Luisa Calè
@luisacale
Professor of Romantic & 19C literature & visual culture @BirkbeckUoL. author of The Book Unbound (CUP, 2025): cultures of reading, collecting, altered books; exhibitions editor @BlakeQuarterly, associate editor at Word&Image.
"The air itself is one vast library on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said or woman whispered.” (Babbage) Enjoying Claudia Arozqueta and Zeynep Bulut's inspiring discussion of sensing, heartbeat, voice, atmospheric memory, embodied listening #IAWIS2026, Bak Basecamp, Utrecht
"Waiting to forget Something", one of William Kentridge's mottoes from Words (2023), speaks to me today.
So hot in the British Museum Print Room, looking at Biblical catastrophes and thinking about the present moment in this precious place with a glass roof not made for today's temperature. How much of our archival infrastructure needs rethinking and rehousing?
Really enjoyed William #Kentridge's Mackenzie Lecture, in conversation with Peter McDonald at the Schwarzman yesterday. I am so looking forward to discussing the codex as a moving image technology in "Waiting for the Sibyl" at Textual Ecologies in Passau in July.
In 1811 Thomas Frognall Dibdin claimed that a collector had illustrated four lines of Genesis with 700 plates. Today's marvel: #PhysicaSacra
Looking forward to joining an interactive reading of #Blake's #Jerusalem at #Blake'sCottage in Felpham on Saturday. @blakecottagetrust.bsky.social @blakesociety.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/breaking-t...
'How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?' #Blake's question's in my head thinking about birds taking flight, inspired by the new Wonder of Birds exhibition @bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Do see it, if you can.
Looking forward to Morris and Utopia #BBKArtsWeek Join us on 5 May at 6pm Birkbeck, Clore Auditorium, 27 Torrington Sq., London Book your free place here: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event... @drvickymills.bsky.social
#BBKArtsWeek: this is the best time in the year, when we open our doors to share projects, ideas, dreams: Centre for Nineeteenth-Century Studies William #Morris & #Utopia Michael Robertson 5 May, 6pm, Birkbeck Clore, Torrington Square. Details & free booking here: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...
Liber Studiorum: thinking about the serial formalism produced by book formats through #Turner digressions as I get ready for my talk tomorrow: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...
A dream of nine nights: so looking forward to hearing about #Blake's The Four Zoas through the eyes of a contemporary artist @blakesociety.bsky.social
Off to see some #Turner sketchbooks on Thursday, so I am looking for inspiring essays about the #sketchbook as a cultural form and material support for invention. Please send recommendations
Please join us to discuss detached pieces, single leaves, and un/bound forms, and mark the publication of The Book Unbound @universitypress.cambridge.org Friday 30 January, Senate House, University of London @ies-sas.bsky.social @bars.bsky.social, @bsecs.bsky.social please spread the word
Looking forward to discussing printmakers' book forms with printmaker and book artist Marina Bindella in Rome tomorrow. This is the first outing of my monograph The Book Unbound, coming out universitypress.cambridge.org on 8 January. @blakesociety.bsky.social @blakequarterly.bsky.social
How odd to bump into #Blake's life mask at the National Portrait Gallery on the day he died
follow serpentine paths: will Eternity swallow 'the vast / Leviathan, the Bubbles vain, that ride / High on the foaming Billow'? This #Blake watercolour @britishmuseum.bsky.social sees a scaly green man riding his glorious green serpent up from the bottom of the sea around Edward Young's words...
what I am working on today, thinking about serpentine formations in #Blake's trees for bsky.app/profile/abda... and bsky.app/profile/dran... #LiteraryArboretum
Sorting my papers, looking back and looking forward, still thinking about the metaphors and material forms that shape the #sibyl's prophetic leaves #TheBookUnbound
Looking forward to hearing Elizabeth Denlinger from @nypl.bsky.social discuss books, chapbooks, games, fiction, periodicals, and autobiographical accounts of trades and career choices for children in the Romantic Period at the London-Paris Romanticism Seminar @ies-sas.bsky.social on Friday 2 May.
Looking forward to hearing Sanja Perovic speak about 'Radical Translations: The Transfer of Revolutionary Culture in France, Britain, Italy (1789-1815)' 6 March, 6 pm, Birkbeck School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication, 43 Gordon Sq Book your place here: my.bbk.ac.uk/ords/f?p=832...
Looking forward to @katherineharloe.bsky.social talking about Goethe's Winckelmann at the London Paris Romanticism Seminar at Senate House, University of London on Friday @ies-sas.bsky.social @ics.bsky.social @bars.bsky.social
Creator of Nightmares has just been delivered to my door. I am looking forward to reading and reviewing it for @blakequarterly.bsky.social
So looking forward to reading about Transnational Women Writers. I enjoyed following the metamorphoses of @dralexiswolf.bsky.social's fascinating project tracing the #Wilmot sisters' travels between Ireland and Russia during the Revolutionary period @19birkbeck.bsky.social
Looking forward to welcoming Katharina Boehm to speak about #Antiquarian #Conjectures, #Romantic #Material Culture, & the Novel at the Institute of English Studies, Senate House, London, on 13 December. Please spread the news, @bars.bsky.social, @antiquaries.bsky.social, @bsecs.bsky.social
Ready to discuss #Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities tonight in #MA Victorian Studies, thinking about serial fiction, writing in past & historic present tense, & the world of #Victorian #commodities: this first advert in the monthly issue features #Heal's, still a landmark nearby on Tottenham Court Road
2.12.1824, on laying the first stone of the new lecture theatre at the London Mechanics Institution, George Birkbeck issued an invitation to 'the Feast of Reason', where 'the charms of Literature' join 'the powers of Science'. What was the place of #literature then? what is it now? 19.bbk.ac.uk