I wrote about why I can't sleep at night: the devaluation of so many things (critical thinking, creativity) I thought were paramount. lithub.com/when-we-deva...

This episode, from 2023, is the second-most downloaded episode of this past week, with hundreds of people downloading it in just the last two days. I don’t know what spurred this surge in interest, but I love it when archival episodes suddenly pop.

Trying something new in the classroom can be a "best of times but also worst of times" experience—esp. if you want that "new" to be both good/sustainable That's what I reflected on today: learnings from bringing a new strategy/system into the classroom thebrokencopier.substack.com/p/bringing-s...

@mattseybold.bsky.social I just read your new AV blog post about CUNY stepping in for public ed-tech. 1) Bold, love it; 2) Lina Khan, who is in the transition team, might be into it. Anyone we know has an in with her? Maybe @moacir.com who's doing digital librarian type work for the DSA...

This book is fantastic for anyone teaching literature, but offers a significant additional benefit for many high school teachers: it will help them (re)discover and then trace the roots of close reading back to a particular (albeit expansive) tradition and intellectual community. (1/4) 🧵

Odd detail for me to get excited about, but as someone who’s spent A LOT of time thinking, writing, & designing PD about transfer, seeing this in Close Reading for the 21st Century was a treat. Inviting inductive reasoning across multiple examples is such a powerful & easy teaching move.

Myers Education Press authors of "Fandoms in the Classroom" Karis Jones and Scott Storm are doing a #literacies chat in November. Visit www.aera.net/SIG137/Writi... for more info. #curriculum #teaching #learning #teachereducation

In addition to all the usual reasons to be upset by these layoffs, this is an additional layer for me. I used Teen Vogue to introduce some concepts, events, & trending topics because it was one of the few mainstream outlets that treated teens like serious people & not a marketing demographic.

Added this mind-boggling slide from Chris’s research to the episode homepage.

Teen Vogue rising after the 2016 election and dying after the 2024 election doesn't even feel like a metaphor as much as a microcosm of what is happening all over places that were once strong areas of resistance.

"The point is to change it" — a volume of new essays from 21 leading academics exploring the role of philosophy in public life — launches today! Contributors include @tariqmodood.bsky.social, @martinoneill.bsky.social, @jowolff.bsky.social, @elkeschwarz.bsky.social and more. Click below to read 👇🦉

We speak with Caroline Levine, Ryan Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University, about her important book The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis.

Every public school teacher you know now knows more about how to help families find affordable food than they did about a week ago. In case any anti-teacher-union types are curious, this is what those disruptive organizers have been texting/emailing each other about all weekend.

it's here! FILMING CAPITAL special issue of SAQ "Visual and film studies provide a distinctive lens through which to unravel and confront the complexities of capitalism’s elusive appearance." read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlant...

It is pretty wild how all encompassing this framing has become. Human capital theory has completely dominated the social imaginary of education for decades. Article I wrote a few years ago. Not so silent of a crisis these days though. ⤵️ www.humanrestorationproject.org/writing/the-...

A brilliant analysis of how the tech (and, at this point, policy) world’s mythmaking around AGI—which nobody can even define—functions like a conspiracy theory on multiple levels. www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1...

Also worth a read on the lessons of ethics in Shelley's masterpiece. www.themarginalian.org/2018/06/14/f...

When multiple students say stuff like “You aren’t going to tell us how many paragraphs our paper has to have or how many pieces of evidence we have to have per paragraph? But that’s how we were trained!” it really shows how algorithms replaced writing well before chatbots. It’s about pedagogy. 🤷‍♂️

“Dataism is nihilism. It gives up on any and all meaning. Data and numbers are not narrative; they are additive. Meaning, on the other hand, is based on narration.” Between teaching The Circle and the endless AI discourse on my timeline, I think about Byung-Chul Han’s Psychopolitics daily.

OK I’m sorry I know we know this but it’s going to burn like a coal in my mouth till I say it: the stuff Elon Musk quoted this morning is literally from a guy who falls to the Ring BECAUSE of he clings to his own sense of cultural supremacy

Q3: As someone whose doctorate began at the dawn of the pandemic, I don’t know where I’d be (from a scholarly/professional POV) without the #literacies crew I met online. Truly a space where lasting collaborations, and friendships(!) are built and sustained. Glad I get a lovely monthly reminder!

I have been thinking about this a lot recently— wondering if folks would be interested in collaborating on #literacies public scholarship. Building things together?

My excitement for tonight’s #literacies chat must have been infectious, because bedtime was a struggle. 🫠Joining for the final few questions and glad to see the chat buzzing!

Yes to all of this! FYI: Discord servers are amazing for this kind of stuff if you're willing to give that app a try! #literacies

A4: For those of us who can travel & continue participating in in-person conferences, let’s host #literacies happy hours & hangs! I know I’m excited for #LRA25, but I am even more ecstatic for #WRAB2026! Would love to widen the circumference of impact by fostering more international connections.

I would love for us to do something - act in the world. I saw, for instance, someone crowdsourcing legit aid organizations in Jamaica today. Simple, but can be impactful. #Literacies chat could be a great source to do rapid response crowdsourcing of resources, ideas, support, etc.

Matt Seybold joins Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson to discuss the political economy of literary criticism from past to present, amateur to professional.

“Print is a rent strike” appeared in the pages of @defector.com & @slate.com in the span of less than 24 hours courtesy of two very different, but very complementary essays by @jraden.bsky.social, @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social. These would be weekend must-reads regardless!

What stage of capitalism is it when you can’t find a last minute costume because private equity closed your local Party City, the strip mall necromancy magic that resurrects Spirit is fading, & Target has put all of its Christmas stuff out a full week before Halloween? Because we’re in it.

Hey high school English teachers! If you are going to @ncte.org 's convention next month, please be in touch! @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I, along with ed prof pals Robert LeBlanc and @philnichols.bsky.social, will be presenting and leading a workshop on Saturday, 11/22

More of this! For Eng teachers, professors, or teacher educators looking for related research & resources creating connections: A) Buy Dan/Johanna’s book. I was fortunate to get a review copy & it rocks B) Check my 🧵 of resources & researchers. ⤵️ C) Support disciplinary literacy policy/initiatives

To support the narrative with which Dan & Johanna open this excellent piece, after the Jan 2024 episode in which they discussed their now published book (as well as Danielle Steel) I heard from many teachers who wanted more, as has been true for every episode about close reading. Which is why...

Reason # 1,759 why the high stakes standardized testing regime is even more detrimental to the very purpose of writing in the age of LLMs than it was in the before times. Too many students experiences with writing begin and end with exercises in mindless compliance and contrived performance.

We are less than a week away from the ultimate #literacies HOMECOMING, and we cannot wait to see you there!

Still a work-in-progress, but excited to launch my unit discussing, researching, & writing about the debate surrounding “The Anxious Generation.” Creating a digital whiteboard is infinitely more intuitive & functional than our LMS. All of these materials are hyperlinked to curated articles & media.

Calvin and Hobbes, seriously one of the best duos of all time. Maybe the highest percentage of human nature in a single duo. Up there with Lila and Lenu.

We both felt motivated to understand close reading better, to make the clearest, strongest, case we could for it, and to do it together every step of the way. It's been a huge gift to think with Johanna in the making of this book, which we now offer to the world. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

It is also, especially, above all, a collective book. At its heart: a series of twenty-one short essays. In each, a critic chooses a close reading that matters to them and demonstrates just one thing that that reading does that you could do, too. nd on.

Today is pub day for my third book: Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century. It is a handbook on how to read. It argues for the foundational importance of *caring* to thought. It offers an anatomy of close reading's five steps so we can hone the skills to perform them. It argues for why to read

Working on Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century let me bring together and sustain so many of the texts, ideas, and communities that I care about, and sustained me too. It looks to the future. And now it's in your hands.

at the risk of sentimentality, I'll say that this book has always felt hopeful, powerful, useful, and beautiful to me -- when we planned about it 4 years ago as I had a toddler and young kid and no childcare, 2 years ago when I thought I'd be laid off, and every day that I talked to Dan or taught

. @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I put this book together because we believe close reading to be powerful, beautiful, and useful, to make arguments, skill, and conversation. We hoped to offer more clarity about our central practice to more people. We worked together and with 22 brilliant contributors

Happy official publication day to Close Reading for the Twenty- First Century

Part of teaching against AI requires better writing instruction that better reflects how composing exists in authentic contexts for actual audiences. Silverman’s & Rader’s “The World is a Text” is a fantastic resource for just that. Been a hit for my cultural criticism unit! #literacies

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