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historyasif.bsky.social
New Yorker. Historian of Science and Technology. Space. Music. Soviet History. Comics
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Congratulations to Victor Seow @eastasiascitech.bsky.social -- an amazing scholar and author of the fantastic 'Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia' (U Chicago, 2021)...

Some good news

100% this.

As a reminder, the AHA council approved the following, about a month after the invasion of Ukraine. www.historians.org/news/aha-sta...

Faced with an overwhelming vote by its members to condemn scholasticide in Palestine, the American Historical Association council has vetoed the resolution. Entirely in character for an organization that’s long been useless, but still galling

This is me literally every single day.

Here is a statement by my colleague Katherine Franke about the end of her time teaching at Columbia. Please read it. drive.google.com/file/d/1i4cO...

Space Karen has a long history of explicitly targeting women and attempting to destroy their careers. I’ve witnessed him sabotage space journalists (all women) over several years and last month he targeted 4 random women who worked in climate science/policy for the govt: www.cnn.com/2024/11/27/b...

Thrilled to announce the official publication of my new book — The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism Grab my book to go beyond the vaporous hype and get the real material analysis of technological capitalism that we all need! www.ucpress.edu/books/the-me...

#AHA25 resolution against scholasticide in Gaza passes 428 to 88!!

Loren Graham (based at MIT) one of the greatest historians of science, who wrote on Russian & Soviet science, passed away on Dec 15. Loren's brilliant insights and publications are many but he was also an incredibly kind & generous scholar. He supported me throughout my career & I owe him immensely.

Chenjerai is an officer of the American Association of University Professors, and honestly all members and all academics should take this as a threat to us collectively

BREAKING: The AAUP condemns today’s faculty arrests at NYU. “This crackdown on NYU faculty is part of a distressing pattern of repression of pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses nationwide.” — AAUP President Todd Wolfson. ⬇️ www.aaup.org/news/aaup-co...

Alright, I wrote a rant about my feelings about the Global Middle Ages as institutional, historiographical, and moral paradigm. You can read it here. journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/al...

yeremi colino, a teenager stabbed to death in NYC last night by a group of men after he told them he didn’t speak english, deserves as much attention as the healthcare CEO, if not more. let’s give it to him. www.amny.com/new-york/man...

The new issue of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian is out featuring articles by Lewis Siegelbaum, Ann Komaromi; @faithhillis.bsky.social and @vhtroyansky.bsky.social; reviews by @bryangigantino.bsky.social and others. muse.jhu.edu/issue/53729

Fantastic open access article on the history & historiography of technology in modern South Asia by @amandazillo.bsky.social (which I had a small part in bringing to publication). She invites us to rethink hierarchies of technical authority and the notion of “vernacular” technical knowledge.

My favourite archive in India, at NCBS in Bengaluru, is looking for a distinguished professor to work with their collections.

All of your centuries can't be long.

Great workshop by the BASEES Eurasian Regions Study Group. 👇

Hey, #STS folks. TIL that @jay.bsky.team, CEO of this place, has a degree in Science, Technology and Society from Penn! 🤯 In case you need to tell your students what they can do with an STS degree…

"For reasons I couldn’t explain.. I believed shoegaze, and Loveless in particular, to be deeply transgender music. Both Kevin Shields’ & Bilinda Butcher’s voices are high, airy, and de-sexed. Every boundary between.. discrete sounds is blurred to illegibility." www.hearingthings.co/modes-of-tra...

New book:"The opening of classified documents from the Soviet era has been dubbed the 'archival revolution' due to its unprecedented scale, drama, and impact. With a storyteller's sensibility, Cristina Vatulescu ..takes on the ..challenges of reading in these archives." www.sup.org/books/litera...

"Standing in a power station. On acid." On the history of LSD, electronic music, and 'Selected Ambient Works Vol. II' by Aphex Twin (being re-released to today): thequietus.com/opinion-and-... #aphextwin

Some time ago, NASA hired me to write about stuff humanity had flung into the heavens, far beyond Earth. They published it in 2018. This is it, a 372-page reference on every spaceship sent to deep space (cover by explorer & filmmaker extraordinaire @arielwaldman.com): www.nasa.gov/history/hist...