Three exciting CFPs for contributions to EJES!

Finishing this book got me through the pandemic & made a dream come true! A deep history of the agential autonomy of short narrative forms since 1700 – topos, lettre de cachet, fable, novella, fairy tale, proverb, commonplace, epiphany, enacted story, videotale … www.zonebooks.org/books/150-ci...

The European Journal of English Studies is inviting proposals for special issues in volume 31 (2027). 👉 essenglish.org/messenger/bl...

As if these days could not get any darker. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...

In Karakter 89: een pleidooi voor contemplatie (Antoon Vandevelde), de laïcisering van KU Leuven (Marc Vervenne), Aby Warburg (Barbara Baert), chronische pijn (Iris Coppieters), hoe de indeling van een tekst ons doet denken (@frederikvandam.bsky.social), en meer! 📖 tijdschriftkarakter.be

Publication and issue: EJES (European Journal of English Studies Volume), 30 (2026): “Cabinets of Curiosities: Collecting, Displaying, Consuming”. Deadline for proposal submissions: 7 April 2025. #essecfp. 👉 essenglish.org/cfp-volumes-...

The Edinburgh Companion to Anthony Trollope is now out in paperback! Still feels and reads as if it was published yesterday. PAPER30 will give you a 30% discount when ordering directly from Edinburgh UP (edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi...).

Uses of literature.

Preparing for my next class on 18C literature. Ironic - or fitting - that I am turning to a French book?

It's really heartening - to see student outspokenness about the negative effects of running universities like a business & making every aspect of life transactional. There's a growing call for a university education to be centered in intellectual life & not whims of job markets & donors.

Schrödinger’s pancake.

From The New School's 1919 course catalog: “courses of study have not been arranged under usual departmental headings — political economy, sociology, history, psychology, etc. — for this tends to obscure the constant connection and interplay of the various interests and activities of mankind.”

I've been spending the past months learning how to sail. If the academic career doesn't work out, perhaps a different future beckons. www.theguardian.com/travel/artic...

Check out the #cfp for the special issue of Studies in the Novel @lydiacooper.bsky.social and I are guest editing on disease and disability in the novel. Please share widely and please consider auottong www.studiesinthenovel.org/submit/call-...

I wrote for @placesjournal.bsky.social about cardboard boxes 📦 as logistical media and designed objects, as pandemic emblems, as capitalist equipment and detritus, as modules for all kinds of modernist imaginings, and as shapers of landscapes!

Next week Tuesday I'll be giving a short talk (in Dutch) at Pint of Science. Why do people craft stories about diplomats? Where can we find diplomacy in fiction, and fiction in diplomacy? Register (for free) at pintofscience.nl/events/nijme...

RIP Marjorie Perloff, 28 September 1931 – 24 March 2024. What an extraordinary body of work.

This is happening next Tuesday, 5pm, at Princeton! Olga Touloumi and I are talking about tables as interfaces of diplomacy and assemblage! www.instagram.com/p/C5CdWVFOFb...

What is the OED's problem with intertextuality?

On Thursday I am moderating the second 'Serendipity Session' at the InScience Film Festival. Three academics will give shed some light on what darkness means in their research fields: dark emotions, dark vision, and dark tourism. Please come and join! www.insciencefestival.nl/nl/vertoning...

Exciting developments in Groningen. www.rug.nl/about-ug/lat...

In the past two years, I worked with @drchrislouttit.bsky.social and Joanna Hofer-Robinson to edit an EJES issue on 19th-century interstitial spaces. I am chuffed to announce that this issue has arrived at its port of call! More @ www.tandfonline.com/toc/neje20/c....

Have you checked out the latest issue of @19birkbeck.bsky.social? A fav new issue dedicated to Nineteenth-Century Infrastructures guest-edited by Joanna Hofer-Robinson and @nicolakirkby.bsky.social Read it here: 19.bbk.ac.uk/issue/915/in...

On opening my pigeon-hole in the office, I found some Iberian ham. A Sicilian message?

Grad students looking for extra mentorship, please consider applying to the EML residency (online, March 2024). Details at link: environmentalmedialab.com/grad-scholar...

zines, y'all (h/t @kaibosworth.bsky.social) haters.noblogs.org/zines/

The article says that we've got rats in our uni building, but what I am hearing is that we need a squad of cats. www.voxweb.nl/nieuws/kou-e...

If you missed the special issue on death, celebrity and material culture that Danielle Dove and I edited for Victoriographies in 2022, you can now access it for FREE throughout January! www.euppublishing.com/toc/vic/12/1

I'm happy to announce a conference next June here at Buckingham on the life and works of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens (to commemorate Collins's bicentenary). CFP is on the site, along with details of bursaries courtesy of @dickenssociety.bsky.social www.collins-and-dickens.com

Are you working on English Lit/Culture and mobility/infrastructure/transport? I am co-organising a panel on literary and artistic engagements with trains and the railroad at ESSE 2024 in Lausanne - wp.unil.ch/esse2024/fil.... Join us!

My Reading Year. (My last Guardian Books cartoon of 2023)

As part of its free access campaign, @edinburghup.bsky.social is opening up all content from its journals in literary studies (until the end of January): www.euppublishing.com/literarystud....

We're hiring! The Faculty of Arts is looking for a new assistant professor in Arts and Culture Studies. www.ru.nl/en/working-a...

We're thrilled to announce that the premiere issue of Critical AI is now online and paywall-free for a limited time! Read more about this new interdisciplinary journal on today's blog: dukeupress.wordpress.com/2023/10/05/n...

On Monday we are organizing a small symposium on the study of coffee. This will be (we hope) the first of a series of sessions in which we explore how the serendipitous encounter between different disciplines may yield new and unexpected insights. Plus: free specialty coffees, cookies, and buns!

New at PB: Sharon Marcus reviews Eleanor Catton's BIRNAM WOOD. “Encrypted in Birnam Wood’s bleak vision of human nature," Marcus writes, "lies a subtle counterfactual story of the great good that might result from a decent person’s daily stream of care.” www.publicbooks.org/capitalism-a...