M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska

Neil’s newsletter is destined to be required DC history reading. 🗃️

VA double header #1: On March 14, I'm *thrilled* to be visiting Jamestown-Yorktown with "On National Commemorations and How We Do History Now: The Bicentennial, the Semiquincentennial, and What We Can Learn About the Future of the Past" www.jyfmuseums.org/events/progr...

absolutely--ideologically, they're straight out of the postwar! they're also oddly museal, which I am interested in...

someone (probably me) should write a short piece about the banners on all of the departments (labor has teddy roosevelt, for example) and how they're mobilizing a reframing of u.s. history

I would *love* to know more about the historical research behind this display (i.e. which prompt did they feed grok)

I am writing an entire book about this phenomenon!

a truly wonderful visit--thank you for everything! ❤️

historian speaking from a podium to a packed lecture hall

amazing #Brown2026 / History Dept talk by @mjrp.bsky.social re: The Historian and the Historian-ish: Notes on the Future of the Past!

more tomorrow/Friday at 10am at the JNBC

it's nice to be here! about to go see if my favorite downtown coffee shops still exist!

Made it! Enjoying the extremely PVD view from my hotel window and looking forward to climbing Mount College Hill up to my talk! ❄️❤️

If someone is working on such a piece, I have a title for you: "Why Universities Should Band Together and Drop the Contracts of Any LLM that isn't Actively Fighting This, But Won't"

if someone has written a good explainer on how higher ed tech contracts (ex. Canvas) work, I would like to read it. (bonus if there's an explainer of the university-administrator-to-tech-consultant-pipeline, which I imagine is prodigious).

The Historian and the Historian-ish In the contemporary, people are engaging in forms of historical practice that allow them to act in the role of the historian—whether that means a...

Am truly having trouble imagining how on earth travel to and within Rhode Island can be functioning right now but guess I'm about to find out! Looking forward to bundling up and heading to Brown tomorrow!

events.brown.edu/history/even...

Blocking capital weather gang for mental health reasons

This happened to me a year ago! We were about to pull in and then just stood there for an hour

wow, Herblock :(

there are a few more in the works, so I'll be adding as they finalize!

and on May 12th, back in D.C. at Tudor Place, as part of their Landmark Lecture series, talking about commemoration www.eventbrite.com/e/landmark-l...

In April, it's @oah.org in Philadelphia, on a truly stacked panel "Who Counts as a Historian" with Linda Shopes, Andrea Smith, and Amy Starecheski www.oah.org/conferences/...

VA double header #2: March 15th, I'm the opening session of the annual meeting of the Virginia Association of Museums in Williamsburg, discussing my new work on "The Historianish" www.vamuseums.org/conference

VA double header #1: On March 14, I'm *thrilled* to be visiting Jamestown-Yorktown with "On National Commemorations and How We Do History Now: The Bicentennial, the Semiquincentennial, and What We Can Learn About the Future of the Past" www.jyfmuseums.org/events/progr...

thank you!! 😊

part deux of my upcoming visit: asking folks to bring in examples of history (or representations of historians) from popular culture and social media, and then we'll analyze it together! I've been doing this with my own AU students and it's been a blast to see what they come up with!

The Historian and the Historian-ish In the contemporary, people are engaging in forms of historical practice that allow them to act in the role of the historian—whether that means a...

delighted to be heading back to Providence this week to share some new work! As a person who thinks deeply about commemoration, I'm really making the rounds this year so watch this space!

events.brown.edu/history/even...

this is one of the most montgomery county things I have ever seen

lots of other abominations in this article but I think it's worth pointing out this undermining reference to Smithsonian Institution as "a group." Part of the project here is false equivalence between actual scholarship and partisan hackery

about as boring as the article itself, I'd say!

there is an interesting way to think about how grantmaking has helped to shape "the humanities" (a category that was, in fact, popularized via grantmaking) but pinning it entirely on one person at Mellon is myopic and shortsighted

I think the greatest gift college professors in the humanities can give to students right now is a seminar room where, for 80 minutes twice a week, nothing that happens to them is a sales pitch for an AI product.

the call is coming from inside the house