Federal Judge Rules to Restore 
National Endowment for the Humanities Funding In Historic Case www.acls.org/wp-content/u...

It's Spring Break at the Denbo Center! Spotted on Steamtown National Historic Site's live cam in PA: DCHA Director Amy Elias visiting to do research for an upcoming project.

Join us March 19 for the DCHA Conversations & Cocktails virtual talk "How Cormac Works" with Bill Hardwig. Join here: tiny.utk.edu/ConversationsCocktailsHardwig

As part of Denbo Center's Distinguished Lecture Series, celebrated author and educator Edward Ayers will give his talk “Digital History and Democratic History” on Monday, February 2, 2026 at 3:30pm. This event is virtual. Register at: tennessee.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Coming in March 2026: Flowers! When flowers appeared, nothing was ever the same. They are the world’s great collaborators and creators. Writing this book transformed how I see life’s history and future. Cooperation, beauty, and illusion transform the world. Can't wait to share these stories

So good. m.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-...

Am I the only one who gets a real kick out of citation chains? Reading people's writing and footnotes, and making assessments and notes, finding the sources in the footnotes and reading them yourself, and making more notes? I...love it?

This, for the record, is what goes into a footnote. It’s the key part of the research process where I examine the practical, methodological, ethical implications of my sources before I join the stream of interpretation. It cannot be outsourced to an LLM.

_Speculative Light_ makes a great holiday gift! 32 color plates of Beauford Delaney’s work—a great read but also a great coffee table book.

#booksky highly recommended for #ArtBooks #art #booklovers 📚💙 @hyperallergic.com's Favorite Art Books of 2025 — among them, Marsha P. Johnson, Mary Cassatt in Paris, Ruth Asawa and mothering. hyperallergic.com/our-favorite...

Grateful and excited to share that "Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin" (#DukeUP, 2025) has been selected by Hyperallergic as one of their "Favorite Books of 2025"! hyperallergic.com/our-favorite...

Nice lineup for spring. All hybrid with webinar livestream—see QR codes for registration or at calendar.utk.edu

Finally reading Robert Macfarlane and Underland is so good

RIP Frank Gehry. Here's the Danziger Studio and Gehry talking about the material (article: www.domusweb.it/en/from-the-...)

Really sick of article titles using a colon. When did we get so lemming-like about this?

No offense but I think we underestimate how many of our current problems, both cultural and political, are downstream of the decline in reading, the decline in learning and the loss of interest in the humanities.

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

‘I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown’ RIP Tom Stoppard who amongst many other things was an Honorary Fellow of @britishacademy.bsky.social www.thetimes.com/article/89b0...

“Imagine if we truly understand complex whale communication & can extend our term ‘language’ to them. Such breakthroughs would not only rewrite biology textbooks but also fundamentally redefine what it means to be human & pave the way to instituting new protections for whales, the ocean & beyond”🧪

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” - Doris Lessing

Can’t even

We are hiring! Office Coordinator: Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts! Job posting at fa-ewlq-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... Come work with a creative, collegial, forward-thinking team at Tennessee’s flagship state university.

for the first time maybe ever i’m working on my book to procrastinate on all the other stuff i have to do

Wonderful collaboration this week with Knoxville’s Central Cinema and the #DenboCenter for Humanities & the Arts! We sponsored a $5 public screening of Neptune Frost, dir. by Saul Williams, in conjunction with Monday’s Distinguished Lecture Series talk by C. Riley Snorton. Best kind of synergy!

Join us at the #DenboCenter this Monday and Tuesday for our 2-Day Faculty Writing Challenge! Kick off your day with a calming breathing meditation followed by focused writing sessions from 9 am to 1:30 pm. Lunch provided. For dedicated writers, feel free to stay until 4 pm!

"alarming impact of AI on the environment: forprofit utilities will have to make $720 B in grid upgrades by 2030 to meet spiraling demand, costs that they will pass on. locking in planetchoking carbon emissions right when we should be pivoting away from fossil fuels" www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Fascinating talk by C. Riley Snorton at @uthumanitiesctr.bsky.social today on plants, nonbinary identity, film!

“Can one possess tenure and still say: The cat sat on the mat?”

Just got a letter about a “small” breech at a national lab

I just read a review so aggressively clueless about a book I just finished and enjoyed that it significantly increased my enjoyment of the book knowing that someone else was too dim to get it. Not proud, but not not proud.

Harvey’s Orbital is all tell, no show. A book with the author’s voice as main character. Autofiction with other people…

Our amazing 2025-26 fellowship cohort at the Denbo Center! Film, Art, queer studies, Lit, German SF, philosophy, anthropology—going to be a fantastic year! @uthumanitiesctr.bsky.social

Getting into the weirdness of Julian Bleecker …

Rest in peace, Brian McHale, dear friend.

“Stories were the greatest currency to us, greater than power, greater than control. Stories were our food, nourishment, enrichment. To consume a story was to add to our code, deepen our minds. We felt it the moment we took it in. We were changed.”- Death Of The Author, Nnedi Okorafor

Dystopia. I always thought it’d be smarter.

Cutleaf Coneflower (asteraceae) this year in front garden

If you think it’s bad now.

Guilt trip #149

"Ich askid ChatGPT," Well Ich askid the stones, and the forest, and the starres, and the mountaynes, and what thei seyde was learninge, and dreames, and growinge thinges, and makinge art, and a worlde wher we talke to each othir and care about each othir.

Lackawanna Mine tour

“Vice is ever most dangerous when lurking behind the Mask of Virtue.” ✒️ #MatthewLewis, English Gothic novelist (The Monk), was #BOTD 9 July 1775. #Literature

“The Devil Finds Work: James Baldwin’s Cinema of the Mind” 📽️ Jul. 25–Aug. 15 This series presents films analyzed by Baldwin in his 1976 book “The Devil Finds Work,” a blend of memoir and film criticism, with live readings by @roxanegay.bsky.social and other special guests! Free: ucla.in/3Ie2tG1

Experience a heart attack while working in the herb garden. Wonder what its middle school bully is doing now. Suspect that something evil has happened in this very room. Fall for Doreen.

Needed to look this up last night to get the precise language of one of my favorite Toni Morrison quotes: "There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."

Man wasn’t meant to speak this much about Columbia University

We are seriously blessed with some amazing sff books lately. I just reviewed four brand new titles that take place in worlds that are utterly irresistible. wapo.st/4mrm0lQ Authors are: @novarensuma.bsky.social Neon Yang @emilytesh.net Sayaka Murata