In a world where searching is increasingly awful, I decided to replicate some of the early web patterns: a listing of blog favorites. I wanted to share multiple avenues to rewarding writing on topics near and dear to my heart. Bonus, most of these have RSS feeds, if you still live in that part of the internet. (Better than doomscrolling, amiright?!)
By all means, suggest other discoveries in the comments.
NUNS, BOOKS, WOMEN, AND MATERIAL THINGS
Medingen Manuscripts — https://medingen.seh.ox.ac.uk/
A research blog from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, devoted to late medieval convent manuscripts, prayer books, women’s religious life, liturgy, materiality, and the effects of the Reformation on religious communities. Especially good if you like manuscripts attached to actual historical women!
History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland — https://historyofwomenreligious.org/
A broad hub for the history of women religious from the medieval period onward: conferences, reviews, research resources, notices, and new scholarship. Their bibliography is particularly useful if you need somewhere sensible to begin (or are chasing that elusive memory fragment of that thing you read three years ago...)
Early Modern Female Book Ownership / #HerBook — https://earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/
Books that once belonged to women are the point here: inscriptions, handwriting, reading practices, ownership marks, textual self-presentation, and books that have since wandered off into libraries and private collections. A wonderful site for anyone who likes evidence left in the margins.
Feminist Histories — https://feministhistories.substack.com/
Natalie Donnell writes long-form archival history about women exercising their political, diplomatic, familial, and economic power in early modern Europe. Well researched, very readable, and full of women who turn out to have been doing rather more than the standard narratives allow.
Free Range History — https://freerangehistory.substack.com/
Amy Freeborn writes “stories from the past, driven by curiosity and wonder,” which is a pretty good description of the appeal. Broad-ranging, approachable history that follows an interesting question wherever it leads.
Feminist History of Philosophy — https://feministhistoryofphilosophy.wordpress.com/
Sandrine Berges looks at philosophy with the women put back in. Expect forgotten thinkers, arguments about canon formation, and a more gender-inclusive history of ideas than the one many of us were originally taught.
Early Modern Fashion and Material Culture — https://sarahabendall.com/blog/
Sarah Bendall writes sharply and often wittily about clothing, objects, labor, bodies, and material life in the early modern world. Come for court dress and textiles; stay for the reminder that clothes are historical evidence too.
MUSICOLOGY
Songs of Sunrise — https://leahbroad.substack.com/
Leah Broad’s delightfully written “music newsletter for inquisitive listeners.” Music history, women musicians, biography, archives, listening, and the larger cultural stories that make repertories matter.
Musicology, Medieval to Modern — https://eeleach.blog/blog/
Elizabeth Eva Leach writes across medieval music, manuscripts, gender, research, publications, and the occasional realities of academic life. Especially rewarding if your tastes run toward manuscripts and medieval song.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist — https://karenmcaulaymusicologist.blog/
Karen McAulay writes about Scottish music collecting, publishing, national identity, women musicians, archives, and the wonderfully winding paths research can take. Part research diary, part musical history, with plenty of curiosity, useful discoveries, and the occasional irresistible archival rabbit hole.
Words on Music — https://wordsonmusic.substack.com/
Rebecca Franks calls this “a place to explore the art of writing about music.” Smart, vivid prose on listening, performance, books, criticism, and what makes music worth writing about in the first place.
Twangle: Music and Words — https://jessicaduchen.substack.com/
Jessica Duchen comes at things more as critic and journalist than academic musicologist, but she has a delightful way with words. Music history, biography, women musicians, performance, current classical culture, and the occasional personal detour all turn up here.
LARGER-SCALE MUSICOLOGY
Musicology Now — https://musicologynow.org/
The American Musicological Society’s public-facing platform for “sounds, words, and ideas.” A useful place to see what musicologists are thinking about beyond journal articles: archives, listening, race, gender, technology, repertory, performance, and so on.
Sounding Out! — https://soundstudiesblog.com/
“Pushing sound studies into the red since 2009,” and still doing it. Essays on sound, listening, voice, race, gender, media, technology, embodiment, and culture, usually with more energy than the phrase “interdisciplinary sound studies” has a right to suggest.
RILM Bibliolore — https://bibliolore.org/
Musicology produces an astonishing amount of bibliography; Bibliolore picks out nuggets to share. Expect discoveries, anniversaries, books, archival curiosities, international scholarship, and other delightful oddities.
Musicological Brainfood — https://www.musicology.org/brainfood/
The International Musicological Society’s series of short provocations and “amuse-bouches” from the field. Good for testing new ideas, spotting emerging conversations, and encountering perspectives well beyond one national or disciplinary corner of musicology.
You might also be interested in...
Building for the Ear (from Chaco Canyon to Medieval Vorarlberg), in which a Soundscape article made me think differently about all those uphill climbs I took in Austria -- and their sound implications.
Musical Presence and Funeral Choices, where Brian Fairley’s work on recorded singing in Soviet Georgia (in which you could sing at your own funeral!!!) opened up much bigger questions for me about family memory, technology, musical presence, and what it means to leave a voice behind.
Supple Rules for Prayer: Daston’s Ideas Meet the 16thc Prayerbook; I found that Lorraine Daston’s Rules gave me a new way to think about prayerbook rubrics: not merely as instructions or choreography, but as “supple rules” for practiced devotion. What happens when we treat prayer as a craft learned through repetition, judgment, bodily habit, and use?
