We have friends everywhere. #andor

This is incredible. I didn’t realize it was this complex.

🚨New Episode Alert 🚨 Please check out this latest @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social episode where I speak with @smaran.bsky.social & Ben Baer about their groundbreaking new book, Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. newbooksnetwork.com/spider-mother

Last week, Ben Baer and I spoke to @arnabdr.bsky.social about our book Spider-Mother and Rokeya Hossain for the New Books Network podcast. You can listen to the episode at the link below. 🙂 So grateful for Arnab's excellent questions and planning of the interview. newbooksnetwork.com/spider-mother

We're a third of the way there!! Thank you so much for your support!! Help us #BuildtheQueensLink by continuing to donate at the link in bio ✨

What Southeast Queens Really Needs @mta.info #QueensLink

The @queenslink.org project would reactivate a section of the NYC subway, connecting the M-line down from Queens Blvd to the A-line in Ozone Park, adding four new stops and serving a transit desert. 1/2 #publictransit #walkablecities #urbanism #nyc

The present-day parts of Octavia E. Butler’s time-travel classic, KINDRED, take place in Altadena. So devastating to see the Palisades fire’s destruction of the area. 😢 @teenvogue.bsky.social

Happy MLK Day.

RIP David Lodge

We Lacanians call it Lack Friday

This is aimed at young scholars in the UK (18-30). If you teach on those islands, let your students know.

Some photos from this past weekend’s book event for Spider-Mother at Princeton. Thank you (again) to Ben Baer for his excellent translations and collaboration on this project, to @sadafjaffer.bsky.social for being in conversation with us, and to the Center for Global India for hosting us!

Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain is an absolute legend. She published Sultana’s Dream, the first English language science fiction story by a South Asian woman, in 1905.

I similarly feel like it helped me get my work out there and meet so many interesting people during the pandemic. It was painful to step away from it when things started to go south in 2022.

The first known use of singular “they” is so old that not only does it pre-date singular “you,” it wasn’t even spelled with a “th” When William and the Werewolf, in 1375 CE, used singular “they,” it was spelled with a Thorn

We’ll be reading the Parables in my Octavia Butler major authors class in the spring. Hoping against hope that it doesn’t read as any more prescient/prophetic than it already does.

Since we're all reconvening here, I thought I'd reshare some good news here: A project I’ve been working on all year was published this month: Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (Warbler Press, 2024). 1/4

All my academic faves are gathering here! Rejoice. 🥳

Public disappointment with universities has reached epidemic proportions. Christopher Newfield suggests the answer lies in redefining #HigherEducation around intellectual and social benefits, not monetary ones. Join us Mon, 11/18, @ 4pm EST on Zoom - register: websites.umass.edu/feinberg/nov... 🗃️

I know a platform dying (which in internet terms mostly means not being what it once was anymore) can feel quite tragic, but @smaran.bsky.social remarking on this makes me hopeful: there’s people who will continue to cross your virtual path still!

#ASA2024 book exhibit haul. Thanks, U Chicago Press!

Currently at the American Studies Conf in Baltimore and people keep talking about getting active on Bluesky. All talk? Or does the Twitter crowd finally have a new home?

Extremely grateful that there’s a livestream of the Ella Baker symposium. www.youtube.com/live/X5N6xGZ...

Honored to contribute to this incredible anthology, out now! BLACK ART & AESTHETICS: Relationalities, Interiorities, Reckonings https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/black-art-and-aesthetics-9781350294608/

(1) Anyone else’s caloric intake look like this? (2) Apparently, even 7yrs in, my music taste hasn’t quite adapted to the local environment. 🥲

🗃️The JWH has been migrating from that other site to this one. Could you please give us a boost here (and there) to move our followers to this more pleasant place? Thank you!

I was rooting for Prophet Song to win! A work of dystopian speculative fiction takes the Booker this year. And with an Irish author winning the prize, its locus is once again where it should be: in the postcolonies.

I would add: all of her work, incl. the most recent book on disability/debility, and other foundational work on queer people’s relation to nationalism and state power (Chandan Reddy, Paisley Currah, Matilda Bernstein Sycamore, Dean Spade, Eric Stanley, Sara Farris and others).

Björk's 'Post' is 28 year old and every song on that album still fuckin slaps. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SDW...

How do we fully abolish cars in NYC

🚨PhD funding 🚨 2x fully funded Stuart Hall Foundation PhD fellowships available to Black, British scholars starting their PhD studies in October 2024 at Sussex. Proposed research should clearly address social justice issues. www.sussex.ac.uk/study/fees-f...

Guardian reporting on the National Book Awards ceremony: amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/n...

Rather sadly - my first post on here is to let anyone who will listen know that English/Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes is facing massive redundancies - 40% of staff to be culled by January including my own role. Please share and support, we are trying to save our livelihoods #SaveBrookesEnglish

We are sorry to learn of the death of philosopher Enrique Dussel, author of "Ethics of Liberation," "Twenty Theses on Politics," and the forthcoming "The Theological Metaphors of Marx." ow.ly/8fhG50Q687P

Rest in peace, Enrique Dussel.

I don’t care what your associate dean tells you: you have to rest. Not half-hour cat nap. Rest for a whole day. You need to do what you like. You need to walk in fresh air. You need to see friends and family. In the long run, it will help you, particularly in the final stretch to tenure.

WOW. A Black zombie anthology??? Yes please.

There is no American Studies worth the name that doesn’t also account for political economy, empire, geopolitics, colonialism, and race in its frameworks and analysis. To be an Americanist is, by definition, to be a postcolonialist.

Mutuals coming to the 2024 MLA, Oct 26th is the last day to get the lower registration rate. #PSA

Why is this so accurate. Emails ‘assessment,’ committees, meetings. 😳

a word for the dreams that render specific emotions from one part of your life through the people + places from another

Potentially my most unpopular opinion: academics should make ALL their work freely available, including books and book chapters. What's the point of going to all that effort to write, if hardly anyone can afford to read your work..?

Substack really is where some of intellectual Twitter went, it seems. I don’t even try and keep up with all the newsletters I’m subscribed to, but it’s nice to see familiar names in my inbox, and occasionally pop in for a read.

Please read/sign/distribute this petition to hold those responsible for the Indian international student Jaahnavi Kandula’s death accountable in Seattle. www.change.org/p/demand-imm...