Jon Dell Isola

@medievaljon.bsky.social

2443 Followers 945 Following

PhD Medieval Historian. I think about the meaning and purpose of history a lot in my newsletter Among the Ruins (http://among-the-ruins.ghost.io). Special Projects Assistant @medievalacademy.bsky.social. All opinions my own.

Pint glass with Arnulf of Carinthia's monogram on it.

Idris Elba meme: "Learn to sit back and observe. Not everything needs a reaction."

Norman Rockwell "Freedom of Speech" painting.

"The general state of the world hardly helps, said Kobayashi, who described herself as a “prepper.” All civilizations “kind of crash” after 250 years, she said. “I’m not saying there’s a zombie apocalypse coming,” she said. “But we’re prepared.”"

Idris Elba meme: "Learn to sit back and observe. Not everything needs a reaction."

Trailer Park Boys scene with J-Roc saying: "Why you so worried about time, anyway, you know? Only time I'm concerned with is having a good one."

Boromir saying "give them a moment for pity's sake."

Sopranos scene "it's anti-Italian discrimination" but replace anti-Italian with anti-American.

Paul Klee's "Denkmal auf einem Friedhof" with the title of my post: "Is Revisionist History Actually Bad?"

Poster for the movie Striking Distance

Picture of Oppenheimer with the text "Now I am become sleepy, the goer to bed".

Cover for James Banner book "The Ever-Changing Past".

Headline: "Now that Aaron Rodgers is back, the revisionist history begins." https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/now-that-aaron-rodgers-is-back-the-revisionist-history-begins

Pope Leo XIV is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State.

Tweet by Ayo Edebiri: "I'm seated. The theater employees are scared and asking me to leave because it's "not released yet" but I'm simply too seated."

Opinion
The best filing system? The one where every piece of paper goes in the bin
Adrian Chiles

Cover of Pierre Bourdieu's Language and Symbolic Power

"This post was fact checked by real American patriots: true" meme but American has been replaced by "Byzantine"

Screenshot of the MDR website "Browse Resources" tab (https://mdr-maa.org/resource/), showing recent additions. There are six recent additions: Corpus Synodalium, Virtual Mappa, Amalarius's Bells, Four Anglo-Carolingian Minitexts, Lexikon zur Byzantinischen Gräzistik, and Monasterium.

Title and abstract for my article "Shaping Dynastic History in the Charters of Arnulf of Carinthia". The abstract reads: The successful coup of Arnulf of Carinthia in 887 resulted in a new political world in the former Carolingian Empire. For the first time since 751, non-Carolingian rulers appeared in West Francia, Italy, and Upper Burgundy. Historians have seen this as a moment when the power and mythology of Carolingian dynastic supremacy lost its lustre. Yet charters from the remaining Carolingian ruler, Arnulf, reveal that Carolingian pedigree continued to matter. This article argues that Arnulf ’s charters created a tailored version of the dynastic past to present himself as the rightful ruler through processes of elision and addition.

Scene from Frasier with the dad saying "when you insult this restaurant you insult me" but changed to "when you insult this movie you insult me".

Two books lying on a wood desk. One is Conor O'Brien's "The Rise of Christian Kingship in the Early Medieval West". The other is the edited collection "Annals in Carolingian Europe".

Scene from Seinfeld where Poppy tells Kramer "now on this issue, there can be no debate."

Page of the Green Knight with annotations by David Lowery in red in the margins.

Stone epitaph for the Carolingian Emperor Louis II. Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, 2007. From wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:0111_-_Milano_-_Sant%27Ambrogio_Lastra_tombale_Ludovico_II_(%2B_875)_-_Foto_Giovanni_Dall%27Orto_25-Apr-2007.jpg

Exterior view of the Dew Drop Inn in Washington DC. It is a clear sunny day.

Title page for Paul Kershaw's book "Peaceful Kings: Peace, Power, and the Early Medieval Political Imagination".

Scene from Uncut Gems with the line "I took a crazy risk, and its about to pay off."

First page of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay titled History

Cover image for David Woodman's 2025 book The First King of England.

Boston Herald headline: "This is no mis-steak: Boston Archdiocese says no special dispensation for Red Sox home opener on Good Friday
‘An opportunity for Catholics for reflection, fasting, prayer, and penance’"

Image of Frank Reynolds from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The caption reads, from Caesar: "Brutus! You are like a son to me." Brutus' reply replaces the normal quote of "so anyway, I started blasting" with "so anyway, I started stabbing."

Weird AI picture of a siege with a bunch of soldiers standing around what is probably meant to be a siege engine of some type. A castle burns in the background

Photo of Benjamin Dreyer's book, "Dreyer's English: an Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style." It is resting on my lap on top of a tote bag

A
Among the many reproaches made against the Middle Ages one of the most insistent aspersions has been a three-headed slander, barking like Cerberus to this effect. First, that the streets of mediaeval towns were constantly foul-smelling and full of filth, owing to the lack of closed sewers and private or public conveniences, to the custom of throwing refuse into the street, and to the failure of the municipal authorities to clean the pavements. Second,that soap and baths were little known in those benighted days. Third, that these dirty and pestilence-breeding living conditions in the crowded towns were accompanied by a complete lack of anything resembling sanitary legislation and administration or care for public health.So far as I know, very little specific evidence has accompanied these broad charges or, at least,one could desire a great deal more than has been adduced. One suspects that they have been largely due to prejudice against the Middle Ages

APPLICATION:
Applicants should supply:
1) a cover letter that includes a statement about the candidate's teaching and research interests, experience relevant to the position, and a discussion of how the candidate proposes to develop as a teacher-scholar;
2) a teaching portfolio, inclusive of teaching philosophy, sample syllabi, and student evaluations for courses taught (if available);
3) a curriculum vitae;
4) transcripts (copies are acceptable for screening);
5) an article-length writing sample; and
6) three letters of recommendation that speak to the candidate's scholarship and teaching. In the cover letter, candidates are encouraged to highlight skills and experiences that demonstrate a commitment to promoting inclusive academic environments and engaging across differences.

Academic friends, why do folks share job ads here? Surely if you have any chance of getting these posts, you are already hearing about them through other routes

Copy of Oathbreakers by David Perry and Matthew Gabriele

Photo of the book Too Like the Lightning on a bookshelf at Lost City Books, DC

Wikipedia article for "List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1910-1970"

Screenshot of group text with picture of hot dogs and text "almost got into two accidents for these, but they are worth it"

Cover of the Boston Review titled "The Real Border Crisis"

I think it's an echo from the 20th/19th centuries where the average professor *was* an old white guy talking about his favorite conquest of the Orientals, and while that was roughly true of all disciplines of the time period, most others got better PR while milhist kept the bad branding

Picture of my newly cleaned desk with computer monitors, keyboard and mouse. It looks tidy

Shrugging emoji with the caption "going to therapy" contrasted with the thumbs up emoji with the caption "becoming a medieval historian"

Guys on couch excited meme

Blu-ray case for the deluxe edition of David Lowery's adaptation of the Green Knight

Beginning of the article "2096" by Dan Smail in Speculum 101, no. 1. "The year is 2096. The following is an account of the events that led to the folding of the Medieval Academy of America thirteen years earlier, in 2083. The text, along with four thick folders containing neatly handwritten notes, was found among the papers of the last editor of Speculum. For more than a decade now, friends and former colleagues in medieval studies, the few who are left to me, have asked me to set down my thoughts regarding the series of untimely events that led to the shuttering of the Medieval Academy of America thirteen years ago. At ﬁrst, I didn’t see the point in brooding over those painful memories. Beyond that, I found it hard to imagine that anything I might write could improve upon whatever TextWrite, ProText, or any of the others might fashion in response to the prompt. I began to think seriously about the task only when a wise friend, with characteristic gentleness, noted how those who study the traces of the past should not be shy about making their own contributions to those traces."

Fake sticker in the subway reading "Reminder: fare evasion is punishable by DEATH"

Thousand yard stare Michael Petersen from To Live and Die in LA

Text from me saying "I think you can do it" and my friends reply "Brother I feel the dreadful call of the netherworld"

Search page of RI Opac for "Arnulf of Carinthia" with the first result being my PhD dissertation

Screenshot of my two panels at Leeds, one as a moderator/organiser for a panel on minimal computing and the middle ages, one for a roundtable on doing medieval studies in third spaces (i.e. outside the academy)

Cupcake with vanilla frosting. Milano cookies with eyes and cut skittles meant to look like turkeys, candy corn are the feathers

Scene from Seinfeld where Poppy insists to Kramer on the correct pizza toppings, but now changed to "EB Garamond is the best font"

Picture of me giving a conference paper titled 'Arnulf of Carinthia and the End of the Carolingian Empire: Charters, Ancestry, and the Legitimacy of Rulership'

Cover of Nathan Perl-Rosenthal's book The Age of Revolutiona and the Generations Who Made It