Amanda
amandastafford.bsky.social
Amanda
@amandastafford.bsky.social
Accidental academic - underground newspapers, movies, yoga, all too infrequent writing, plants. 🌱 PGR in US History at the University of Leeds.
Reposted by Amanda
Graduate of the American Studies programme that the University of Nottingham wishes to close wins 2025 Wolfson History Prize for Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

History, it's a long game. Divest in haste, repent for the longue durée.
The Wolfson History Prize - Celebrating Outstanding History
The Wolfson History Prize is awarded annually to promote and recognise outstanding history written for a general audience.
www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk
December 3, 2025 at 8:44 AM
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my great-grandparents arrived in the UK in the 1890s with nothing.
they sold pickles from the front room window, took in laundry, worked as tailors.
their children were nurses, teachers, salesmen.
their grandchildren were professors, designers, opticians, doctors, magistrates, entrepreneurs.
This is so disgusting.
December 7, 2025 at 8:59 AM
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Your Netflix package is about to cost more, and your cinemas will have fewer movies to show, but *jazz hands* Thaaaaat’s Capitalism, Baaaaaby!
Breaking news: Netflix has agreed an $83bn takeover of the studios and streaming businesses of Warner Bros Discovery, in a deal set to reshape Hollywood and create a new global entertainment powerhouse. on.ft.com/3MGC59K
December 5, 2025 at 12:37 PM
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A small cry over this. how wonderful
Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard
December 2, 2025 at 9:02 AM
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November 30, 2025 at 1:54 PM
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If this goes through at Northumbria, other post-92s are next.
Sign the petition! www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/no...
Northumbria Pay and Pension Petition: Stop the Steal!
If Northumbria does this, other universities will too.  These cuts will harm thousands of people, their students, families, and their local communities now and into the future.
www.megaphone.org.uk
November 28, 2025 at 7:34 AM
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Has something happened that I am seeing lots of Twitter screenshots on Bluesky lately?

You're not supposed to use the bucket to pour water *into* the lifeboat.
November 24, 2025 at 5:17 PM
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Perhaps the wildest moment (but there were so many) bsky.app/profile/atru...
Q: Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist?

MAMDANI: I've spoken about--

TRUMP: That's okay. You can just say yes. I don't mind.
November 21, 2025 at 9:32 PM
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There's still time to sign up for the BAAS PG Symposium next Wednesday.

Don't miss out! There's so much to experience!
⚠️ There are now less than 2 weeks until our 2025 Postgraduate Symposium ⚠️

The event, titled '"The people favored and the people oppressed": The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America', will take place on 26th November in Middlesbrough & online.

Sign up now:
BAAS Postgraduate Symposium 2025
‘The people favored and the people oppressed’: The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America
buff.ly
November 21, 2025 at 5:09 PM
So much of my largely misspent youth was spent in the old International on Anson Road watching whoever was playing which was frequently the Roses - this is bloody terrible news.

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/n...
Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, the Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist, dies aged 63
Ian Brown and Tim Burgess were among those to pay tribute to Mani, whose death was announced by his brother and nephew
www.theguardian.com
November 20, 2025 at 8:21 PM
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I am absolutely over the moon that my book “The Republican House Divided: Civil War Memory, Civil Rights, and the Transformation of the GOP” is officially published TODAY!

After years of hard work, I am incredibly proud. Thank you to everyone who has made this possible 📚🐘🗃️

@uscpress.bsky.social
November 20, 2025 at 1:48 PM
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posted by a friend who is Professor of Molecular Biophysics. PM me if you have any ideas and want to be put in touch.
November 17, 2025 at 8:03 PM
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This is the logical consequence of Labour’s appeasement of the far right - this is an arms race Labour should never seek to win
Not everyone is unhappy about the Government's descent into anti-refugee politics
November 16, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Reposted by Amanda
The WAC is a hugely important resource for historians (I've made extensive use of it on multiple projects) and these hugely significant changes are an effective bar on access.
WAC wrong-headedness
(that's the BBC Written Archives Centre)

I've brought together the key links for the campaign against the changes which now make independent and exploratory research at WAC impossible - and why this matters.

www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/wac-wrong-he...
WAC wrong-headedness - Illuminations
John Wyver writes: Some of you will know that I have been very involved over the past months with attempts to reverse the wrong-headed changes to access at the BBC Written Archives Centre (above, with...
www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk
November 8, 2025 at 8:56 AM
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A little piece I wrote a while back about Elizabeth McHenry's To Make Negro Literature and how it changed who I am as a researcher has just been published in JAS. Available here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
FAILURE AS CONSTRUCTION: ELIZABETH MCHENRY’S TO MAKE NEGRO LITERATURE | Journal of American Studies | Cambridge Core
FAILURE AS CONSTRUCTION: ELIZABETH MCHENRY’S TO MAKE NEGRO LITERATURE - Volume 58 Issue 4
www.cambridge.org
November 7, 2025 at 2:09 PM
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Posting again just to underline the fact that the X algorithm is VERY CLEARLY DESIGNED to feed far right material to new users…
It is straight up a propaganda tool and decent people need to LEAVE it.
Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design.

news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
news.sky.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:38 AM
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Next time someone tells you that train drivers "just push buttons" show them this from the BBC
November 2, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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What the hell are you up to, Wes Anderson…
November 2, 2025 at 2:31 PM
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Catching up. Give me Alan Carr On a Bridge: The Extended Cut. I'll watch that shit for 45 minutes straight. #CelebrityTraitors
October 29, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Goals
Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.
October 30, 2025 at 9:54 AM
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#cfp Proposals are welcomed for the Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) annual conference.

The conference will take place at University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès in June 2026.

Submit abstracts before 12th January 2026!
The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) 2026 Conference: Call for Papers - British Association for American Studies
The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) welcomes proposals for its annual conference, hosted by the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès.
buff.ly
October 29, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Amanda
Graduate seminar did a deep dive on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense yesterday. At the line, “in America the law is king,” they (14 students from 6 countries) burst out laughing. I've been doing this for 35 years and this is the first time that was a laugh line.
October 22, 2025 at 10:21 AM
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British.
October 16, 2025 at 5:03 PM