Madeline McMahon
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madmcmahon.bsky.social
Madeline McMahon
@madmcmahon.bsky.social
1.9K followers 640 following 190 posts
Historian, bibliophile, early modernist.

Assistant Prof in History @ UT Austin (I don’t speak for my employer)
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
florianlouis.bsky.social
Ann Blair - In the Scholar’s Workshop

Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship

À paraître en juillet aux Princeton UP
October 16, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
johnraimo.bsky.social
Arnoud S. Q. Visser ( @arnoudvisser.bsky.social), On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All (@princetonupress.bsky.social, 2025; #skystorians) press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
On Pedantry
A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice
press.princeton.edu
October 5, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
drbernard.bsky.social
🚨 New article! I'm excited to share “The sodomy consultant of Paris, 1688–1737,” published this week in French Historical Studies: read.dukeupress.edu/french-histo... . A 🧵:
The Sodomy Consultant of Paris | French Historical Studies | Duke University Press
read.dukeupress.edu
October 1, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
drnaomibaker.bsky.social
Women have been speaking out about abuse for centuries! I wrote about Anne Wentworth, a 17th-century survivor of domestic abuse, for @theconversation.com #earlymodern
The 17th-century woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse
In the 17th century, Anne Wentworth spoke out against her abusive husband and the religious institution that protected him.
theconversation.com
September 18, 2025 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
tntwining.bsky.social
What was John Locke doing, as he eagerly learned about, bought, and read contemporary works of biblical scholarship? My latest article looks at a less familiar side of Locke's life, suggesting it reveals an underappreciated early modern world of 'everyday erudition'.

#earlymodern #skystorians
royalhistsoc.org Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · Sep 12
New in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'

'Everyday Erudition: John Locke, the Bible and
the Challenge of Early Modern Biblical
Scholarship', by Timothy Twining bit.ly/3IkveRA

How was ‘everyday erudition’ used to come to terms with the historical reality of Christian revelation? 1/2
'Everyday Erudition: John Locke, the Bible and the Challenge of Early Modern Biblical Scholarship', by Timothy Twining. Full abstract: The history of early modern scholarship was long written as a subject set at some remove from the rest of early modern society. Learning was the common property of like-minded scholars in the ‘Republic of Letters’, linked by shared codes of elite sociability and united by a mutual concern to transcend religious boundaries. Recent years have seen such views challenged, with studies demonstrating how much scholarly activity was undertaken to achieve confessional objectives. Yet, these contributions have chiefly focused on orthodox clerical scholars. This article uses the case of John Locke to present a new perspective on the place and significance of erudition in the early modern period. It is based on a thoroughgoing examination of Locke’s lifetime of religious reading, bringing together evidence from his manuscript notebooks and journals, his library catalogues and annotated books, and his correspondence and published works. It coins the notion of ‘everyday erudition’ to reveal how learning was not an abstruse concern. Instead, for Locke and his contemporaries at multiple points on the sociocultural scale, it was a kind of common currency, a tool to be used to come to terms with the historical reality of Christian revelation
September 13, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
barbarasplendor.bsky.social
The new history of theriac (since Watson's 1966) is out there in the world, on its own. At last, out of my thoughts. I am so happy!
#histmed #histscie #earlymodern #histpharma #pharma
Book titled The State Drug by Di Gennaro Splendore in a carton box
August 5, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
rsaorg.bsky.social
We are thrilled to announce that the Summer 2025 issue of Renaissance Quarterly (vol. 78.2) has been published online. Take a look: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #RenTwitter #earlymodern #Renaissance @universitypress.cambridge.org
August 5, 2025 at 4:40 PM
madmcmahon.bsky.social
#earlymodern
August 5, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
lrb.co.uk
‘Colón envisioned his library as a vast and accessible information machine. He recorded details about the acquisition of every book – date, place, price, even the exchange rate.’

Anthony Grafton on early modern libraries: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anthony Grafton · No Cheese Please: The First Bibliophiles
The library made possible a new kind of intellectual life. Machiavelli, when he’d been exiled from Florence, described...
www.lrb.co.uk
August 3, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
drdanielletw.bsky.social
Job Opportunity!

Texas A&M University-San Antonio - Tenure-Track Medieval / Early Modern European History

networks.h-net.org/jobs/68892/t...
Texas A&M University-San Antonio - Tenure-Track Medieval / Early Modern European History | H-Net
networks.h-net.org
July 18, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
drdanielletw.bsky.social
Job Opportunity!

Pomona College - Assistant Professor of History (Early Modern European history)

networks.h-net.org/jobs/68930/p...
Pomona College - Assistant Professor of History (Early Modern European history) | H-Net
networks.h-net.org
August 3, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
daseger7.bsky.social
Hello #renaissance #reformation & #earlymodern historians: I'm really trying to rev up my Ren&Ref course this syllabus time: any inspiring/successful monographs, sources, websites that you could recommend? Melchior Lorck, Satire on the Papacy @metmuseum.org. Thanks!
July 30, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
janmachielsen.bsky.social
The final Covid project is finally beating the dust. This #reformazing Cambridge Companion should be coming out towards the end of this year. 😊
Book cover
July 9, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
janmachielsen.bsky.social
Katrina Olds and I are organising one or two panels at next year's @rsaorg.bsky.social in tribute to the amazing and much missed A. Katie Harris.

If you have an paper touching on #earlymodern Catholic scholarship, relics, forgery, etc. please do send us something!

www.rsa.org/forms/FormRe...
Renaissance Society of America
365 Fifth AvenueRoom 5405New York, NY 10016 • USA
www.rsa.org
June 6, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
harryspillane.bsky.social
www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/articles/mat...

Hopefully this works!
Matthew Parker’s Portrait
‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ the old adage tells us. Despite being the first portrait engraved in England, the portrait of Matthew Parker (1504–1575) from the College Statutes (CCCC MS 582) h...
www.corpus.cam.ac.uk
May 17, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
karlgalle.bsky.social
With a keynote address by Sachiko Kusukawa on "how emblematic worldview shaped early modern scientific thought and representation, from Vesalius and Brahe to Gessner, Camerarius Jr, and Boyle." #earlymodern #HistSTM
warburginstitute.bsky.social The Warburg Institute @warburginstitute.bsky.social · May 12
📜 Call for papers!

This conference in October 2025 will explore allegory’s role in sciences from 1300–1700 — in anatomy, astrology, alchemy, and beyond.

🗓️ Submit by 15 June

Find out more: warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/CFP--...

#HistoryOfScience #CallForPapers
warburg.ac.uk
May 12, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
johnraimo.bsky.social
Giorgio Caravale, A suon di polemiche: Eresia e controversia dottrinale nella crisi religiosa del Cinquecento (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2025; #skystorians): www.storiaeletteratura.it/catalogo/a-s...
A suon di polemiche | Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura
In un’epoca come il Cinquecento in cui le frontiere dei grandi monoteismi e gli equilibri interni alle singole confessioni vacillavano, i protagonisti del dibattito religioso furono particolarmente in...
www.storiaeletteratura.it
April 11, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
karlgalle.bsky.social
New book mail yesterday, Anthony Grafton's work on #earlymodern magic and the age of Faust. In the current environment I'm also reminded of remarks in his Girolamo Cardano book referring to 16th-century astrologers as the economists of their day: 🙄 📗 📉 bookshop.org/p/books/magu...
My hand holding a paperback copy of Anthony Grafton's book "Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa", recently ordered from biblio.com.
April 10, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
tntwining.bsky.social
I’ll be launching my book The Limits of Erudition in Cambridge on 2 May 2025 with Simon Ditchfield. All very much welcome, whether in person or online! For further details see the poster attached and register for Zoom here: www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

#earlymodern
A poster with details for the book launch of The Limits of Erudition: The Old Testament in Post-Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2024). For more information, see: https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series/early-modern-scholarship-and-religion
April 10, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
earlymodernjohn.bsky.social
Oh this will be a treat! Between now and publication date, why not tuck into Kate's superb @historicaljnl.bsky.social article on 'Women and the History of Samuel Pepys's Diary'? Free to read open access and a fantastic piece of scholarship.
April 7, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
lsangha.bsky.social
Thanks to my department for combining my and my colleague's Leverhulme Trust teaching buy out into an almost full time (0.9) 1 year post 👇

- Application deadline 16th April

#EarlyModern 🗃️

1/

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DML369/l...
Lecturer in Early Modern History (Education and Scholarship) at University of Exeter
Looking for a new job opportunity in academia? Check out this job opening for a Lecturer in Early Modern History (Education and Scholarship) on jobs.ac.uk!
www.jobs.ac.uk
April 3, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
draftingthepast.bsky.social
ICYMI: New episode, with acclaimed historian Lyndal Roper about her new book, SUMMER OF FIRE AND BLOOD, on the German Peasants' War. This conversation was a delight, featuring lots of maps, bike rides, and the wisdom of a long and productive career! Listen here: draftingthepast.com/podcast-epis...
Podcast graphic with a photograph in the left of a smiling woman with glass and long white hair. On the right, teal text reads "Drafting the Past episode 62: Lyndal Roper."
April 2, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
lrb.co.uk
‘Crusius studied spoken Greek carefully, treating his visitors as crucial primary sources. Yet he regarded modern vernacular Greek as a corrupt version of its classical ancestor.’

Alexander Bevilacqua on the German cleric who invented modern Grecomania:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Alexander Bevilacqua · Can we speak Greek? Martin Crusius’s Project
Crusius plundered contemporary travel accounts for information alongside chronicles and histories. He recognised the...
www.lrb.co.uk
March 26, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
dukepress.bsky.social
"The New Kingdom of Granada," by Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez tells the history of the making and unmaking of empire in the diverse and decentralized Indigenous landscapes of the Northern Andes. Read the intro for free on our website! #LatinAmericanStudies #History
buff.ly/dHQmPB2
Cover of The New Kingdom of Granada: The Making and Unmaking of Spain's Atlantic Empire by Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez. The cover features patterns from ancient Muisican (pre-Colombian) art, now displayed in the British Museum. The background is a dark red and black pattern featuring geometric shapes, circular motifs, and stylized figures. The title is displayed in large, bold, yellow capital letters, and the author's name appears in smaller white text at the bottom.
March 24, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Madeline McMahon
perurealfonso.bsky.social
Valeria López Fadul, The Cradle of Words. Language and Knowledge in the #SpanishEmpire press.jhu.edu/books/title/... #HispaniaImperial #EarlyModern #HistoriaIndiana #Philology via @hopkinspress.bsky.social
The Cradle of Words
Language and Knowledge in the Spanish Empire
press.jhu.edu
March 26, 2025 at 4:20 PM