I'm very excited to share the cover for a forthcoming @cornellupress.bsky.social book that I sponsored on the International Workers Order (IWO), a 1930-50s immigrant and minority workers' cooperative undone by the Red Scare. The cover art/design is by the inimitable Ben Katchor (Julius Knipl, etc.)

The margins were never empty. MICROLITERATURES by Jesús R. Velasco uncovers the hidden world of #medieval readers who turned scribbles and side notes into a public, #political act. #Reading will never look the same. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Before Sleepy Hollow, there was satire, #folklore, and... Dutch? In THE DUTCH WORLD OF WASHINGTON IRVING, Elisabeth Paling Funk uncovers the hidden roots of America's #literary legend. It all starts in 1809 with a prank and a pseudonym. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Hulk 181 famously introduced Wolverine in 1974, which is when 8-year-old me bought a copy at the local convenience store. If I’d had the foresight to hermetically seal it then, I could retire today. Ah well …It’s still a fun read, torn cover and all, fifty years later. #Marvel #comicbooks

And here’s what awaits attendees when they arrive tomorrow morning for the first day of #Kzoo2025. The first person the bring me a Sweetwater’s donut will get a free ARC of Beni Kedar’s new book, “The Medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem.” (Just kidding ….)

Just arrived in Kalamazoo!

#PublishingOnScreen Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936). Jean Renoir (dir.), Jacques Prévert (scr.)

Spending this rainy Saturday cataloguing my comic book collection (mostly ‘70s-90s) with the enthusiastic assistance of my 17-year-old daughter, who is amused by the back cover ads and impressed … OK, alarmed …by my ability to remember obscure characters and plotlines

Welcome to Ithaca, Museum Association of New York attendees! @cornellupress.bsky.social has a table laden with new and recent books about all aspects of the Empire State - history, nature, biography, public health, even fiction - so stop by to browse, admire, and order (at a 40% discount)

Or stop by @cornellupress.bsky.social’s stand at #RSA/SAA25 to hold the book and order a copy of the print copy (to complement your Open Access edition) at our too-good-to-be-true conference discount. (By law, I’m not allowed to state how big this discount is.)

Today I crossed the Charles to attend #RSA/SAA 2025 for the first time and have been amazed by the enthusiasm at the book exhibit for our @cornellupress.bsky.social books like this ….

A welcome flurry of excitement and interest at the #MAA25 book exhibit to start this year’s Medieval Academy. And on the program for Friday, TWO sessions on representative medieval governance inspired by this @cornellupress.bsky.social book by Jacques Dalarun, TO GOVERN IS TO SERVE

The stage is set for #MAA2025. The book exhibit opens Thursday morning and I’ll be there to stand behind (literally and figuratively) @cornellupress.bsky.social’s latest titles in medieval history and literature. #medievalsky

Psssst ... Did you hear that @cornellupress.bsky.social is giving away its #MLA25 display copies to graduate students on Sunday? Visit the Cornell UP stand (#116) between 9:00 and noon!

@cornellupress.bsky.social is known for many wonderful things: award-winning books, engaged authors, dedicated staff … But really, it’s all about the SOCKS! And you can get your free pair at #MLA2025

Congratulations to our #MLA2025 award winners: Adhaar Noor Desai, Sean Franzel, and Eric Keenaghan & Rowena Kennedy-Epstein. You can find these books and lots more at the @cornellupress.bsky.social stand in the exhibit hall.

I’ve been away from the socials for a few months but #MLA2025 seems an especially gentle way to reengage. @cornellupress.bsky.social is here in New Orleans. Booth #116: Laissez les bons livres rouler!

Here’s my weekend hot take: Gladiator II, for all its flaws (the baboons!) and historical inaccuracies, is a more interesting and entertaining movie than Gladiator, which I always found too self-important and self-serious. GII undermines the pieties of the OG, which has clearly annoyed many

I’m trying to buy fewer books these days (mostly for reasons of space) so it’s a treat when I HAVE to buy a book, say when I’ve unexpectedly finished one on a trip and find myself at a good airport bookstore and can pick up @jonathancoe.bsky.social’s charming, cine-literate novel, MR. WILDER & ME

I’ve been drinking cocktails for a long time but somehow only had my first Perfect Manhattan last month and I’ve made it my seasonal drink for the winter. Perfectly balanced between sweet (vermouth) and astringent (dry vermouth) #cocktailhour

Grad students attending the @moderniststudies.bsky.social conference, I will be giving away the display copies at the @cornellupress.bsky.social table to starting on Saturday afternoon at 4:00 PM. Been coveting the brand new MODERNISM’S INHUMAN WORLDS by Rasheed Tazudeen? Now’s your chance!

I really appreciate how @moderniststudies.bsky.social connects its meeting to the city it’s taking place in, and in the spirit of Chicago modernisms, visit @cornellupress.bsky.social to browse Holly Baggett’s account of the Chicago-based #modernist journal, the “Little Review”: MAKING NO COMPROMISE

Excited to be in Chicago next week for the Modernist Studies Association conference to show off new books from @cornellupress.bsky.social and @leuvenup.bsky.social and to meet with scholars to discuss YOUR new book projects. Stop on by!

My current “fun read” is @polyalbion’s analysis of the weird (horror/SF/dark heritage) in postwar British film&tv. Was excited to watch The Changes (BBC YA apocalypse series featuring a helpful band a traveling Sikhs - my people!) but it’s currently unavailable on any streaming service!?! 😤

I started my day early by constructing the perfect to-do list. Clearly I should have stopped there and then just taken the rest of the day off

I guess I am driving from Ithaca to Notre Dame for #MedievalAcademy next month? All of the flights from ITH or SYR were really inconvenient, whether to South Bend or Chicago. So I’ll be cueing up an audiobook or two and going off to look for America …

In between episodes of True Detective: Night Country, I watched all of the much-maligned second season of TD (with Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Vince Vaughn) and people: I do not get all the hate. I found it a compelling, knowing riff on the L.A. noir of Chandler, MacDonald, and Ellroy.

More #Oscar re-noms: I realize that am virtually alone in finding Robbie Robertson's score for KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON intrusive, but I'd sub in Hildur Gudnadottir's scratchy, spooky score for A HAUNTING IN VENICE, which is as much a part of the film's sound design as it is a soundtrack proper.

Another #Oscar re-nom: Nicholas Cage for the terrifying DREAM SCENARIO over Bradley Cooper (MAESTRO). I liked Cooper as Leonard Bernstein, but Cage was perversely relatable in a self-contained, lived-in, and tragic performance, while Cooper was exhausting.

Let the #Oscar re-noms begin: In Supporting Actor, DeNiro didn't need another nom for another (slightly miscast?) DeNiro role. And Ryan Gosling was more (amusing) caricature than acting. Instead: Harris Dickinson (THE IRON CLAW, completely overlooked) & Charles Melton (MAY DECEMBER)

Settling in at the end of a too-short weekend to watch Monsieur Spade on AMC+, with Clive Owen as Hammett’s private eye, living in the south of France in the 1960s. The sharp dialogue could have been written by Hammett and Owen is world-wearier than ever. If #BlueSkyNoir is a thing, get on this!

Found at the Westfield (Mass) Salvo for $2, a film noir I haven’t previously seen: 1949’s SCENE OF THE CRIME. Variety called it “Taut, tough and often relentless.” Sold! #FilmNoir #PhysicalMedia

With wintery New England having its cultural moment—Noah Kahan’s anthemic STICK SEASON & Alexander Payne’s bittersweet prep school-at-the-holidays character study THE HOLDOVERS—it’s good being back with the fam in Western Mass for Christmas.

BLUE EYE SAMURAI (on Netflix) is an unexpected delight. Set in Edo-period Japan, it's beautifully animated (with gorgeous backgrounds) and surprisingly bloody, and has complex characters and great voice work. I'm three (of eight) episodes in and having to restrain myself from bingeing the rest.

Huzzah! Rowena Kennedy-Epstein’s “audacious,” “refreshingly forthright” exploration of Muriel Rukeyser’s archive, UNFINISHED SPIRIT, has been awarded the MLA’s 2023 Matei Calinescu Prize for distinguished scholarship in 20th & 21st century thought & literature.

Congratulations to Professor Theodora Dragostinova on being awarded the 2023 John D. Bell Book Prize from the Bulgarian Studies Association for her book, "The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene" (Cornell, 2021) www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Only six years late to the party, my favorite viewing experience of 2023 was TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, 18 hours of the maddest, funniest, scariest, smartest television ever filmed. Runner-up: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. (I contain multitudes, dammit!)

At a serious coffee-head cafe in Philly and there’s something really heartening listening to the baristas complain about their jobs and their schedules, rather than rhapsodizing about their craft. Makes this Gen Xer nostalgic. And despite their bitterness, the coffee is … bitter (but in a good way)

My profound thanks to the University of Tokyo’s International Publishing Initiative for inviting me to Japan to talk about the future of academic publishing and to meet with UT scholars to discuss their book projects. It’s been an amazing week of conversations and new experiences

The bleakest opening in detective fiction? "The events I am about to describe are filled with such darkness and sadness, are so cursed and hate-filled, that not a word I write can possibly offer the faintest glimmer of hope or relief."—Seishi Yokomizo's THE DEVIL'S FLUTE MURDERS

In the middle of our family’s traditional Halloween Double-Double-Toil-and-Trouble Feature, the same two movies every year …

Watching the Rugby World Cup in a completely packed Irish bar in Chicago was exhilarating. Go Springboks! 🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦

Status update: Mahinder is really digging the Remedios Varo exhibit at the Art Institute Chicago, Science Fictions

I'm in Chicago this weekend for a wedding and so am having to miss #MSA2023 in Brooklyn but my fantastic colleague, India Miraglia, is representing Cornell UP at the book exhibit and we have our virtual booth up and running, too: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/our-msa-2022.... Visit both!

In Seneca Falls this morning for a genuinely inspiring event about the creation of the Women’s Rights NHP featuring many of those who fought to realize this vision, including Judy Hart, the force behind it and author of the Cornell UP book telling the park’s improbable, incredible story.

Simenon's Maigret novels are by far my favorite "hang-out" books. His eternally mid-century Paris and its concisely sketched characters, settings, and moods would be my permanent holodeck program. I've been rereading them for three decades and always look forward to another visit.

With the Modernist Studies Assoc conference in Brooklyn approaching fast, a note of congratulations to Bette London, whose Cornell UP book "Posthumous Lives: World War I and the Culture of Memory" is shortlisted for the MSA Book Prize and praised for being "innovative and beautifully written."

Just finished watching the poignant, wistful “Past Lives,” about living fully with the choices you’ve made while acknowledging the other paths you might have taken. Gorgeous score by members of Grizzly Bear. Easily one of 2023’s best films.