Kristina Richardson

Maybe it's time for a thread on medieval Romani history? The last major monograph on the topic was De Goeje's 1903 "Mémoire sur les migrations des tsiganes à travers l'Asie." Since then, medieval Asian Roma have been largely lost as historical subjects. archive.org/details/mmoire…

Workshop on 16c & 17c printing in African, Hebraic, and Middle Eastern languages 4-5 May 2026 at the @librarycongress Register in person at go.loc.gov/70WH50YEGTT Via zoom at go.loc.gov/3ymC50YFe7O Via @krisrich

4-5 May 2026, @librarycongress workshop on 16c & 17c printing in African, Hebraic, and Middle Eastern languages blogs.loc.gov/international-…

In the podcast: Craig Perry's "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt" dives into everyday documents, like wills and manumission deeds, to reconstruct how Jewish households in Egypt bought, sold, owned and freed enslaved people... asianreviewofbooks.com/podcast-with-c…

I just came out of a fascinating virtual presentation on this book, which argues that enslaved labor is central to the production and transmission of the New Testament. In other words, you could think of Christianity as religion powered by the enslaved.

brill.com/display/title/… :: Coming out in May 2026

For the April 2026 issue (103.1) of Der Islam, we present eight new articles and ten book reviews. degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/is…

They served as soldiers and laborers, gradually converted to Islam, and eventually migrated through Armenia and Anatolia into Europe. References to the Zutt in medieval Arabic sources effectively describe proto-Romani and Dom populations before their westward dispersal.

Per de Goeje and confirmed by modern genetics and linguistics, the Roma descend from the Jat (Zutt) of northwestern India/Sind, who were relocated to Iran and Iraq under Sasanian and early Islamic rule.

This looks like a pretty cool and rare vacancy: the @ICRC is looking for a historian careers.icrc.org/job/Geneva-%28…

🇸🇾 Young Dom girls, Syria. The Dom are one of the eastern branches of the Gypsy (Romani) people. Photo by Doruk Seymen

Earlier this month, @VUBrussel annulled the planned appointment of @HarrygPettit after a short but fierce cancel-campaign, here on @X and elsewhere. If you value academic freedom and freedom of expression, please read and consider signing this open letter: docs.google.com/document/d/e/2…

Finally Jane Hathaway's Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah is out - and in open access! openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647…

ICE arrested our beloved professor Vahid Abedini. He is Farzaneh Family Assistant Prof of Iranian Studies at the University of Oklahoma's @OklahomaU's Boren College of International Studies @oucis Dr. Abedini was boarding a flight on his way to attend the Middle East Studies Association (@MESA_1966) in Washington DC when he was detained and put to jail. Nov 22. He has been wrongfully detained because he has a valid H-1B visa —a non-immigrant work visa granted to individuals in “specialty occupations,” including higher education faculty. We are praying for his swift release.

#OpenAccess #NewRelease An Important Volume #IslamicManuscript #Codicology #Marginalia Marginal Matters Explorations into Commenting and Glossing Techniques in Arabic Manuscript Cultures ed. Stefanie Brinkmann.BRill 2025 brill.com/display/title/… PDF🎯 brill.com/downloadpdf/di…

Der Islam 102.2 is hot off the press! First up: [open-access] Ana Davitashvili, "Sealing and the Root kh-t-m in the Qurʾān and pre-Islamic Christian Literature: On the 'Seal of the Prophets' and Disbelievers Having 'Seals on Their Hearts and Hearing'” degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/1…

the best way to encourage students to resist the temptation of ChatGPT is to help them feel like real writers & take pride in their voice. I tell my students to start writing “morning pages”—three handwritten pages on anything they want to write about. I tell them to transcribe themselves talking on the phone about their paper ideas to someone. I tell them to read their work out loud & hear how they sound—& if they like how they sound. I tell them to pick unique sign offs for emails (down with “Best”). I tell them to read their social media posts & text messages & to analyze them for voice—their tone, their use of internal punctuation, their humor. I encourage them instead of police them. I make a case for writing as an art they should try to master.

as an English professor, I’d go as far to say these days I’m excited to see typos & fragments & run on sentences & page-long paragraphs & awkward word choices & any imperfection that suggests a human being sat down to do the very hard thing of writing a college paper.

Basra, Iraq 🌴🇮🇶

@KiswahiliNaTwea @Iamturyamusiima @IanFirminho @Rachealkyy @ssentongopeter5 @gad_rogers *Ile ni miti yangu.

Hamjambo Learn a little bit of #Swahili grammar

Ancient potsherd pavement visible at Owo.