Faculty will be ”given a score between zero and three by the university” - unbelievable stupidity and cruelty, solidarity with comrades at Exeter

Ok, so according to the Union’s calculations, 27% of the staff in my English department will be made redundant

Guardian piece on Exeter! 🤩 www.theguardian.com/education/20...

First review of my book, Modernism’s Whims, and it’s a lovely one ❤️✨🥰

It might just help change the senior management team's minds

Exeter has a phenomenal track record of literary studies research AND enrollment. The unbundling of the two will sabotage them both. And that is by design. The fewer research-intensive humanities departments there are, this thinking goes, the easier it will be to censor what they produce.

solidarity from UEA where we went through this 3 years ago. the 3 campus unions did a stellar job then, ousting the VC, getting media onside and supporting alternative plans for budget management- a very long and hard fight and many still lost their jobs but it was a turnaround - good luck

In case you didn’t know, Exeter uni, where I work, has announced a plan to make 25% of staff in my English department redundant. Left-over staff will do double the teaching while their research time will be shrunk to 1%. Meanwhile admissions for English at Exeter are HIGH, and on the rise this year

english lit and culture studies people from the last 10 years, favorite standalone articles, or book intros/chapters, that open new ways of reading / new areas of study / new paradigms and thus usefully show new grads range in the field?

Wow. Simultaneously being put at risk of redundancy and my new modules being abolished, while also being asked to put forward those same modules for TEF and Accessibility case studies. The sheer nerve.

😍😍😍

Proofs ✨✨✨

“No throne exists that has a right to exist, & no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull & crossbones of that kindred industry, piracy, which differs from royalty only as retail differs from wholesale.” - Mark Twain

‘That you cannot get in since the entrance is the obstacle itself is what it means for life to end at emptiness. Despite the space’ (Keston Sutherland)

‘That you cannot get in since the entrance is the obstacle itself is what it means for life to end at emptiness. Despite the space’ (Keston Sutherland)

Just got my copy of TP’s brilliant special issue on influence, with my essays on inimitability and Prynne side by side ❤️

new in Parapraxis online! Love's Work the romance boom, psychoanalysis, Emily Henry, and creative labor www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/lov...

Code for my book’s intro 😘😘😘 fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...

Code for my book’s intro 😘😘😘 fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...

Writing on loving drafts too much

Last seminar of the term: truth & exploded gum 🔥🤯✨

I’m chapter 30 in a forthcoming Oxford handbook of Santayana. My first philosophy gig! It’s mainly about Wallace Stevens ✨💕

Excited for our panel on modernism’s meanest: Laura Riding Hates You (And You, And You, And You, And You)

Speaking on the theme ‘Laura Riding Hates You’ at this year’s BAMS, alongside brilliant @kristingrogan.bsky.social & Christian Gelder 🖤✨🎉

My Aldington piece in the flesh in the #TLS

The #TLS let me vomit all over Richard Aldington 🤢 🤮 www.the-tls.com/literature-b...

It’s happened 🩷🩵

Lecturing on allusion today ✨

This Newsnight interview with Zack Polanski is really brilliant 🤩 m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpVO...

Happy Dydd Gwyl Dewi from my little ghost

“One possible criterion with which to evaluate the success of a close reading is how well it understands itself as being part of & beholden to a community, even as it tries to challenge that community's terms of engagement. Or, as Dan & Johanna phrase it, as a product of & an offering to community.”

Gave a paper on boobs at a drugs symposium today; this is the view from the floor

One of my students brought this heartbreaking poem to class today

Bit of Woolf that always makes me cry 💔

Stunning cast in the second of the three-part podcast miniseries on the symposium, Close Reading for the 21C: "Why is close reading best understood as a conversation? What are its evaluative standards? How does it extend the conversation beyond literary studies?" podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

New issue of CQ has landed! “Chaplinish”, edited brilliantly by @becimay.bsky.social

Reading is an irresistible invocation of all the breasts you’ve wanted more from 💕 🍸 🥛

My article on the last line has just been published over at Critical Quarterly. I’d ❤️ to know what you think 🤔 doi.org/10.1111/criq...

noBOdY cAReS ABoUt CRiTiciSM

hating Sexy Wuthering Heights will only make it stronger

It's here! I hosted a symposium on close reading at Emory in November. Matt Seybold recorded it for his podcast, American Vandal, and the first of three episodes is out today. Catch me, @johannawinant.bsky.social, @becimay.bsky.social, @bakaari.bsky.social + more podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Don’t you wish this were a podcast? 😉

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!

About to lecture about nits

So it looks as though you can access my new book already if you’re subscribed to OUP. Here’s the link :) 🎉✨ academic.oup.com/book/62228?s...

Really enjoyed this Q&A with @biblioracle.bsky.social, who pushed me to think about my work in terms of the somewhat amorphous, but not obsolescent principles of academic freedom.

Keats slamming his era’s riot police 👮🔥💪

Poetic rhythm vs AI 🔥