A DC-based company with the email address coolhistory13@gmail.com has posted an open casting call for a “history based reality TV show.” What could go wrong?

Do you work on disability studies? Early American Literature is running a special issue, and calling for contributions from “historians, literary critics, art historians, musicologists, and other early American scholars.”

If that’s not enough early America for the week (and really, is it ever enough? No. No is the answer to that question), you should check out the program for the seminar “Rethinking Land and Language: Dialogues in Early American and Indigenous Studies,” at Columbia University on Friday, April 26. RSVP required by April 19^th.

Dissent Magazine has a lovely essay on historian Jill Lepore’s professional evolution as microhistorian storyteller. On a more troubling note, this piece at Inside Higher Ed  details growing socioeconomic disparity in American higher education.

A couple of early American links from the New York Times: T.D. Allman on the 500th anniversary of Ponce de León’s trip to Florida, although, unfortunately, no mention is made of the 20th anniversary of Elaine and George’s argument about “Ponce de Leon.”  Meanwhile there’s a good Walter Johnson essay on King Cotton’s long shadow, and this piece about a certain kind of quadruped on the grounds of the Paris Archives.

The folks at GradHacker have a smart piece on all the administrative minutiae graduating PhDs need to tend to before they’re really official. Once you’ve done that, you can get started on dealing with impostor syndrome (if you haven’t already since starting grad school). Regretting your decision to go to grad school? This polemical Slate piece puts you in good company. When that gets your blood sufficiently boiling, you can go check out this interesting and nuanced counter over at @tressiemcphd’s blog.