dr. meg smith

There’s definitely something special about doing this work in a center. I finished that bunting during a making session with faculty, staff, and students. Fac/staff found it so cathartic and joyful to make in a scholarly space, and students felt comfortable to open up and join in conversation.

A strip of homemade fabric bunting in greens and blues with the letters i-r-i-s appliquéd on the flags

Step 1 of @siueiris.bsky.social’s glow-up! More #DHMakes to come, including data quilts, literary craft, subversive cross stitch, and whatever else strikes our collective fancies.

Look, I’m not saying that Cork is the center of the world, but I’m not NOT saying it…

Always and forever!

Spoiler: I think the answer is yes!

#MedievalSky #skystorians #IrishHistory #DigitalHumanities

Have you checked out the @blacklitnetwork.bsky.social yet? It's got a wealth of creative tools for engaging with Black literature! Head over and check out the Literary Navigator Device to find your next read. (Give them a follow on your social media platforms while you're at it!) #DigitalHumanities

Ooh, good lead. Thank you!

If you found the tumblr post, I think that name is invented! It was a blog dedicated to imagining wizarding fashion, and all the images have fake names attached to them.

(But if you found it somewhere else, please let me know!!)

Thanks, this is helpful!

A sepia-toned image of a woman wearing a jeweled hennin, perhaps from around the turn of the 20th century

Hey history hivemind, does anyone recognize this image? A student wants to use it in her capstone and is trying to track down both citation and context. The earliest version of it in a reverse image search is from a Harry Potter fandom tumblr post in 2013. #skystorians #medievalism #medievalsky 🗃️

Since I made this for freshmen, it’s light on early modern content. But here’s my guide to finding usable media for our digital humanities students. (Copied from a Wordpress site, so excuse any formatting weirdness.)

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

After weeks of dire warnings about my Gmail/drive reaching capacity, I have freed up a solid 8% of space just by deleting all the melodramatic, badgering emails from various DNC pols and PACs that were hanging out in my filters.

A silver road bike parked in front of the entrance sign to Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area in Hazelwood, MO

A rectangular stone ruin on a hilltop in the woods. The remaining walls are about two feet tall at the highest point.

A selfie on top of a bluff at Saint Stanislaus, with wintry, leafless forest in the background

Slightly larger than pea size hail on the ground

Did a little field work and recon at Saint Stanislaus this morning before I bring my students here, and I am happy to report that I did not fall in the creek this time. I did get hailed on though, so there’s still room for improvement.

No ashes, but Lenten fasts (generally from a habit, not food) were very en vogue at my weird evangelical school in the early 2000s. It was international but very influenced by Campus Crusade missionaries.

There were ashes at my Anglican church, and people at school looked VERY askance at them.

My pandora is still going strong!

An appliqué block featuring two trains crossing the Eads Bridge in opposite directions. The Arch is visible out to the left side. Flowers grow along the tracks, including one clover and one bee - a reference to Emily Dickinson’s poem “To make a prairie.”

Emily Dickinson 1830 - 1886 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Another Dickinson-inspired appliqué! This one’s from her poem “To make a prairie” about intentional placemaking. It evokes ecological care, but I wanted something that blends that with human infrastructures that also manifest care. So here’s an ode to public transit! #DHMakes #PublicTransit

My brain went straight to environmental personhood

A side by side of a picture of Liam Conejo Ramos after his release from ICE detention and the similarly aged child to whom Bad Bunny handed a Grammy during the halftime show

They don’t look like the same child to me

Oh that’s awful, but exactly the kind of behavior that makes me love them so much.

An appliqué quilt block, approximately 11x14 inches. It features an angry, honking Canadian goose and some lily pads, with the text “Hope is the thing with feathers,” a line from an Emily Dickinson poem.

This idea has been rattling around my head for a while. I have a deep fondness for Canadian geese, and their brash, unapologetic defense of the vulnerable among them feels like the right brand of hope for this moment. Eventually I’ll stitch down the edges and finish as a wall hanging. #DHMakes

For myself, I’m trying to focus on the most flagrant offenders that I know can afford to pay for snow clearance. Walgreens, Target, Schnucks? Fair game. Churches and small businesses? Maybe a lighter touch.

But I’ve noticed small, local businesses are much more likely to have cleared already.

That’s a great question, and I’d love an answer! A generous take is that it probably comes down in part to capacity. My next move after sending postcards to businesses to remind/inform them of their obligations will be to submit Citizen’s Service Bureau requests, flagging this as a code violation.

Let me know if you want some!

How many do you want? I’ll be out and about this weekend…

🫡

💌Mail day💌

I’ve got 150 of these suckers, and I’m willing to share. Big ups to the Ink Spot, a local union print shop that printed these same day for me! #StLouis #STL #stlwx

Oh my god, I love the vaporware and the printing press! When you have that store up and running, I would totally buy those for @siueiris.bsky.social.

Yes! The residential sidewalks are bad and frustrating, but I have a lot more grace for them. The businesses who’ve obviously paid for snow removal but not on the sidewalks are the main targets of my ire.

I just put in an order for 150 postcards with the snow-clearing ordinance to send to local businesses. No more hiding behind feigned ignorance! #StLouis #STL #stlwx