Going through the initial reviews, I am currently in the odd place of both agreeing with critical reviews of Mozart/Mozart--it is aesthetically confusing, dramatically silly at times, and wildly historically accurate--and possibly being the show's ideal audience. 1/6
If I go on about all of the inaccuracies in Mozart/Mozart--many of them intentional given the YA "vaguely historical romance" genre--I will never do anything else ever again. But I will say that I may have audibly gone "yes!" in my office when we got a couple of shoutouts to Der Rauchfangkehrer.
December 13, 2025 at 1:02 AM
If I go on about all of the inaccuracies in Mozart/Mozart--many of them intentional given the YA "vaguely historical romance" genre--I will never do anything else ever again. But I will say that I may have audibly gone "yes!" in my office when we got a couple of shoutouts to Der Rauchfangkehrer.
Reposted by Kristin Franseen
Universities: investing millions so students ”develop literacy in the language of AI”
Also universities: defunding the humanities so students are illiterate in ordinary languages
Also universities: defunding the humanities so students are illiterate in ordinary languages
December 6, 2025 at 2:58 AM
Universities: investing millions so students ”develop literacy in the language of AI”
Also universities: defunding the humanities so students are illiterate in ordinary languages
Also universities: defunding the humanities so students are illiterate in ordinary languages
Speaking of forthcoming work-related things for me, I want exactly two things from the new Amadeus miniseries: (1) some music "by Salieri" that is maybe actually sort of by Salieri and (2) an episode set entirely after 1791 focusing on where Salieri's and Constanze's lives went subsequently.
Amadeus | Official Trailer | Sky
YouTube video by Sky TV
youtu.be
November 28, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Speaking of forthcoming work-related things for me, I want exactly two things from the new Amadeus miniseries: (1) some music "by Salieri" that is maybe actually sort of by Salieri and (2) an episode set entirely after 1791 focusing on where Salieri's and Constanze's lives went subsequently.
I would say that I have questions about the plot of this new alt history series about Nannerl Mozart. But, to be honest, the plot is pretty much exactly what I was expecting.
Mozart/Mozart
„Mozart/Mozart“ rückt Mozarts vergessene Schwester Maria Anna ins Rampenlicht der Geschichte – eine völlig neue weibliche Perspektive auf Genie, Rollenverständnis und Selbstbestimmung. Er ist der Supe...
www.degeto.de
November 28, 2025 at 12:21 AM
I would say that I have questions about the plot of this new alt history series about Nannerl Mozart. But, to be honest, the plot is pretty much exactly what I was expecting.
Reposted by Kristin Franseen
Haven't received as many contributions as usual for this year's lists--could be many things, but one aspect is surely that our ability to get this in front of people is much diminished. If you know folks whose stuff should be on here, please suggest it! contingentmagazine.org/yearly-pub-l...
Publications by Non-Tenure-Track Historians
Since we began publishing in 2019, Contingent has published end-of-year lists of books and articles by non-tenure-track historians released in the past calendar year. To submit something for inclusion...
contingentmagazine.org
November 24, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Haven't received as many contributions as usual for this year's lists--could be many things, but one aspect is surely that our ability to get this in front of people is much diminished. If you know folks whose stuff should be on here, please suggest it! contingentmagazine.org/yearly-pub-l...
I get "oh, music, that must be so fun!" fairly often from other academics. I mean, I do find it fun, but presumably in the same way that cultural historians and literary scholars might find their research fun.
"oh, you research literature? you must get to read all the time, how fun!"
*me, going through every single (digital) issue of an 18th century daily newspaper to make a spreadsheet listing number of advertisements and the portion of them that were for books*
*me, going through every single (digital) issue of an 18th century daily newspaper to make a spreadsheet listing number of advertisements and the portion of them that were for books*
November 27, 2025 at 3:17 PM
I get "oh, music, that must be so fun!" fairly often from other academics. I mean, I do find it fun, but presumably in the same way that cultural historians and literary scholars might find their research fun.
What concerns me is how much this is clearly affecting how hiring and research funding are happening now. How many of us will continue to be pushed out of academia before this bubble bursts? How many tenure lines and how much research funding will be used for university admin to promote AI hype?
Collecting the best examples (pejorative) of this genre to pull back out in a few years when the bubble has burst
Wow. Just wow.
"Students pay premium prices for information that AI now delivers instantly and for free. A business student can ask ChatGPT to explain supply chain optimization or generate market analysis in seconds. The traditional lecture-and-test model faces its Blockbuster moment."
"Students pay premium prices for information that AI now delivers instantly and for free. A business student can ask ChatGPT to explain supply chain optimization or generate market analysis in seconds. The traditional lecture-and-test model faces its Blockbuster moment."
October 16, 2025 at 2:49 PM
What concerns me is how much this is clearly affecting how hiring and research funding are happening now. How many of us will continue to be pushed out of academia before this bubble bursts? How many tenure lines and how much research funding will be used for university admin to promote AI hype?