Laura Ludtke
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ladyelectric.bsky.social
Laura Ludtke
@ladyelectric.bsky.social
Light, politics, aesthetics, & gender in the city, w/ hist of sci/tech. Co-host LitSciPod. Canadian in Oxford (ish). Come for the typos, stay for the wit.
“Downsizing higher education in the name of corporate efficiency squanders the collective expertise and experience in which immense public resources have been invested. This manufactured crisis, however, is far from inevitable.”

Read more:

moneyontheleft.org/2025/01/16/u...
UK Universities in Crisis? Time to Transform Higher Ed Finance
by Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson Universities in the UK are in crisis. Job cuts in the sector are reaching ‘cataclysmic’ levels, with an estimated 10,000 already lost and many more at risk. Just da…
moneyontheleft.org
January 24, 2025 at 6:53 AM
Oh, wow!
Today I learned about the 🇨🇦 artist Sandra Sawatzky and the epic-scaled embroidered tapestry she has created, emulating the Bayeux tapestry, to chronicle the history of fossil fuel extraction. #needlework, #SubversiveStitch www.theblackgoldtapestry.com
January 19, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Sharing is caring.
Anyway, happy Friday everyone! Buy my books (obvs) so I can feed the cat, but also, if you want to read something free about a SEA MONSTRE and a CROTCHETY WIZARD and her UNWANTED APPRENTICE (I mean who doesn't) I have something for you! :D

strangehorizons.com/fiction/by-s...
By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars
When her bell sounded at midnight, Firion the wizard grasped her stoutest staff (crowned, for non-magical reasons, with a razor-sharp chunk of amethyst) and put her lips to the doorjamb. “Who goes …
strangehorizons.com
January 17, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
Manifesting tackling enemies.
January 16, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Meet Oberon. He is helping.
January 13, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
“I regard the report the MLA Executive Council published on Dec 16 to explain their suppression of the BDS resolution…as a betrayal of the professional class whom the MLA claims to serve and represent.” A must-read by @mattseybold.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theameri...
What The MLA Is...
The organization has chosen an interpretation of fiduciary responsibility beyond the wildest hopes of Chicago School economists.
open.substack.com
January 9, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
I don't know who needs to know this, but @archive.org has thousands of knitting & crafting books you can "check out" & sometimes download. E.g., as a machine knitter (amongst other things), I have found an amazing trove of very helpful out-of-print books. 🙏 Check it out! 🧶
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
archive.org
January 8, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Day 21 without internet at home and it turns out I am not great at rationing my mobile data. Not when things are happening in the world, there are cat and house updates to send, teaching to prepare, scholarly admin to dispatch, and writing/research, etc.
January 9, 2025 at 7:47 AM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
Look, I’ve no doubt Trump wants to play hardball with Canada in trade negotiations and that we’re in for hurt. But the annexation talk is a negotiating tactic, same as him insisting that we have nothing the US needs. It is meant to rattle Canadian leadership, which is in flux right now.
January 9, 2025 at 5:11 AM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
We're pleased to announce a deadline extension for the 'Modernism and Data' Special Issue! The new deadline is January 20th. See below for the CFP:

modernistreviewcouk.wordpress.com/2024/09/27/m...
Modernism and Data Special Issue: Call for Papers
27 September 2024 “A New World of Information”: Modernism and Data Modernism has a problem with data. Within adjacent fields—Victorian, Post45, and Black studies—there has been a proliferation of a…
modernistreviewcouk.wordpress.com
January 8, 2025 at 11:40 AM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
how does public health influence the creation of public landscapes?

our latest blogpost recaps on the ideas and collections explored during the 2024 Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading (FOLAR) conference, held here in November

merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2025/01...
Landscapes of Public Health - The Museum of English Rural Life
Learn how public health impacts the design of public spaces, as explored in the 2024 symposium of FOLAR, held at The MERL.
merl.reading.ac.uk
January 7, 2025 at 12:31 PM
I won’t have internet at my new place until 24 January and have somehow managed to use 80% of my monthly phone data (renews on the 2nd of each month) on *checks browser history* DIY videos.

Send reinforcements.
January 8, 2025 at 7:25 AM
Just in time for Christmas: news that my essay, “Reading (in) Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear”, published in the May 2024 issue of Novel is one the most-read of the year!

Free to access until 31 January!
December 23, 2024 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
THIS is why we wrote this. archive.is/2024.10.31-1...
December 8, 2024 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
A companion to our history lists, here's a list of books, chapters, and articles published in 2024 in lit studies by scholars working off the tenure track. Compiled by @rcolesworthy.bsky.social and @hartmann-villalta.bsky.social.
2024 Literary Studies Book and Journal Article List
A companion list for lit studies scholars.
contingentmagazine.org
December 8, 2024 at 5:33 PM
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! In other words, spending today’s classes doing reverse outlines with students.
November 25, 2024 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
For publishers' series, SUNY, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century.
November 24, 2024 at 6:39 AM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
Here's a list of journals, scholarly societies, and book series devoted to 19th-c. Britain. If you're aware of others that should be added, please let me know.
www.victorianresearch.org/journals.htm...
VRW: Journal Guide
www.victorianresearch.org
November 23, 2024 at 11:18 PM
Since I’ve reached 1K followers over here (quicker than I gathered my curated list of friends, colleagues, and strangers in the other place) I wanted to say a warm hello and welcome.

I’m not ignoring you, but am treading lightly on all social platforms to focus on my writing academic projects.
November 24, 2024 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke
One of our amazing Georgetown English students bringing heat in the New York Times: “to employers in business fields and beyond: if you want employees who excel at thinking, hire a humanities major.” 💜
November 21, 2024 at 3:20 AM
Five writers of whom I’ve read 5+ books

Ali Smith
Virginia Woolf
George Orwell
Arnold Bennett
Sara Ahmed
Five writers of whom I’ve read 5+ books

Roland Barthes
Roberto Calasso
Gabrielle Wittkop
Anne Carson
Lavinia Greenlaw
Five writers of whom I’ve read 5+ books:

Virginia Woolf
Mary McCarthy
Vivian Gornick
Nicholson Baker
Kate Zambreno
November 18, 2024 at 5:48 PM
How are you all archiving and closing out your accounts at the other place?
November 18, 2024 at 4:35 PM
Part “The Matter of Matter”, part “Reading Reading :)”.
Currently a combination of “It’s a Dick,” “Reading Reading :),” “This Radical Thing is Fucked Actually,” and “Remember Poetry?”
tag yourself, I'm "it's a dick" 🐳
November 18, 2024 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Laura Ludtke