UT American Studies is my intellectual home, with a rich and expansive history of scholarship. These other departments share the same, crown jewels of what was once among the greatest public universities in the world. Just sick over this.

Some days it feels like the contemporary university is just an ever-shifting pile of edtech vendor contracts wearing a trench coat.

wrote about jelly roll pretending he and we are stupid for this week's drti www.dontrocktheinbox.com/im-a-dumb-re...

In early February 1973, Willie Nelson and his Family Band, along with guests Doug Sahm, Waylon Jennings, and Jessi Colter, traveled to NYC to record not one, but two Nelson albums in quick succession: “Shotgun Willie” and “The Troublemaker.” buff.ly/nX64CQp

Please sign and share this Aggies Forward petition link with alumni and allies -- and anyone you know who wants to protect free speech and academic freedom in Texas and across the country: alumni.standforcampusfreedom.org/petitions/co...

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college: The History of Being Cool in America Primate Behavior Revolution in Latin America Contemporary European Social Theory Walking

Legalize Plato! Top-down decisions to censor, cancel, or flag classes at Texas A&M do not protect students. It harms their growth. Brian Evans, @texasaaup.bsky.social president, believes in the students’ ability to stand up for themselves, and for the futures of their university and of Texas.

Texas A&M ends its women's & gender studies program while hundreds of syllabi remain flagged and censored under top-down review policies. “I have never seen anything like this.” — Dr. Leonard Bright, @tamu-aaup.bsky.social President @texasaft.org @texasaaup.bsky.social @cwa-tseu.bsky.social

Just to reiterate

Tempted to put this atop the syllabi I'm introducing next week.

For people elsewhere who have asked how to support Minnesota while we’re overrun with nazi thugs, here’s an excellent list of places that could use financial help. Lots of choices. Thank you so much! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I was desperate for some organization, so I put together a list of places you can donate or buy things for to support folks in Minnesota. If you have places for me to add, please DM me.

When explaining how or why a person could devote a life to "Texas music," Joe Ely is on the short of list of artists you could use to make the case, and almost effortlessly so. Just listen. A heartbreaking, monumental loss. May he rest.

“School officials have created a Microsoft Copilot prompt to review course descriptions with an eye toward avoiding ‘advocacy-oriented or prescriptive terms.’” Terms: “dismantling, decolonizing, interrogating, challenging, centering, combating, liberation, resistance, activism, justice oriented”

EVER HEARD OF… THE UFO CLUB? (Underground-England) A look at Joe Boyd's legendary, short lived UFO club, and the UK psychedelic underground scene of 1967. (Photos by Adam Ritchie) underground-england.com/the-ufo-club/

Hey my news outlet @thebarbedwire.com is hiring a social media manager. Looking for someone smart who lives in Tx and loves covering our messed up state www.journalismjobs.com/job-listing/...

📝 Sign below to support Professor Tom Alter of Texas State who was fired for speech he made in his capacity as a private citizen! ⬇️

Austin #NoKings

Asking again, if you're a UT-Austin grad, to add your name to this open letter. You can also forward it to President James Davis ([email protected]) and the UT Board of Regents ([email protected]).

It was an absolute joy to write about the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, a nonprofit that works tirelessly to preserve Texas' film history by digitizing tapes and film before they degrade. Their website is a treasure trove of cool state history: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

Good news to your end your week ✊ Dr. Thomas Alter is set to be reinstated at Texas State University after an initial court victory. Statement from @texasaaup.bsky.social President Dr. Brian Evans and Texas AFT President @zephcapo.bsky.social 👇 www.texasaft.org/membership/h...

Amanda Shires spent an afternoon introducing me to Lubbock and a small portion of those very fun hours is now chronicled in Texas Monthly ahead of her new album :) gift link: www.texasmonthly.com/arts-enterta...

"Enough is enough. Texas must allow faculty and college students to explore freely the breadth of human knowledge, and administrators must support us in that time-honored quest." – Pauline Strong, President @utaustinaaup.bsky.social #AcademicFreedom #AcademicSky @texasaaup.bsky.social

Texas State terminates history professor over comments made at conference – The University Star share.google/CCzqjzasnYQY...

Appreciate my unions today and everyday. If you work in Texas universities, join up with @cwa-tseu.bsky.social and @texasaft.org The only way through is together!

“Texas Democrats lost. But they drew attention to Republicans’ efforts to put their thumb on the scale, and demonstrated a valuable tactic for galvanizing their beleaguered party. They lost, but they lost loudly. Losing loudly has been a crucial feature of successful political movements.” Gift:

Calling all part-time and full-time faculty in the South: Speak out on academic freedom, shared governance, and your working conditions! Survey closes 8/29 at 5pm ET. States: AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Simply believe that people who don't live in cities shouldn't be able to declare cities "unliveable." Like, most of us do live here, in the face of all your imaginary terrors.

things can be different

“We wanted to rid ourselves of the fashions of historiography,” Burns summarized at one event, “and make a film that simply shows what happened.” That’s not how history works though. You’re making an argument about what happened & what mattered even if you don’t realize you’re doing it. 🗃️

Some mixed feelings about my hometown Austin these days, but the 13th Floor Elevators' "Slip Inside This House" on the airport speakers definitely goes on the plus side of the ledger.

"Find your political home" remains, for me at least, the single best guiding star in times of crisis and chaos. Individuals can doomscroll and post and have big feelings; groups can take meaningful action. Maybe it's an activist org, union, student group, career, collective/crew, etc (1/3)

From @jasonmellard.bsky.social: "This Week in Texas Music History, Blues giant Leadbelly performs his final concert at UT’s Hogg Auditorium" - #Texas

Hell yeah. Here's my manifesto: close reading for all. On Sigrid Nunez, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Erich Auerbach, and why close reading is an answer to AI. Thanks to @brandyjensen.bsky.social, rockstar editor, who rules. For @defector.com defector.com/close-readin...

Don't make Texas universities unconstitutional by passing SB37 www.expressnews.com/opinion/comm...

The @thebarbedwire.bsky.social writers out there doing the Lord's work, and consistently so.

If you've been waiting in the wings to launch an artisan chicory coffee revival, congrats, I guess.

The last time I felt like this was when Leticia Van de Putte asked her epic question — what does a woman have to do to be heard over the men in the room — during Wendy Davis' filibuster of the 2013 TX omnibus anti-abortion bill and the crowd in the building hollered until the clock hit midnight.

Funny how "erasing history" only applies to tearing down Confederate monuments, emphasizing the role of enslavement in the development of the U.S., & renaming military bases named after Confederates, but not to acknowledging historical Black, Brown, queer, and trans folks

CALL TO ACTION FOR ALL WHO SUPPORT HIGHER ED: Please join us in signing this public commitment to the value and values of higher ed as a crucial part of healthy democracies, and calling on our leaders to actively defend us against attack! bit.ly/DemocracyAnd...

"We all live inside this brutal, loud, limitlessly stupid soap opera now, where each and every institution you might have valued, with whatever misgiving, can be seen sliding toward a ruined and more or less unviable version of itself."

Happy to have the digital version of the 2024 Journal of Texas Music History now online, featuring articles on San Antonio's Acosta family of luthiers and on the Texas dimensions of the Vietnam War Songs Project by @justinbrummer.bsky.social www.txst.edu/ctmh/publica...

Article now available online: www.txst.edu/ctmh/publica... Thanks to the editors Jason Mellard (@jasonmellard.bsky.social) & Alan Schaefer

We are looking for journalists and writers to cover the Mississippi Delta and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Like every semester teaching US history, started with Reconstruction in the first week, about to get to Wong Kim Ark in the second. "The past is never dead. It's not even past" and all that.

If you're looking to join more of your fellow Verdes and #AustinFC fans, here is a starter pack: go.bsky.app/5z2Qf4Y

It's in small doses, but in my most ambitious moments I figure our KUTX/Texas Standard/Texas State team can eventually cover the Lone Star State's whole dang musical past via This Week in Texas Music History. This week, Katie Webster!

Spoke with Rose McMackin about the legacy of the Chicks. Honored to be cited alongside Marissa Moss and Jada Watson and for the chance to engage with the Barbed Wire, a great new pub on Texas culture and goings-on. thebarbedwire.com/2025/01/06/t...

No matter how often I listen to Roky Erickson's "Bloody Hammer"-a song I love-the arrival of the baby ghost in the lyric somehow spooks and surprises me every time.