CALL FOR PITCHES @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not. Details below!

Feels like the US has spent the last 5+ years on the verge of some kind of secular moral revival that keeps getting channeled into weirdo lifestyle puritanism

Not at all surprised to learn that Bad Bunny has a historical adviser. His halftime show was a reminder that our history and culture are deeply intertwined with the rest of the western hemisphere. We should think of his performance as part of #America250. #SuperBowl news.wisc.edu/pop-star-bad...

One of many issues with right coded classical education. Instead of treating canonical texts as invitations to explore and appreciate truth and beauty, it treats them as the embodiment of truth and beauty. Under this model, reading is about submission to existing ideas, not making meaning of them.

Join us for our February #literacies chat on the intersections between gaming and literacy with @elpatronhimself.bsky.social!

Realizing that powerful people cannot distinguish fact from obvious fiction online is helpful to understanding 2026.

I had a great conversation with @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social on the what/why/how of close reading. There’s much to be gained by creating connective tissue between literary studies & secondary English, so I’m excited to share this episode! open.substack.com/pub/trevoral...

I had a great conversation with @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social on the what/why/how of close reading. There’s much to be gained by creating connective tissue between literary studies & secondary English, so I’m excited to share this episode! open.substack.com/pub/trevoral...

Johanna Winant and I talked with Trevor Aleo about why close reading matters now, and about our book, Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century @johannawinant.bsky.social @mraleosays.bsky.social @princetonupress.bsky.social trevoraleo.substack.com/p/drs-dan-si...

The Media Studies Toolkit, 2nd edition, dropped this week. I'm excited for this refreshed, updated, and expanded version to reach students and instructors of introductory courses in media studies. www.routledge.com/The-Media-St... A short thread about what's inside.

I really love that Annie’s work doesn’t simply defend the liberal arts, it actively demonstrates how taking up its texts & traditions can provide invaluable insight into contemporary issues. English classes should be invitations to appreciate, enjoy, & contribute to living traditions & communities.

“calling our current public-education policy ‘progressive’ is, read most generously, imprecise” great essay about what progressive education ought to aim for—one that hopefully clarifies things not only for the Tates of the world, but also for those of us who aim to do this kind of work ourselves.

How can we scaffold that growth rather than admonish students for not having it?

My hot take about the “students cannot read whole novels / watch whole films / etc.” is that they can learn to do it. None of us are born with attention spans suited for long media. It is a learned skill and can be developed with practice.

1. Semiotics & the interpretation of meanings 2. Advanced studies in author: Toni Morrison 3. Critical theory & literacies 4. New media & literacies 5. Writing about literature

This trend is giving me life. College is cool, knowledge is great. The liberal arts is rad. Being well rounded is the GOAT. Fund all colleges and universities. We should be throwing money at them. Make it affordable for all. Let people take underwater basket weaving if they choose.

While I’m not surprised in the least, it drives me nuts that no one in those institutions thinks like this. ⤵️ It’s almost like there’s a system filled with people who are trained to share knowledge with others & are starved for meaningful, intellectually stimulating professional development.🤔

Best Colorado snow football since

Our careers at the National Endowment for the Humanities weren't boring - they were inspiring and fulfilling, in service to America. And after months of uncertainty and unemployment, most of us certainly aren't working in better jobs for more pay. You destroyed so much, and for what? #NEH

“Being a student in Minneapolis right now can be really scary, because going to school is something that kids are so lucky to have,” she said. “The fact that our own government is keeping us from the schools that they provide and they want us to be at is scary, and it’s sad and it’s angering.”

I wanted to avoid the obligatory “buffet of continents & cultures” approach when designing my new World Literature course, so planning has been intense for this semester. It’s a pretty ambitious framing for 11th & 12th graders, but I’m excited to see how it goes this week.

Join us this Wednesday (1/21/26) at 7pm ET to debrief on #NCET25 and #CEL25. We invite anyone who views themselves as classroom, school, district, community, or state-level leaders in ELA/literacy. Must be an NCTE member. An hour of casual reflections! #NCET26 #CEL26 ncte.org/reflect-rela...

"As long as any topic makes an immediate appeal, it is not necessary to ask what it is good for...Some goods are not good for anything; they are just goods. Any other notion leads to an absurdity." Dewey, Democracy and Education

not just an explanation but a celebration and an invitation

Been talking to lots of folks about this (teachers, teacher educators, & literary scholars) in a US context, but interesting to see it happening in the UK under a different but equally damaging testing regime. All for the sake of “rigor” while actual experts are like “But this is bad/wrong?”

I was talking to @kierongillen.bsky.social today about the Burkean Parlor: “Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about…”

"This is a verified page fundraising support for the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO and Working Partnerships' 2026 rapid response effort to meet the needs of impacted union members, worker center members, and their families..." workingpartnerships.betterworld.org/campaigns/su...

Citations are not an end in themselves. They are the residue of healthy process. Treating citations as a successful end in a simulacra research and writing process is like saying you raise corn to get the tassels.

I see this take everywhere and it sends me every time. Literacy matters. We need it. It’s important. It’s why I study it! That said, for the love of God, stop assuming that people’s heinous politics are a result of faulty logic or an inability to decode/comprehend text.

Unprecedented, systematic attacks on HigherEd designed to undermine public faith and suppress attendance...and nationwide enrollments still went up. "I think a lot of people think of it as a demographic slope at this point." 😏

It hasn’t coalesced into a concrete paper/project yet, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how English education might draw on Jameson more explicitly to help reframe & refresh some of the deeper “Why?” questions we’re grappling with rn. This excerpt from @roberttally.bsky.social captures it nicely.

Me: Wow, Between parenting and trying to finish up grades/comments, I haven't had a second to chill. Maybe I'll take a break and scroll for a bit. I wonder what I've missed today! Me opening Bluesky: Ohh. Okay.

I really wish Dems would start making similar arguments about education. Presenting it as a public good that provides access to other “goods” like art, expression, knowledge, community, discernment, etc. is such a more compelling narrative than “Make human capital go up!!! 📈”

Another brilliant blog from @xenogothic.bsky.social -- a reminder that, as Bloch wrote, the opposite of hope is not fear but memory that throws us back into an unchangeable past. Give it a read 👇 xenogothic.com/2026/01/09/a...

Great example of how theories & questions from literary studies (E.g. Are there narrative forms/patterns that transcend culture?) become unmoored from their disciplinary roots, circulate in curricular materials & online, & eventually calcify into worksheets containing Immutable English Class Stuff™️.

"Philosophy will have conscience of tomorrow, commitment to the future, knowledge of hope, or it will have no more knowledge." - Ernst Bloch, 1954

So much love for the @jckessler.bsky.social, @annakornbluh.bsky.social, & the whole UIC Faculty United, who collectively programmed this event, & then had the generosity & gumption to say, let’s share it with the world, because we are @higheredlabor.bsky.social United. + @bakerdphd.bsky.social is 🔥

fantastic essay on desire, politics, and psychoanalytic extrapolations "you cannot not be in a group" www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/ess...

Sunday scaries have been hitting very unevenly tonight. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between feverishly re-imagining my entire Global Literature syllabus and mindlessly scrolling social media while debating if I should start bingeing Pluribus.

KSR on "futurecide" and what comes after, climate counter-aesthetics, and utopian directionality note that Futurę Histories now has a new channel specifically for its English language episodes!

The Curriculum Discourse™️ has me returning to a question I often ask myself & PSTs—what might happen if we START the curriculum design process by asking “how can students join meaningful conversations within the literary humanities?” instead of “what skills/standards should I cover in this unit?”

It’s been a hectic 365ish days since I started my Substack & I’ve enjoyed having a space to write & connect with folks who share my passion for teaching, learning, & the literary humanities. In the spirit of obligatory NY posts, here’s my 2025 highlights. open.substack.com/pub/trevoral...

It was, by every measure, a banner year for The American Vandal. Every episode is my favorite episode, but here were 2025's top 5 by downloads, starting where you would guess. The episode cited in Slate, Defector, etc. It coined a slogan. The first of 3 appearances by @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social

We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall University, to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (The New Press, 2025). moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...

This is EdTech & AI grifter’s fault. I don’t blame individuals. I get blue books are an understandable stop-gap fix to our AI-hellscape. HOWEVER—the claim timed writings are “a return to authentic human learning” is turning me into the joker. This thread. I can’t.⤵️ open.substack.com/pub/trevoral...

Now that “English is for developing fungible 21st-Century Skills™️” is fading from our social imaginary (good thing), I hope whatever comes next is rooted in authentic communities & contexts. Buurma & Heffernan’s “The Teaching Archive” offers a compelling vision from oft overlook literary history.