James Kelman at 80: a conference to mark the 80th birthday of the great Glaswegian writer. Spring 2027, University of Glasgow @glasgow.ac.uk

Delighted to announce that my first academic monograph - "Ali Smith and the Politics of Connection: Encounter, Relationality, Praxis" - is under contract with @edinburghup.bsky.social! 📖 This book will offer a deep dive into contemporary Scottish author Ali Smith spanning the 1980s/90s to the 2020s

Important news: the deadline for the joint BAMS/MSA conference in Loughborough has been extended to December 29, 2025! You can review the CFP, and find links to the submission platform, here. www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M...

The heartbreaking, obscene thing is that while the target audience *might* notice and remember headlines about the extension of ILR requirements for 48 hours at most, tens of thousands of individuals and British families will live with a whole decade or more of stress, uncertainty, punitive expense.

Thrilled to announce our new issue, Novel Media/Media Novel, edited by Dong Xia and Sandro Eich: c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1286/i...

Very much the case for humanities ECRs today - eloquently summarised by these contributors, no. 2 especially

pls RT, modernists - CFP now out for 'Weird Modernisms', the collaborative conference between @modernistudies.bsky.social and @moderniststudies.bsky.social ! July 2026, Loughborough University. www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M...

Huge thanks to Helen Smith wordsmith.bsky.social for an excellent English: Shared Futures conference. It was inspiring, exciting, and fun, and especially moving to hear so many friends and colleagues speaking about why and how English matters to them

‘If higher education was as committed to “woke indoctrination” as the Tory peer Nat Wei claims, I imagine I would spend a lot less time on administrative emails.’ Ed Kiely on UK university finances: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Higher education: Got No Jobs

Really excellent conference programme - I sadly cannot make it, but (if you're in Cambridge in mid June) you can!

This government is totally reckless and dangerously ignorant when it comes to universities. If a regional uni folds, it will probably be the biggest employer in the area. Further, all industries that supply the uni will lose biz. Industries partnered with the uni will also leave. Unemployment hell.

Ecocritical people/hive mind - I'm putting together a workshop introducing humanities thinking for environmental issues; after close reading a poem by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, I want to incorporate an example of press coverage/public discourse to then critically read - any good/go to examples?

Stop treating our lives as abstract questions and gotchas

again and again and yet again the privileged’s fantasies of oppression take precedence over the marginalised’s real, daily, violent oppression

We have a brilliant new issue for you! Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2025) is now available: c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1419/i.... There are new articles on peripheral readings of poetry, the Scottish Network Novel, the new sub-genre of up-lit & reviews. Plus more articles coming soon! #OpenAccess #AcaSky

So not only did I give a lecture to an empty room, but the only attendee was, in fact, this post-it atop my webcam

📣 🚨 C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings / @c21literature.bsky.social seeks a new editor! Join a leading journal in 21st-century #LiteraryStudies. Term starts May 2025. 📅 Deadline: 22 April 2025. More info: c21.openlibhums.org/news/793/ #C21Literature @bacls.bsky.social

Found myself in a literal rabbit hole watching clips of Watership Down while doing teaching prep and marking

Academia still expects the outputs appropriate to a 1980s-era tenure line researcher (time protected for thought, wage sufficient to support social reproduction at home) but its reward structure is more like picking up hours at Chipotle or delivering packages for Amazon, if you can even get that

⏰📢EXTENDED DEADLINE: Mon, 17 February 25. If you missed the original deadline, now is your chance to submit a proposal, and to come to beautiful Stirling to present your work on 10–12 June. Information on registration and on PGR/ECR travel bursaries will follow shortly!

Hiya BlueSky! We've got a cracking special issue on Ali Smith which features an interview with Ali Smith, published in December 2024: c21.openlibhums.org/issue/901/in.... Check it out, if you haven't already had a chance! #AcademicSky #BookSky #Literature #OpenAccess @bacls.bsky.social

What the woke mob really want is for you to do the assigned reading (and less marking on the weekends)

Call for Papers: British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies – What Happens Now Conference (BACLS-WHN) 10-12th June 2025, University of Stirling Proposal Deadline: Friday, 7 February docs.google.com/forms/d/1MQD...

Despite current precarity and all of its stresses, it's just great to teach such lovely and engaged students and to see their ideas and thought develop over time - it reminds you why you're trying so hard juggling All The Things, bashing into academia like a moth against a window

Hivemind: Is there anyone here who might be able to lead a session to support PhD students who have caring responsibilities? Hybrid session in Manchester, 18th-19th February, and the person will, of course, be paid for their time.

Just saw this CfP on the Other Site and thought I’d share here for anyone that missed it! The @bacls.bsky.social What Happens Now Conference will be held in Stirling on 10-12 June 2025 🤩 Proposals due 24 Jan. forms.gle/Jmx4BBpdB7L3...

Published today (!) During my PhD, I was lucky enough to interview Ali Smith and have a wide ranging conversation with her about (then latest) novel Companion Piece and writing to the moment - now published here (open access) as part of a C21 Literature special issue on the Seasonal books:

When the US result started to become increasingly clear this morning, Mum asked if it meant that we're all doomed, so of course I said not straightforwardly. Complicatedly doomed then, she says. It's certainly felt like that for a while

Put together a wee modernism/contemporary lit Starter Pack (because there simply wasn't not enough research/teaching prep/admin/housework to keep me occupied) DM me if I've made any glaring omissions or besmirched your good name by implying that you're a modernist go.bsky.app/CkQhf9v

Save the Date! We are pleased to announce that BACLS 2025 will take place from 10-12 June 2025 in Stirling, Scotland. A Call for Papers will be released in the coming weeks on here and via our mailing list.

There are now 74 universities making redundancies. That number will reach 80 by Christmas and 90 next year. In my view around 20%-30% of all capacity will be destroyed in many fields. qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

The Edinburgh Companion to Queer Reading is now available for pre order here: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi.... Feel free to share this link and the launch discount code NEW30 for 30% off far and wide. 🦄

Feels like a good time to plug this (brilliant) recent novel: Diego Garcia by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams

📢CfP: New Work in Modernist Studies 14 📌13 December, @uniofeastanglia ⏰Apply by 18 October 2024 A great opportunity for postgraduates & early career researchers to share work on modernist culture in a supportive environment. See below for details & please circulate!

You can find a growing #C21Lit starter pack here now! If you want to be on the list or if you have any recommendations of who or which feeds should be on here, DM or comment! go.bsky.app/B4b7Yoq

Banger

SCOTTISH LITERARY REVIEW 16/1 Special issue: “Queer Form” ed Zoë Strachan & Darryl Peers Free on Open Access via Project MUSE Articles on: JM Barrie & Compton Mackenzie Ali Smith Queer Landscapes Shola von Reinhold Queer Scottish Form Callie Gardner Maud Sulter Edwin Morgan muse.jhu.edu/issue/51852

Happy to announce that my book is available for pre-order! 📗🙌 If are interested in entering a conversation between the environmental humanities, border studies & Scottish literature; & if you believe literary forms matter - this may be for you! #BorderStudies #EnvHum #ScotLit @scotlit.bsky.social

While witnessing powerful acts of communication during this (durational) moment - poems, speeches, live media appearances, essays, graphics, posters, songs, translations - you can see all the more clearly why governments like ours want to restrict creative subjects.

Delighted to receive a contributor copy of this collection on Max Porter; my piece is about the novel Lanny's experimental storytelling encompassing genre hybridity, social othering, eco-crisis, and play. Thanks so much to the editors! Full book info here: www.routledge.com/Critical-Per...

Excited to share some of my words out in the world: exploring Ali Smith's writing - both fiction and essays - as an idiosyncratic mode of (literary) art criticism (open access! ft artsy images by Emma Hart, Francesco del Cossa, and Pauline Boty!): academic.oup.com/camqtly/arti...

Some books I'm teaching/excerpting this term for classes based around textual analysis and critical theory

Crowdfunder for Dr Kiguru - please donate or share if you can 🙏🏽 www.gofundme.com/f/help-reuni...

Here's a Republic of Consciousness newsletter I put together - a bonus one for Nov. Pass the terrible sequel puns for news, events and books from UK small presses:

Hiya BACLS members old and new 👋 We're excited that we are now also part of the bluesky community! 💙 If you have an invite code that you would be willing to share with a member not yet on bluesky, please email our publicity officer @juliaditter.bsky.social at [email protected] 📨

Finally reading Deep Wheel Orcadia and it's grand - not sure if it's the orcadian verse, everday sci-fi conversations, the influence of Mackay Brown & Gibbon, its lyrical narrative about community, the underlying bildungsroman and questions of identity & difference - but it's a uncan birlan classic

This is brilliant—in response to the Frankfurt Book Fair's contemptible erasure of Adania Shibli's brilliant MINOR DETAIL, her publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions has made the ebook free to download for the duration of the Book Fair, on Amazon UK, Apple Books, and Kobo.

Delighted to be on placement with the Republic of Consciousness Prize and helping with their work supporting small presses - here's a newsletter I put together with loads of great new releases, workshops, opportunities, and more RofC Newsletter - Oct 2023: open.substack.com/pub/therepub...

Today I saw Eley Williams's Attrib in an Oxfam bookshop and swapped it onto a display stand because (I hope) someone is going to pick it up and love it - a shameless trick back from when I did relief work across Aberdeen's public libraries, when I'd sneak books I liked in all kinds of places