@petergleick I often don't understand how this can still surprise anyone: It's the blueprint of every fascist system. We can learn from history that one of the first steps is to eradicate unwelcome #education and critical thinking. After all, how else can people be collectively stupidised by propaganda? @academicchatter
On the value of the #humanities: "Humanist inquiry of the sort we pursue, with its situated knowledges and its cultural attunements and its fine-grained attentiveness to the shifting complexity of ethical and moral life, can give restorative heft to even the most tarnished of these ideals. You might need them." -- Peter Coviello, head of the #English department at Univesity of Illinois Chicago Circle
The chair of the National Endowment for the #Humanities, Shelly C. Lowe, left her position on Wednesday “at the direction of President #Trump,” the agency said.
Lowe, a scholar of higher education & the first #NativeAmerican to lead the agency, was nominated by former President Joseph R. #Biden Jr. in Oct 2021 & confirmed by the Senate in Feb 2022. Michael McDonald, the agency’s general council, was named its acting chairman on Wednesday.
#NEH #WhiteSupremacy #USpol
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/arts/national-endowment-humanities-trump-shelly-lowe.html?smid=url-share
Announcing the latest title in Open Humanities Press's MEDIA : ART : WRITE : NOW series:
Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence by Gary Hall.
Available open access - to be downloaded for free:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/
If we want a socially and environmentally just future, do we need a radical new theory of change – or to radically change theory? Unsettling received ideas of the author and the book, originality and copyright, real and artificial intelligence, Masked Media tests ‘non-modernist-liberal’ modes of creating and sharing knowledge enabled by media technologies, from writing through to GenAI. Thinking outside the black box that renders Euro-Western knowledge-making practices invisible – keeping the human ontologically separate from the nonhuman – it shows there’s no such thing as the human, the nonhuman already being in(the)human.
#newmedia #academicpublishing #experimentalwriting #humanities
#philosophy #ai #openai #genai
"Rep. 1 "...such a competition is rigged from the beginning, since it is organized by an #oligarch who controls the govt. He is fit. You are not. That is natural."
...
"Rep. 1. “...yes, the point is to make the #government entirely dysfunctional for the rest of you. But, right, we will keep the govt functional for us..."
Rep. 4 "Of course we lie. Lying is good. Let #science & the #humanities compete with other opinions in a free market of ideas."
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-doge-helpline
Hello #DHd2025 
Wir freuen uns, die diesjährige Internationale Tagung der Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum zu unterstützen.
Kommt vorbei und mit uns ins Gespräch! Ihr findet uns am Stand der #Humanities@NFDI gemeinsam mit unseren geschätzten Kolleg:innen der anderen drei geisteswissenschaftlichen Konsortien der German National Research Data Infrastructure @NFDI: @nfdi4objects, @NFDI4Memory und @Textplus.
Wir freuen uns auf euch! 
#NFDIrocks #NFDI4Culture #nfdi @DHdKonferenz
Call for Papers: Workshop "Critical Theory of the Computational" (Berlin, October 16-17, 2025)
This workshop aims to use critical theories to explore how digital and computational systems are influencing societal changes and how these systems are also part of broader global transformations.
Submit your abstract by April 30, 2025
More: https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/call-for-papers-critical-theory-of-the-computational/
Hcommons.social is a Hometown Mastodon server for humanities scholars and practitioners around the world:
This server has additional features including much longer post lengths and local server-only post visibility options.
You can find out more about hcommons.social at https://hcommons.social/about or contact the admin @hello
As arts and humanities enrolment declines, could making programs more practical help?
Faculty say fellowships, career courses and other practical changes could help students realize the valuable skills that arts and humanities programs have to offer.
#education #arts #humanities #career #Radio #TheCurrent
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/arts-and-humanities-practical-1.7469940?cmp=rss
As arts and humanities enrolment declines, could making programs more practical help?
Faculty say fellowships, career courses and other practical changes could help students realize the valuable skills that arts and humanities programs have to offer.
#education #arts #humanities #career #Radio #TheCurrent
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/arts-and-humanities-practical-1.7469940?cmp=rss
Our university is now a subscribing member of White Horse Press, a family-run academic publisher specializing in #environmental #humanities & #SocialSciences! 
Read more: https://www.rug.nl/library/news/250226-white-horse-press
Discover other #diamond #OpenAccess initiatives we support: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/diamond-open-access-at-the-ug/open-access-initiatives/
So schools with #arts & #humanities programs trying to promote themselves & make the case for inclusion, can't just try & prove their career relevance. They're also fighting this idea that there's no room for creativity, empathy, insight & other "right-brained" modalities in a world of logic, innovation, productivity & hard #science.
When I look at the world today - even as a technologist - I question the outcome of an even harder shift toward #STEM to the exclusion of all else.
\5
#cfp #aac European Academy of Religion EuARe - July 8-12, Vienna, Austria
University of Vienna - Research Center #Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society
Deadline : April 4th, 2025
#academia @religion #socialsciences #humanities
https://www.europeanacademyofreligion.org/proposal-submission-2025
There is a positive correlation between the last ten years of cutting #humanities programs in U.S. universities and what we see happening in the country now.
Just moved to Fosstodon! #introduction
Dad and husband in #Pennsylvania. I teach #biochemistry, #molecularbiology, and #microbiology (and #humanities) in #highered.
Daily #Emacs user since the late 80s, #GNU #Linux on and off since the 90s. Strictly #FreeSoftware since 2010s. #Debian, #GrapheneOS, #OrgMode and #Emacs for teaching and research.
#Japanese #日本語, #francais, y #espanol roto. #DnD and #books. Love #camping #hiking #walking #cycling #coding #elisp
Beyond #causality
https://aeon.co/essays/to-better-understand-the-world-follow-the-paths-of-mathematics
#Mathematics shows that understanding isn't just about finding causes, but about recognizing complex structural relationships that connect mind and nature. It shows that the mental and physical worlds aren't separate - they're different aspects of the same reality.
So, stop seeing #science and #humanities as competing worldviews. They're complementary ways of exploring our interconnected world, with mathematics as the translator between them.
Just listened to the Common Descent podcast's current episode on the palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope. And I wonder: scholars and scientists, who is the worst person in your speciality that you regularly have to cite?
In my case it's numismatist Ian Wiséhn (1950-2020), because he has 350 pieces of work in our main bibliographical database while also stealing massively from the Royal Coin Cabinet during his 14 years as its director.
https://commondescentpodcast.com/2025/02/15/episode-211-edward-drinker-cope/
On AI analytics, illusions of control and the convergence of big data fascism and populist fascism in the second Trump administration -
I was interviewed Jessica Saxby for the philosophy journal Technophany. This is mostly a sequel/update to my essay 'Crapularity Hermeneutics' from 2016 (published as part of the Open Access book "Pattern Discrimination" in 2018)
(With special thanks to Yuk Hui.)
https://philotechne.substack.com/p/interview-with-florian-cramer-commentaries
@juergen_hubert You can relax. A major movement in the #Humanities argued for half a century that Truth and Facts were meaningless.
I highly recommend Jens Soentgen's "The Example of Rubber" for Cambridge University Press's *Indigenous Knowledge and Material Histories* series. A sterling example of what environmental humanities is at its best. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/indigenous-knowledge-and-material-histories/16CD0F80ED56660E9194ECBF8DEEC781 #bookstodon #humanities #environment #indigenous #chemistry #polymer #polymers
