Josh Shepperd

Grateful to coffee this morning. Thank you coffee.

Big talk today, went well. It is beer o’clock. 

This is effectively the beginning of the end of the best public media production culture in the world. Brexit destroyed the entire country.

RIP - much of my public research is guided by Gramsci and the interpretation of his work in the Critical Pedagogical tradition. I’ve called upon Thomas’s important scholarship to think organizational strategy through on a number of occasions.

What happens when a court ruling suddenly throws your life into turmoil? My new paper explores how trans+ people dealt with the aftermath of the FWS judgement, the EHRC's response, and political antagonism, showing they remained defiant, finding space for joy alongside fear and rage. bit.ly/4jhvf96

The American Historical Association @historians.org has announced its book prize winners and I STRONGLY recommend the following to you: First Miranda Spieler's _Slaves in Paris_ has won TWO prizes from the AHA (as did her first book! that has to be a record) www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Delighted to be interviewed alongside Kate at Columbia Journalism Review about the organizational history and future of NPR, PBS, and public media in the US.

Looks like two new university book contracts are on their way before 2026 year's end. One connected to the Library of Congress work, the other to my political economic/public media research. More to announce in the coming months.

Acid Mothers Temple live in Denver. Kawabata Makoto is still one of the best guitarists in the world. About as good as music gets.

Thrilled to announce that NSF just awarded PI TSU Historian of Science & Mathematics Roger Hart & me (Co-PI) a major 3-Year NSF grant on the history of quantum computing/quantum information science (scholarship, 30 CBI oral histories, infrastructural tools for study...) cse.umn.edu/cbi/news/new...

Happy to share that "Sixty Years of Daisies: Perspectives on Věra Chytilová’s Anarchic Classic" is out now in @jcmsjournal.bsky.social. Essays by @hennefem.bsky.social, @aurspiers.bsky.social, Leana Hirschfeld-Kroen, Barbora Bartunkova, Dijana Jelača + Meta Mazaj, edited by Masha Shpolberg + me.

Tonight’s porch view

Starting 'The State of Digital Studies' here in Basel today with @berrydm.bsky.social talking about the Vector Paradigm. Register via contralab.online/state-of-dig...

Honored to be part of this! Hanging out near the Rockies in January will make this Calgary gal very nostalgic. 🏔️🏔️🏔️

Website live for our new academic conference “New Terrain,” in University of Colorado partnership with the Sundance Film Festival. I’m directing. This year we’re featuring 12 invited talks and a brainstorming session to discuss how New Terrain will grow in 2028. www.colorado.edu/cmdi/new-ter...

Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/kQdKbY1

Autumn in Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Today’s John Coltrane’s centennial. Listening to his music taught me as much about thinking as Gramsci, Husserl, Hall, or Anderson. One of the very few historical figures who I’d call a hero. 

Delighted to join the History on Film podcast with Brad to talk about the rise of broadcast journalism as a 1940s nation-building paradigm, how it became a mid-century public service, and the emergence of newsertainment in the mid-1970s. Plus…Ned Beatty.

Tonight’s porch view. No filter!

It's arrived! It was wonderful to work with colleagues on this volume on Copy/Rights & Early Cinema. We'll celebrate the book in Pordenone, Italy on Oct. 6 with Ian Christie and Paolo Tosini, among others, at the 45th Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Days of Silent Cinema). doi.org/10.3998/mpub...

The professors and instructors who turn classrooms back into spaces for reading and discussion, are going to leave the biggest legacies in this world. Everyone one else will disappear into LLM wallpaper proxies and derivatives. 

One of the most visionary leaders in the history of The Smithsonian (his appointment is titled "The Secretary"), and the DC heritage sector. Up there with Archibald McLeish at the Library of Congress. Bunch's example positioned memory and recognition as central to preservation and curation.

Been enjoying the Merlin app, from Cornell University. You just turn on the app and leave it by the window and it tells you which birds are making what sounds outside.

I was interviewed by Times Higher Education about the changing landscape of Academic Twitter, its migration to Bluesky, and how the conditions and institutional support for public scholarship shifted over the past three years. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/has-aca...

Looks like I’ll be the director of an academic conference as part of University of Colorado’s new partnership with the Sundance Film Festival, coming to Boulder in January. It’ll be baby steps this year, but there will be a lot to plan for January 2028.

Was just invited to give my 13th annual invited talk at the Library of Congress. It'll be my 18th overall at the institution.

I hope y’all see that this will mean the imminent closure of a number of graduate programs.

The American Historical Association hired a lobbying firm to help silence member advocacy on Palestine. In this essay, Adam Rzepka covers @historians.org's relationship w/ Thorn Run Partners, its deep ethical conflicts, & the advocacy crisis AHA has thrust upon us. www.chronicle.com/article/a-sc...

Josh circa 2022

Ok serious question for class prep: what's your list of "five best or greatest films"? Not favorite movies, best films.

Will someone please buy this for me? I promise to have you over and cook dinner and we will admire its sublimity together. 

Neighborhood view on my evening stroll.

Frank Lloyd Wright over Lake Monona, Madison

Northwestern University is reportedly shuttering its 80-year-old Program of African Studies, laying off staff and keeping students in the dark It is the "first formal academic program focused on Africa in the United States."