Lydia E. Ferguson
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docfergus.bsky.social
Lydia E. Ferguson
@docfergus.bsky.social
Educator in AmLit & Culture working w/ archives, ephemera, and material & ICH preservation. Intersectional Feminism, CRT, Disability Rights—in other words, I’m a hoot at parties.
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
Let's talk about books and the public trust.

📚🧵

Something that is easy to forget, in these days of barcode-scanning / auto-adjust pricing on third-party platforms for pennies plus shipping:

Booksellers are not merely people who sell some popular books in a competitive market.
November 12, 2025 at 8:41 PM
“No revisions required” —hell yeah
November 12, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
The beautiful chaos of a used bookstore is unmatched.
November 9, 2025 at 1:44 AM
The world is a mess, so here’s a pit baby emerging from under the covers.
November 10, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
CFP: The daily attacks on disabled lives we experience/witness are exhausting, yet we trudge on, collectively, dreaming and actively creating different futures for ourselves and for those we love.

Submissions Due Dec. 1st, 2025.
wgssouth.org/2026conference

#disability #accessibility #academicsky
November 9, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
There’s a young southern woman on tt doing an experiment: calling churches & asking if they can help her get baby formula, saying she can’t afford it. Of the 30+ she’s called, nearly every church has said no. The ones who said yes were:

Black Baptist Churches
A Mosque
A small Appalachian church
November 8, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
sometimes an Oxford comma can make all the difference
November 8, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
Check out our 2026 LGBTQ Caucus CFP: "Trans, Intersex, and Queer Freedom Dreams and Futurities"

If you have something to say, let us hear it! Join us at Wake Forest University this March!

Submissions Due Dec. 1st wgssouth.org/2026conference

#lgbtq #queerstudies #southernstudies #academicsky
November 7, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
I was laid off from Teen Vogue this week, alongside multiple other phenomenal team members.

At our Summit, I was asked how it felt to be 1 of 2 Black women left and what that meant for representation. Now, there are no Black women at Teen Vogue and that is incredibly painful to think about.
November 3, 2025 at 11:57 PM
This is so disheartening. I’ve been impressed by and appreciated the political writing at Teen Vogue for years.
I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.
November 3, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
"When I first heard Sam Cooke’s music, I had no idea that he had a legacy, that his voice had been tragically silenced in the prime of his life or that he once sang with one of my father’s favorite Gospel groups."
medium.com/p/441275a6f258
“Nearer to Thee”: The Still Evolving Legacy and Politics of Sam Cooke by Mark Anthony Neal
All I knew was that there was something that I heard in the man’s voice. This was me, in the mid-1970s watching TV in our South Bronx…
medium.com
November 2, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Party idea for #parents on #budget: hit up the #thriftstores and buy a bunch of different Spidey costumes for cheap. Then throw a Spiderverse-themed party at a local park where you supply the costumes. Provide silly string as the party activity and let them go at it (commit to cleaning up after).
November 1, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”
Trump is holding a Great Gatsby/Roaring 20s-themed party at his private club in Palm Beach tonight as he tries to withhold SNAP and health care subsidies from millions of Americans. (via Kellie Meyer)
November 1, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Was back to campus 6 days after hip-replacement surgery and the one thing that was unbearable was wearing a bra.
October 30, 2025 at 2:16 AM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
MONKEYTRUCK (2025)
October 28, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
Universities across the world seeing this:

"its only wrong 45% of the time!!
Lets buy free licenses for our students, staff and faculty!!
Lets lock into contracts with rapacious predatory AI companies with shitty technofascist politics, sucking up water and jacking up electricity prices!!"
October 23, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
We're proud to announce the CFP for our 50th Anniversary & 2026 conference: "Feminist Futurities: 50 More Years of Feminist Scholarship and Activism in the South"

Check out the details on our website!
Submissions due Dec. 1st! wgssouth.org/2026conference

#AcademicSky #edusky #highered #wgs
October 20, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
No notes
October 19, 2025 at 3:52 PM
This is suspicious…has anyone checked to make sure the Baseball Diamond is accounted for?
the Muppets have been real quiet since the Louvre heist
October 20, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Cleaned out the file cabinet in my classroom today. Behold the new(ish) talisman of my Comp II classes: a two-liter of generic cola that expired in 2005…otherwise known as before my students were born.

#academicsky #highered #gross
October 16, 2025 at 10:51 PM
Me to my spouse, waiting for our Indian food to arrive:
a cartoon character from the little mermaid is hanging upside down in the water .
Alt: Ursula from the little mermaid, hanging upside down in the water saying, “Look at me! Wasting away to practically nothing.”
media.tenor.com
October 14, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
This is such a clever idea on taking kids to museums/galleries
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
October 12, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Begging for an #editbutton on #BlueSky bc my Dollar Tree readers have a scratch on them and I have giant hands.
October 8, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Reposted by Lydia E. Ferguson
How to ymprove higher ed
And win all the pryzes:
1) Hire manye facultye
2) Small class syzes
October 8, 2025 at 7:17 PM