Cynthia Cyrus
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scholarfarmer.bsky.social
Cynthia Cyrus
@scholarfarmer.bsky.social
250 followers 220 following 200 posts
Medievalist monastic historian / musicologist working on nuns’ roles in 15thc soundscapes in Bregenz Austria. Manuscript fragments make me giddy. I also collect sunrises. Blog at SilencesAndSounds@blogspot.com
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Today's blog post is on the scorched sculpture, a wooden Christ ca 1500 from Brno's Moravian Gallery

I might have mentioned #Fabio and his fabulous hair...

#art #sculpture #15thc #carving #medieval #blog
A scorched sculpture of Christ with carved wooden moustache, beard, and hair; blog post title: Brno's Torso of Christ
November 19, 2025 at 2:26 PM
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Today's blog post is on a 15th-century Swabian Madonna now housed in Brno -- there are a couple of interesting nuances to the statue, which is anonymous, and rather beetle-bored

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#Sculpture #art #medieval #blog #Madonna
The heads of a Madonna with crown looking at the viewer, and babe looking over our right shoulder. Blog title: The Swabian Madonna of Brno
November 18, 2025 at 2:10 PM
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A new blog post this morning, on our visit to Ubon Ratchathani this past summer, with abundant pictures! Such a pretty place!

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#travel #Thailand #blog #blogpost #AsianSojourn #wats #architecture
Image of one of Ubon Ratchathani's many Wats, with its ornate faux-flame roofline and brilliant white paint with gilt highlights; above is found the blog title: Asian Sojourn 8: Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand
November 17, 2025 at 1:08 PM
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And, another blog post, this one about end-of-life ceremonies at Nepal’s Pashupatinath Temple, with a more extended and slightly scholarly positioning

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #Asia #Nepal #funeral #cremation #AsianSojourn #travel #tourism #DarkTourism
Riverside view of the Nepal Ghats, wtih blog title: Asian Sojourn 7: Life and Its Endings (Nepal's Pashupatinath Temple)
November 16, 2025 at 3:36 PM
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I completed several blog posts about our travels in Nepal last summer; have a look!

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#travel #AsianSojourn #Nepal #Kathmandu #Pokhara #NepalBusTravel
November 16, 2025 at 3:02 PM
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Today (Nov 11) is the feast of St Martin of Tours; to celebrate, I talk a bit about Martinmas customs and about the celebration of the Feast at Thalbach in Bregenz in 1595 in today's blog post

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #research #Martinmas #medieval #chant
image of the saint in green with a brown cloak and red leggings; he has the sword with which he will divide his cloak to share with the beggar, who is kneeling and has lost a foot. St Martin looks on. Blog title: Singing to St Martin of Tours.
November 11, 2025 at 6:31 PM
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Today's blog post is on chant performance, and addresses the way in which our popular listening tastes -- exemplified by Taylor Swift -- have come to influence our chant performance practice and consumption

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com
Title: The Taylor Swifting of Chant Performance; an image of the Sequentia cover of Hildegard von Bingen's Canticles of Ecstasy with the manuscript illumination of an upright person against a swirled orange and then (outer rings) blue background a bit like a migraine nimbus; and on the right, Taylor Swift in a dance move in front of an architecturally rich and ornate marble backdrop
October 24, 2025 at 2:21 PM
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Today's blog post asks: what do space alien dreams have to do with checking historical data? More than you might think!

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #Research #AcademicChatter #data #narrative #history #AcademicPractice
A frog foot and a couple of manuscript snail images, one black and white, one colored. Blog title: Of Space Aliens and Their Tentacles (Data and story-telling)
October 20, 2025 at 1:58 PM
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I wrote a blog post about office hours, the most silent time of the day. Enjoy!

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#AcademicChatter #Faculty #FacultyLife #OfficeHours #Academia #AcademicHumor
a picture of a sealed box and a clock set to 1:30. "The silent office hour: I'm in my box on the clock. Does it help?"
October 16, 2025 at 1:15 PM
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I wrote a (short) thing! Blog post on the surprising absence of smell from the multisensory details covered in memorial endowments in early modern Bregenz

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#smell #multisensory #liturgy #memorial #blog #research #history #15thc #16thc
A nose and a bell; blog post title: Smells and bells? Just bells!
October 13, 2025 at 1:33 PM
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A blog post on that journey "From Draft to Done" in a scholarly context...

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#draft #outline #ScholarlyPractices #blog #AmWriting #Research #AcademicChatter
A messy opening in a handwritten notebook with lists and numbers on the left and other lists and notes and more numbers on the right. Blog title: "From Draft to Done."
October 8, 2025 at 1:10 PM
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today's blog post addresses my bad mental habit of thinking of the woods as silent. Plus, some #hiking pictures. And a couple #fungi

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#woods #forest #silence #sound #blog
mossy tree roots gripping a boulder by the stream's edge; blog title: The silence of the woods is full of noise
October 6, 2025 at 1:11 PM
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If you like paper structure models, I've got another blog post for you -- part two of yesterday's post

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#pedagogy #AmWriting #TeachingWriting #Blog #PaperWriting #structure
Musicological Paper Structures 102; gives a template for the "problem-driven" outline, and then adds other types -- causative, historical, analytical stories; paradigm shifts; I invented a thing. These are explained in the accompanying blog post.
October 2, 2025 at 2:35 PM
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Today's blog post shares a writing how-to that I use with my undergraduates. (Not my only model, but a place to start!)

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#pedagogy #AmWriting #TeachingWriting #Blog #PaperWriting #structure
A visual model of how to organize a paper with arrows showing sections moving around. The blog post title: Musicological Paper Structures 101. Details of the model are explained in the linked post.
October 1, 2025 at 10:23 PM
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The three Augustinian Sisters make the case that the church needs to give back by letting them inhabit their cloister as they'd been promised. I blogged about them today

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#nuns #nuntastic #dignity #autonomy #ChurchPolitics #nunsontherun #goldenstein #blog #AmWriting
Three elderly nuns in black and white Augustinian habits sitting in front of a salmon-colored wall with sacred artwork. Blog post title: Listening in on the Nuns' Rebellion at Kloster Goldenstein
September 27, 2025 at 2:46 PM
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A new blog post on the summer's Asia trip -- this one on morning experiences in Kathmandu, with its integration of the sacred into daily life

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#Kathmandu #travel #Soundscape
Image of a courtyard with gilt-eaved temple, several humans, and a dog. Post title: Asian Sojourn 3: Living in Sacred Space – Kathmandu
September 26, 2025 at 1:26 PM
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Earlids are back! A post on attentional earlids, engaging with the work of Ananya Mandal and her teams on noise and its impact on attention and focus

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#earlids #blog #AmWriting #AcademicChatter #soundscape #filtering #focus
An image of noise-canceling headphones with Blog post title: Attention filtering: the voluntary earlid. To the side, 3 key phrases: attentional earlid, sound-glasses, and noise-canceling headphones.
September 21, 2025 at 5:29 PM
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Today's post is short, sweet, and to the point, and addresses the "when" of writing...

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#Blog #AmWriting #AcWri #WritingPractice
Image of an analogue clock showing 10:07; blog post title: The Perfect Time to Write
September 17, 2025 at 1:21 PM
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I've been writing blog posts about some of the interesting prayers from the 16thc Thalbach prayerbook. Today's contribution: a prayer on Mary's sorrows as redemptive

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #AmWriting #AcWri #16thc #prayer #FranciscanTertiaries #nuntastic
A woodcut of a haloed Mary of Swords, with seven swords piercing her breast; on the right, the word "schwert" (sword) and "Scharfen todes" (bitter death). Blog title: An indulgence prayer for Mary of Swords
September 16, 2025 at 10:38 AM
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Today's blog post went in the history direction -- a brief overview of Nazi impact on Catholic Vorarlberg

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #History #20thC #Vorarlberg #Catholic #Bregenz #nuns #AmWriting
Black and White image of a Nazi parade -- soldiers on foot, led by a man on horse -- through Feldkirch city streets in Vorarlberg, with blog post title: When the Gestapo Came for the Sisters
September 6, 2025 at 4:33 PM
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Today's blog post is on editing the old fashioned way -- with scissors and tape and notecards and physical sorting

#blog #AmWriting #AcWri #WritingStrategies #AcademicChatter
Slice! Dice! Sort! Cogitate! Organize! Tape into place! These instructions for how to edit are shown as a cloud of floating words adjacent to slips of paper with scholarly writing on them, clearly cut out from an earlier draft. Blog post title: Writing with scissors and tape
September 1, 2025 at 9:53 PM
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Today's blog post is on a tourist day in Kathmandu, featuring a parade

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #travel #Nepal #Kathmandu #parade #soundscape
soldiers marching by old buildings, curving around the corner of a square; the drummers are in the back. Blog post title: Asian sojourn 2: Kathmandu: Parade rest!
August 30, 2025 at 2:28 PM
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Today's blog post is on using research questions, and what makes a good one.

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #Academia #AcademicChatter #Writing #ResearchQuestions #editing
Blog title (in blue/purple): Using Research Questions: Defeat data-hoarding and discard the chaff. Photo images: one of the 1911 image of the dragon Fafner with his hoard, and another of wheat and chaff.
August 24, 2025 at 7:32 PM
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As I sort my photos, I will be blogging about my seven-week Asian sojourn this summer. Today is my first post, and talks about an interesting night in Delhi...

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#Asia, #AsianSojourn, #Blog, #Delhi, #HotelStories, #Tourism, #Travel
Blog title: Asian Sojourn 1: The Hotel That Wasn't There (Delhi). Image is a photo of an after-dark street scene with shops, a number of people, a couple of motor bikes/scooters, and an opensided truck. The scene is colorful and well-lit with all the advertising lights.
August 23, 2025 at 5:19 PM
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So, another blog post exploring the Brand (Vorarlberg, Austria) Parish Church frescoes of the early 16th century.

silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#blog #research #ArtHistory #16thc #frescoes #14Nothelfer #ParishChurch
A church wall with two wwindows and two pair of fresco panels, each surrounded by brick-red painted frames. The Blog post title is "The North Wall of Brand's Parish Church: Challenges of Interpretation"
June 8, 2025 at 11:38 PM