I've noticed that hardly any job postings seem to ask anymore for "evidence of teaching effectiveness" (course or peer evaluations, usually). Did committees ultimately decide that this was too humiliating, or have they just found the undergraduate's solution of using RateMyProfessor instead?

People in the Seattle/Tacoma area: I'll be reprising my talk on animal research films for the Tacoma Film Festival on October 12th and then introducing Ted Kennedy's experimental doc B.F. Skinner Plays Himself afterwards. Swing by and say "hi!" grandcinema.com/movie/free-f...

Two new job postings in the Film and Media Studies program at Hunter College: one in Film Production, one in Journalism. The production job:

This may be the best title of a book ever. Imagine if all titles were equally descriptive: "Academic Monograph with Tedious Descriptions of Gothic Architecture." "Collection of Previously Published Essays with No Unity Among Them or Discernible Point."

Really sad to hear that Bluestockings is closing for good. It was one of the first places I started going to in New York, 20 years ago. Indeed some of these bookmarks are starting show their age, much like me.

Every appearance of RFK Jr. in the news reminds me of a phrase I once read in Christina Stead: "depraved healthiness"

Just a reminder that there is still time (10/1) to apply to SCMSSP's parallel conference, to be held "both virtually (online) and, simultaneously, in person in/from Chicago (exact physical location TBA) during the same dates as SCMS March 26-29, 2026.... contingent upon agreement not to attend SCMS"

I'm in the process of porting all my stuff over from Academia dot edu to ResearchGate, at least until I can get my own website back up and running: you can now find most of my writing (academic or otherwise) over at www.researchgate.net/profile/Seth...

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Coming to the slow and painful realization that my child will repeat practically anything I say

New Yorkers, get your tickets for this FREE event celebrating my new book! October 9, at 7pm, at Lenfest Center for the Arts. Details of the screening will be announced soon. www.lenfest.arts.columbia.edu/fall-2025-ev...

Whenever I think of Robert Redford, I think of this scene in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Bea: Listen, I wonder what kind of build he's got on him. Alice: Did you ever see his feet? Bea: Feet? Alice: I heard one time that's supposed to be an indication.

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"My viewing of the entire film [Limite] was like meeting an old friend and realizing that there had always been a sexual attraction." Sadly, nothing in my years of spectatorship has ever quite approached this level of excitement.

Cassandra Guan's great essay "Critique of Flowers" inspired me this semester to teach Das Blumenwunder (The Miracle of Flowers): a truly unique silent film that is both a plea for empathy with the nonhuman world and also a kind of advertisement for IG Farben fertilizer.

Not even origami is safe from transphobia. (From a book published in 2001.)

I've seen some people saying that going to SCMS in 2026 will be seen as a political decision. But the more I talk to people, the more I realize how many never knew there was a boycott in the first place. Not everyone is plugged into social media, and many overestimate their reach on these platforms.

I've had two R&Rs from the same journal. Because it takes me forever to assimilate criticism, months go by before I resubmit. Now I've sent the piece a third time and received no confirmation for a month. Should I be worried, or just take this as a sign of general dysfunction in the journal system?

If only we could just admit he was an asshole and move on with our lives

What I always wear when I'm settling in for a long period of artistic production:

Facebook informs me that 10 years ago I received my first ever page proofs (for this piece that appeared in Camera Obscura). I guess despite everything I'm happy this whole scholarship thing is still the path that I'm on.

Imagine feeling so threatened by an idea that you have to cite daddy (the president) to put an end to any argument

When I teach psychoanalysis at NYU, my worry is usually that students will complain that I'm teaching some form of gender essentialism. When I look at the situation over in Texas I realize just how privileged and provincial this worry of mine is.

Death by cereals: A Corner in Wheat (1909) and Vampyr (1932). I wonder if there is any evidence, direct or indirect, that Dreyer could have seen Griffith's film and paid it homage.

My daughter after covering me with eight stuffed animals: "It could have been worse. It could have been, like, eleven!"

Interesting misprint

A weird question other academics often ask me is "Why are you reading that?" Usually "that" refers to an older novel or historical work with no obvious relation to my area of research. But reading shouldn't reduce to instrumentality! And one's work should be open to even the strangest of influences.

RFK Jr. always look like he's being attacked by a psychic from Scanners. It's like his head is constantly being pressure-cooked.

It's weird to me that in 2025 there appear to be virtually no Blu-ray editions of the early works of Porter and Griffith. I mean these are absolutely central to teaching film history and you think there would be high demand for it. Kino's versions of the Biograph films are 20+ years old and look it.

Many people say that the first day of class is the easiest. I disagree; I hate beginnings (and endings). Whenever I walk into a room to greet 20 or 30 new faces I always feel more or less like Mishima's Mizoguchi: "Something had bestowed reality on all this without waiting for my participation."

Is it just me, or does the free version of Duolingo have the craziest ads? Why is this man who looks like a cross between Zizek and Brendan Gleeson supposed to be an incentive to start gambling?

Another reminder, as we are only (depending on where you are) 4 or 5 days from the start of my online film course: FRITZ LANG on the CineJourneys website! See here for registration details. Help to keep me alive & fed as a film critic in this cold, cruel world! cinejourneys.com/fritz-lang-i...

Revival run at Anthology Film Archives (9/26 to 10/2) of a restored version of William H. Whyte's The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, a classic of microsociology as well as in the history of the popular social science film:

Me waiting for the "professional development fund" portal to open:

God help me, but I think I am planning a research trip to Nebraska?

I've learned that the kind of electronic music I like best is usually called "microsound." Somehow my interests always seem to turn around things that are extremely small.

This is the long version of "No" that I've been having students sign for the last year or so. I realize that some people will accuse me of reactionary humanism, which is fine. (Such people would also probably consider themselves thought leaders.) Feel free to copy or modify for your own purposes.

My AI policy this semester is No

My AI policy this semester is No

MM Serra is a New York institution, someone who has changed the lives of so many artists, writers, scholars -- or just her neighbors for that matter. Consider donating here to support her health and happiness.

Apparently you can become the director of the CDC with only a degree in the humanities. Clearly we aren't capitalizing enough on our amazing versatility and relevance to increase our department budgets a hundredfold.

Someone told me that in Canada it's now common not only to read land acknowledgments but also to give a lengthy account of one's relation to the land as a settler. But, if true, wouldn't this function by and large as the kind of self-indulgent self-centering that the statement is supposed to avoid?

I can't think of a surer path to bad faith in the classroom than enforced groupthink from admin. Can you?

A very interesting film indeed, and pairs nicely with Janet's historical research into the same archive:

Freud really is the best

Not sure I've ever encountered a book review quite this hostile before: "This is not a good review. It is bad enough, in fact, to require a health warning. Anyone who thinks that if you don't have anything nice to say you shouldn't say anything at all should stop reading it now."

With excellent design, I believe, by my friend John Munshour

I wonder if most of the resistance to psychoanalysis I encounter when I teach it can be chalked up to the fact that most students are just too young to have watched their fantasies change much in the course of their lives

What are the great films or film sequences about feet? Shoes (Weber), Solidarity (Wieland), the polling scene in Primary (Drew), the last third of Limite (Peixoto), all come to mind, but there must be many more. This part of the body doesn't get nearly the same critical attention as hands do.

Friendly reminder