For a fourth year in a row, Shannon Steen and I are running a working session on “The Performance of Politics” at ASTR. Previous sessions have been, no exaggeration, some of the best intellectual experiences of my career. Join us! Apply! site.pheedloop.com/event/astr20...

Gosh, it sure would be nice to have a section about books and ideas, staffed with people who actually know things about this stuff...

I want you to guess whether this article draws a single substantive connection to "19th-century philosophy."

Happy February! Now’s a great time to submit your proposals for ASAP/17! www.artsofthepresent.org/conference/3...

Trump's NEH: "Bring back merit! And by 'merit' we mean, of course, our handpicked allies receiving noncompetitive awards."

Look, I will die on this hill: Podcasts are audio files distributed for free via RSS. Videos are not podcasts. Streaming audio on subscription-based platforms is not a podcast.

Today's the day I finally start writing a part of my book I've been working myself up to for months. It's about non-academic (esp. elite liberal) theories of political performance, and it's called... "Ezra Klein, Performance Theorist."

I did not have “Free Experimental Theater for All” on my political wishlist, but now … I might be a single-issue voter? (The tickets being handed out here are for the Under the Radar festival) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/t...

I promise this is not a scholarly version of that “hatred of AI is low-key racist” take

I just published a thing I’m proud of: An article called “Botface” about (1) how humans behave when impersonating robots; (2) how it derives from blackface; and (3) how it contributes to the weird racialization of robots and AI. Please read, please share! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

I love my reading nook so much.

Five years ago today, I was slated to teach theories of play in a course called "The Performance of Politics." Instead, we sat and watched rioters storm the Capitol. A year later, I published "The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots." I still stand by its conclusions. doi.org/10.1080/1352...

Excuse me while I convene a performance studies conference entirely about this quote: "For Kirk and for much of society today, words are not expressions with referents, but rather, performative speech acts with specific functions — in his case, owning the libs." www.theverge.com/policy/84960...

This is exactly the question being prepped for debate by the characters in Emmanuelle Mattana's fascinating play TROPHY BOYS. ... you know, just in case anyone boycotting CBS wants to read some drama: playlabtheatre.com.au/web/viewer.h...

We are so excited to reveal the ASAP/17 logo for our upcoming conference in Madison, WI, on Oct. 15-17! Stay tuned for the CFP!

Credit where credit is due: this a thoughtful, non-doom-hype-y article on higher ed and AI. In the year of our lord 2025! Bonus points for not mentioning a single Ivy. Colleges mentioned include: Wyoming, UCSD, Western Ontario, Vanderbilt, and Illinois State. www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

There’s a good poem about this: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

There’s nothing strange or “hypothetical” about this notion in a theater context. The idea that self-consciousness is the enemy and that actors need to travel some via negativa to strip it away — this is the post-Romantic consensus in actor training and acting theory.

Submitted revisions of articles on back-to-back to days. As sports commentators would say, "He's on pace for 365 publications by July 15 of next year!"

“Disability Works” turns 1 today! I’d like to celebrate by making sure it finds its way into the hands of even more readers. You can help by: 1) Requesting your library purchase a copy (link in bio) 2) Let me know if you assign it (I can zoom in!) #disability #academicsky #historysky #booksky

Article submitted: my first essay on podcasts!

On the dangers of making your work “relevant” to AI: “Like LLMs themselves, which deskill human writing and pollute the corpus of text on which LLMs continue to be trained, AI-relevant research also risks eroding its own foundations in now unfundable and ‘irrelevant’ research.”

what a way to find out that AI is trained exclusively on my writing

Coming soon (but hopefully with my name spelled correctly) ... "Too Much, Too Late: On Academic Responses to Generative AI"

APPLY! For the third year running, Shannon Steen and I will be co-leading an ASTR working session on "The Performance of Politics," this year around the theme of "institutions." Please spread the word. site.pheedloop.com/event/astr20...

Typing out a text message to myself (my way of keeping certain things handy), I nearly jump out of my skin when those three dots appear. Someone is typing! (I am.) Anyway, a psychoanalyst would have a field day with this.

The necessary antidote is this excellent op-ed by theater scholar (and dean of the arts) Harvey Young. As he points out, the humanities are imperiled — on purpose — when the most expensive part of universities loses its funding. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/03/12/o...

Looking in vain for an acknowledgment that the humanities exist and matter — to society, to universities, to individuals — in this column written by people who clearly benefitted extensively from them. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/o...

The Trump administration has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, spurring the nation’s top spender on research and development to plan layoffs and cancel health projects

As a JHU professor who works on other stuff, the role my colleagues play in global health is extraordinary and completely irreplaceable. The Trump administration is tossing our collective ability to deal with global problems onto a roaring bonfire.

The AAUP wholly condemns this punitive weaponization of federal grant funding. This attempt to discipline & control a university campus is a transparent hallmark of authoritarian rule & harshly violates the central mission of education to serve the public good. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/n...

Trump’s Razor (stupidest reason = true) suggests that his administration hadn’t clocked that Khalil has a green card and are now forced to retrofit their policy to match the case. A big mistake provides a big opportunity for those of us who don’t want student visas used to censor political speech.

Happy “Uneven U” Day to those who celebrate! (To those who don’t understand what I mean, let me preach you the gospel of teaching essay-writing via the uneven U!)

Submitted an article AND a reader’s report on the same day

Also, it's important to remember that smart people (incl. Jamelle Bouie himself) saw right away that the protests were both violent/criminal AND silly/playful. Some folks belatedly "discovered" the silliness of it all, and used it to "disprove" the violent criminality. But ofc they're compatible!

I must confess, I’m getting close to leaving this party (Bluesky), too. “I heard about people who’d deleted their accounts and thought: but how do they know things? Reading voraciously and expansively, of course — a much more arduous prospect than waking up and logging on.” I mean, oof. Also, yes.

“To be able to say to every purveyor of conversational systems what artists know through long practice, and what the history of ELIZA teaches: that whenever art feels foreign to conversation design, the field has in fact become a stranger to itself.”

for their final projects, my dramaturgy students had to find a play and advocate for its production in toronto. the play had to be (1) NOT american, british, or canadian; (2) NOT by ibsen, strindberg, chekhov, brecht, beckett, molière, the ancient greeks. they found some incredible plays. 🧵

As with the Writer’s Guild strike, so too with this: AI will be shaped by the collective action of artists who act on their shared interests as a class of creative laborers.

With Linda McMahon(!!!) reportedly tapped for Secretary of Education, I guess this book just became required reading for educators ... www.seagullbooks.org/professional...

I have revised the revise-and-resubmit and resubmitted it.

Seeing a lot of talk that these cabinet nominations and staffing decisions are “performance art.” Ahem.

Today, I'm teaching the whole special section on "Performative X" that Michelle Liu Carriger edited. Such a little time capsule from 2020... muse.jhu.edu/issue/45260

I have never seen a series so devoted to the ongoing professional development of its authors. If you’re working on a book, especially a first book, take Brian up on this offer!

The ideological currents we're swimming against are so strong, even among our closest allies. Even friends and loved ones outside academia tend to respond with, at best, a pitying nod: "Humanities degrees lead to good employment outcomes, good lifetime incomes, etc. I'm sure that's right dear..."

**Actor (my resume listed four distinct Irish accents) **Clothes salesman (sold menswear to Philip Roth *and* Rosie O'Donnell) **Low-level staff at a now-defunct Conde Nast business/lifestyle magazine (weird times) **Union organizer (helped get most of Yale English to sign union cards)

Ok, ok, I’ll be the one to start a Theater & Performance Studies “starter pack.” Please help me grow it? go.bsky.app/JWVbyvP

as long as journalists and pundits act as if they are amateur political strategists & not people trying to understand and tell the truth about the world, they are going to take the implicit view that voters can never be wrong, which then demands endless explanation of their morally blameless choice