Diane Watt
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dianewatt.bsky.social
Diane Watt
@dianewatt.bsky.social

Writer, academic, medievalist, queer

Diane Watt FLSW is a British medievalist, currently professor of medieval English literature at the University of Surrey. She previously held a personal chair at Aberystwyth University, where she was deputy director of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS). She was Charles A. Owen Jr. Distinguished Visiting Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Connecticut in 2005. She was awarded a Snell Exhibition to study at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and was awarded her DPhil in English Literature in 1993. She is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. .. more

History 53%
Philosophy 22%
Pinned
Look what arrived today, or at least the ebook did. This is the first encyclopedia devoted exclusively to medieval women’s writing globally,focusing on the thousand-year period between 500-1500. Entries on about 250 women writers plus longer thematic essays. You’re welcome.

AI generated! (Only kidding)
I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.
VC, founder, dumbass
Virginia Woolf book cover designs by her sister, artist Vanessa Bell ( 1920's - 30's) #WomensArt
I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.
VC, founder, dumbass

The great thing about this also being a living reference work is the we can easily update online — thank you 🙏

Yes I didn’t realize it would be so expensive. There is an online version with the abstracts free to view. The problem is we couldn’t do it without the publisher’s support because it is a really expensive and complex project.

Mea culpa, she is part of the entry on The Trotula.

I know. The price is shocking. I wish there was more support for open access for this sort of thing.

Thank you

Thank you

❤️

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Reposted by Diane Watt

This is a remarkable resource. A thousand years of women's writing, finally consolidated. The erasure was never complete - just scattered. Bringing it together changes what 'medieval literature' means.

For the contents check out the title and abstracts in the online version link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages
This is the first encyclopedia devoted exclusively to medieval women writers and women's wider engagement in literary culture from 500-1500.
link.springer.com

I checked and no but these are relatively short entries providing an overview of the author and her works —mainly tertiary scholarship and recommendations for further reading.

Good question. Heloise yes but learning Hebrew I need to check!

Still a work in progress. Already planning the expanded second edition. But thank you!

Reposted by Diane Watt

Excavation of the tomb of Akhet-Hetep at Giza revealed a monument to his mother Peseshet, the "Overseer of Women Physicians." She is the world's earliest known woman doctor, and practiced at the time of the building of the great pyramids in Egypt, about 2500 BC. #CelebratingWomen

Reposted by Diane Watt

Where is the Dark Academia novel in which Dark Academics spend 80% of their time writing grant applications to the Dark Funding Council and most of the rest being harrassed by Dark ResearchFish (RIP)?

Reposted by Diane Watt

Genuinely angry with the constant targeting of MFL for cuts - for colleagues and students, first, but also the dangerous shortsightedness of becoming a country where the cultural openness and critical skills which are central to MFL degrees will be lost and regarded as irrelevant.

c.org/N2cycpKrpB
Sign the Petition
Save Modern Languages courses at the University of Leicester!
c.org

Reposted by Diane Watt

Applications are invited for a Bloomsbury Doctoral Scholarship on Queer Meaning-Making in South Asian Literature: New Comparative Perspectives supervised by Anandi Rao at SOAS and me. Deadline 27 March. Full details in the link 🌈🎓 bloomsbury.ac.uk/queer-meanin...
Queer Meaning-Making in South Asian Literature: New Comparative Perspectives
Principal Supervisor: Dr Anandi Rao (School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics; SOAS, University of London) Co-Supervisor: Professor Heike Bauer (School of Creative Arts, Culture & Communic…
bloomsbury.ac.uk
Ok, let’s do this🙄

We’ll start with an explainer covering:

🕒What is a 15-minute city
🏫What on Earth is going on with Oxford
👽Where the conspiracy theories have come from

And then we’ll look at the Telegraph article

🧵
1/25

Isn’t it time we did this in academia? Hundreds from Met Police declare Freemasons links www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Hundreds of Met officers and staff declare Freemasons links
Membership of the Freemasons or similar organisations became declarable in December.
www.bbc.co.uk

Hope you are enjoying your new job and being back in Chicago

No worries. Any publicity etc …

I will email you. It is quite long.

Hilarious. The Torygraph doesn’t like the way I teach medieval women’s writing, and digs up a university news story from about 6 years ago so it can pretend it interviewed me,

If you want the full text without clicking let me know.

Near Worthing

Solstice sunrise
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.