Claude Willan
@claudewillan.bsky.social
C18th stuff, DH, dad stuff, ex-pat things, poems, material culture, perfume, etc
UK-CA-NJ-TX-PA-UK. Durham.
UK-CA-NJ-TX-PA-UK. Durham.
I'm going to do, i'm a professional eighteenth-centuryist and i'm going to stand up there and say to a roomful of undergrads on a module i convene, "coffeehouse culture", i've become what i hated
November 9, 2025 at 3:28 PM
I'm going to do, i'm a professional eighteenth-centuryist and i'm going to stand up there and say to a roomful of undergrads on a module i convene, "coffeehouse culture", i've become what i hated
AI and "mind" a short thread.
Recently, I've been working on writing children's stories, for my own pleasure. I have children and they love stories and like writing them, so.
I dictated one over the course of a couple of commutes. The app is designed for meeting and came up with "action items"
Recently, I've been working on writing children's stories, for my own pleasure. I have children and they love stories and like writing them, so.
I dictated one over the course of a couple of commutes. The app is designed for meeting and came up with "action items"
November 7, 2025 at 11:05 AM
AI and "mind" a short thread.
Recently, I've been working on writing children's stories, for my own pleasure. I have children and they love stories and like writing them, so.
I dictated one over the course of a couple of commutes. The app is designed for meeting and came up with "action items"
Recently, I've been working on writing children's stories, for my own pleasure. I have children and they love stories and like writing them, so.
I dictated one over the course of a couple of commutes. The app is designed for meeting and came up with "action items"
Eating lunch at 1021 am, the absolute latest I could push it
November 7, 2025 at 10:21 AM
Eating lunch at 1021 am, the absolute latest I could push it
Thank you for this much more accurate plug! Hope to see you there!
@claudewillan.bsky.social is at the English Faculty in @cam.ac.uk today at 5pm, speaking on Jacobite poetry in manuscript (1688-1750), & the work of Sean Bonney. This sounds like a 🔥 talk on the limits of permissible speech, materiality, & literary experimentation. @bsecs.bsky.social #18thcentury
November 6, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Thank you for this much more accurate plug! Hope to see you there!
I'm giving what might be the "biggest" talk of my life tomorrow, at Cambridge, and I seem to have written my most certifiably bonkers talk yet for it, about Jacobite poetics and Sean Bonney via Charles Le Brun, called "Non-Literary Beauty?". If you're in Cambridge, come see me in the Eng Dept @ 5pm!
November 5, 2025 at 2:08 PM
I'm giving what might be the "biggest" talk of my life tomorrow, at Cambridge, and I seem to have written my most certifiably bonkers talk yet for it, about Jacobite poetics and Sean Bonney via Charles Le Brun, called "Non-Literary Beauty?". If you're in Cambridge, come see me in the Eng Dept @ 5pm!
Read the new Pullman. Delighted, mostly.
Went to talk about it online.
Found readers concerned principally with casting an ethical field of their own contrivance over the actually existing artwork.
Exhausted and depressed.
Went to talk about it online.
Found readers concerned principally with casting an ethical field of their own contrivance over the actually existing artwork.
Exhausted and depressed.
November 5, 2025 at 12:26 AM
Read the new Pullman. Delighted, mostly.
Went to talk about it online.
Found readers concerned principally with casting an ethical field of their own contrivance over the actually existing artwork.
Exhausted and depressed.
Went to talk about it online.
Found readers concerned principally with casting an ethical field of their own contrivance over the actually existing artwork.
Exhausted and depressed.
Whenever I teach something multiple times, the best teaching comments I make are always the ones I forget to make again.
October 31, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Whenever I teach something multiple times, the best teaching comments I make are always the ones I forget to make again.
My 6yo is absolutely Rumplestiltskin-pilled and is on his way to harder ideologies like alchemy. This is the alt natural philosophy pipeline
October 25, 2025 at 11:21 AM
My 6yo is absolutely Rumplestiltskin-pilled and is on his way to harder ideologies like alchemy. This is the alt natural philosophy pipeline
The unironically-named recording suite we have, "Panopto" (!) didn't like having to transcribe me telling students about Rochester's use of rude words. I checked the recording; it is very much audible.
Anyone else encountered censorship in their institution's tools?
Anyone else encountered censorship in their institution's tools?
![Bowdlerised transcription snippet of me talking about Rochester's "mannerly obscene":
"It is something he called the mannerly obscene, in which Rochester suggested offensiveness is not saying dick or [INAUDIBLE] or like rude words"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4veunnbo2mplo5qdv2t322ap/bafkreidnz3moohtudmvf6j3cz42atosemhmi4qyjn7igbtnptedqfxv25m@jpeg)
October 23, 2025 at 1:34 PM
The unironically-named recording suite we have, "Panopto" (!) didn't like having to transcribe me telling students about Rochester's use of rude words. I checked the recording; it is very much audible.
Anyone else encountered censorship in their institution's tools?
Anyone else encountered censorship in their institution's tools?
I am co-convenor of Durham English's module on Restoration and eighteenth-century literature.
I have put so much Dryden on this year's syllabus that in the Dryden-only lecture I am about to give, I will not even mention MacFlecknoe or Absalom and Achitophel.
I have put so much Dryden on this year's syllabus that in the Dryden-only lecture I am about to give, I will not even mention MacFlecknoe or Absalom and Achitophel.
October 23, 2025 at 11:34 AM
I am co-convenor of Durham English's module on Restoration and eighteenth-century literature.
I have put so much Dryden on this year's syllabus that in the Dryden-only lecture I am about to give, I will not even mention MacFlecknoe or Absalom and Achitophel.
I have put so much Dryden on this year's syllabus that in the Dryden-only lecture I am about to give, I will not even mention MacFlecknoe or Absalom and Achitophel.
Picked up Steve Zwicker's "Dryden's Political Poetry" for £6 (!) at Oxfam. It's so clear, such a service to the reader, and totally informs my reading of Dryden. Kind of an epochal book and a rare one that is both true AND still rewards careful reading.
October 21, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Picked up Steve Zwicker's "Dryden's Political Poetry" for £6 (!) at Oxfam. It's so clear, such a service to the reader, and totally informs my reading of Dryden. Kind of an epochal book and a rare one that is both true AND still rewards careful reading.
"What does quite mean dad"
"Quite means a bit, but not a lot"
thinks
"Dad, you're 'quite' important to this family"
"Quite means a bit, but not a lot"
thinks
"Dad, you're 'quite' important to this family"
October 19, 2025 at 6:15 PM
"What does quite mean dad"
"Quite means a bit, but not a lot"
thinks
"Dad, you're 'quite' important to this family"
"Quite means a bit, but not a lot"
thinks
"Dad, you're 'quite' important to this family"
"With the advent of artificial intelligence, the internet transformed from a collaborative space into an extraction zone."
Worth reading this even if you don't know what robots.txt is.
Worth reading this even if you don't know what robots.txt is.
"The protocol taught us that technology can be based on human values like ethics and morality. It showed that voluntary compliance works when all parties benefit."
On robots.txt.
www.heise.de/en/backgroun...
On robots.txt.
www.heise.de/en/backgroun...
Obituary: Farewell to robots.txt (1994-2025)
The voluntary compliance protocol that civilized the internet has departed, bids Henning Fries farewell.
www.heise.de
October 17, 2025 at 10:40 AM
"With the advent of artificial intelligence, the internet transformed from a collaborative space into an extraction zone."
Worth reading this even if you don't know what robots.txt is.
Worth reading this even if you don't know what robots.txt is.
After fifteen years I can finally say that the pleasure of Girl Talk was the tension between criticism and belle-lettrism
October 17, 2025 at 10:34 AM
After fifteen years I can finally say that the pleasure of Girl Talk was the tension between criticism and belle-lettrism
Reposted by Claude Willan
"The protocol taught us that technology can be based on human values like ethics and morality. It showed that voluntary compliance works when all parties benefit."
On robots.txt.
www.heise.de/en/backgroun...
On robots.txt.
www.heise.de/en/backgroun...
Obituary: Farewell to robots.txt (1994-2025)
The voluntary compliance protocol that civilized the internet has departed, bids Henning Fries farewell.
www.heise.de
October 16, 2025 at 8:16 PM
"The protocol taught us that technology can be based on human values like ethics and morality. It showed that voluntary compliance works when all parties benefit."
On robots.txt.
www.heise.de/en/backgroun...
On robots.txt.
www.heise.de/en/backgroun...
And that is how you use a chiasmus.
What I don't have in experience, I make up for in integrity.
And what Andrew Cuomo lacks in integrity, he could never make up for with experience.
And what Andrew Cuomo lacks in integrity, he could never make up for with experience.
October 17, 2025 at 9:48 AM
And that is how you use a chiasmus.
My 6 yo just asked me, dad, are you "FOMO MAN"
So
Id like to report a murder
So
Id like to report a murder
October 16, 2025 at 5:46 PM
My 6 yo just asked me, dad, are you "FOMO MAN"
So
Id like to report a murder
So
Id like to report a murder
"Being a grownup is you have to work all night and all day until someone answers your double computer"
October 13, 2025 at 6:19 AM
"Being a grownup is you have to work all night and all day until someone answers your double computer"
Thinking about the man -- long dead, now -- who taught me The Dead in his sitting room in Hale Barns. He was old, but the story's preoccupation with youth and old he taught quite unselfishly. He wanted me, a 17-yo boy, maybe Michael Furey's age, to think about my youth and my age. What a gift.
October 12, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Thinking about the man -- long dead, now -- who taught me The Dead in his sitting room in Hale Barns. He was old, but the story's preoccupation with youth and old he taught quite unselfishly. He wanted me, a 17-yo boy, maybe Michael Furey's age, to think about my youth and my age. What a gift.
RIP Jilly Cooper, the writer who best understood the inflections of a smirk.
October 9, 2025 at 8:19 AM
RIP Jilly Cooper, the writer who best understood the inflections of a smirk.
Almost all good undergrad teaching tramples on someone else's historicity.
October 7, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Almost all good undergrad teaching tramples on someone else's historicity.
Can't wait to read another week's news justifying torture and genocide.
October 5, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Can't wait to read another week's news justifying torture and genocide.
Final Boss of Both-Sides-ing
September 30, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Final Boss of Both-Sides-ing
Remember "close reading is extractive"?
September 30, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Remember "close reading is extractive"?
This is a terrific analysis. And from the point of view of my own expertise, some really impressive, sensible use of data viz to make an argt.
On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n
British Politics' Midlife Crisis
Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters
benansell.substack.com
September 30, 2025 at 9:18 AM
This is a terrific analysis. And from the point of view of my own expertise, some really impressive, sensible use of data viz to make an argt.