Matthew Harrison
matthewharrison.bsky.social
Matthew Harrison
@matthewharrison.bsky.social
pizza advocate; english professor
Today’s teaching: my favorite lines in Spenser.
October 29, 2025 at 9:48 PM
October 28, 2025 at 10:57 PM
things are getting HEATED in the group chat
October 16, 2025 at 3:29 PM
okay, his friend can come, too

but its just me and nahua bugs from here on out.
October 3, 2025 at 8:01 PM
not talking to anyone except this caterpillar from the Florentine Codex (book 11, 103r) right now
October 3, 2025 at 7:58 PM
@catacalypto.bsky.social reading Renaissance descriptions of possums, so I thought of you.
September 24, 2025 at 10:00 PM
I've been looking for moments like this ever since I read Gerda Lerner: moments when Renaissance women find other women writers and claim them.

To that end, let me show you the best thing I've ever seen in an archive: a little note, in Mary Wroth's copy of Eusebius.
September 23, 2025 at 2:42 AM
for example, we read Gaspara Stampa's Rime 1 alongside Petrarch's first poem.

Where Petrarch turns to shame and transience in his poem's sestet, Stampa imagines a future in which another woman can be inspired by her, can walk side-by-side.
September 23, 2025 at 2:21 AM
me and who?
September 19, 2025 at 6:38 PM
i like that this request to review an article doesn't try to flatter me.
September 12, 2025 at 2:25 PM
From there, images of featherwork in the Florentine Codex, including what I think is a tiny self-portrait.

We closed by comparing that to a moment in Du Bartas, where Eve crafts herself a feather mantle.
August 26, 2025 at 1:01 AM
We talked about English privateers and the material stuff of sea trade, focusing on spices, calicos, and porcelains as sites of non-Euro knowledge, labor, and creativity.

Then Sir Walter Cope's collection. Talked about his "Madonna made of Indian feathers," showing this Mexican St. John.
August 26, 2025 at 12:58 AM
We compared various representations of him (his armor in the Met, two Hilliard portraits, etc) to think about aristocratic masculinity before I asked them about this engraving of him in San Juan.
August 26, 2025 at 12:54 AM
We followed the unhappy looking Anne Clifford to the Great Picture, where I had students zoom in to figure out what kinds of books she had.

From there, I sent them out to various databases to find images of her father, George Clifford.
August 26, 2025 at 12:49 AM
Teaching Ren Lit for the first time in a few years, and I wanted to follow @johnmkuhn.bsky.social and talk about the first class.

Started with this image of the Pembrokes and talked about the space: the landscape, the coat of arms in the backdrop, the classical pillars, the Persian (?) rug.
August 26, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Adding a new section to my Renaissance Literature course in Canvas.
August 22, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Hey, sorry: I won't be able to complete my syllabi before classes start because I'm obsessed with this woodcut and trying to figure out where it comes from.

(it's hard, because late 17th c. ballad printers seem to use their nudie woodcuts whenever they can.)
August 22, 2025 at 2:49 AM
please enjoy this early modern poem about wanting to drink a woman's bathwater.
August 11, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Me making my posts
July 2, 2025 at 3:29 AM
i'm writing, by which i mean i'm being as irritatingly glib and twee as i can in hopes that someone shoots me
June 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM
i keep cracking up at this post on AI writing
June 17, 2025 at 1:11 PM
I have been in this bathroom for three hours waiting for an employee to wash me…
June 3, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Teachable advertisement!
May 31, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Cannot believe this book has 49 sequels.
May 24, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Tried to search for a list of famous fictional Black characters. Number 1, according to Google, is Brutus in Shakespeare's /Julius Caesar/.
May 2, 2025 at 7:22 PM