Delighted to see Progress included in Porchlight's Best New Business Books in Dec www.porchlightbooks.com/collections/...

Scholars Fired/Suspended for Opposing Genocide in Palestine Featuring: Eric Cheyfitz (suspended, Cornell), Jodi Dean (reinstated, Hobart & William Smith), Maura Finkelstein (formerly, Muhlenberg), Sang Hea Kil (formerly, San Jose State), Ramsi Woodcock (suspended, U Kentucky) zoom.us/webinar/regi...

following with interest as one of my undergraduate students is writing their dissertation on THE LAST MAN! #LastMan200

My book provides a novel framework/historical analysis explaining how and why this lineage of development has led to the environmental and inequality crises of today, how narratives of progress have reproduced this lineage, and offers viable ways out of these crises. Links below...

got a chuckle from Kazuo Ishiguro when he was looking for his coat in the Bodleian cloakroom and I said you can just pick your favourite

one of the best books I read in 2025 – fun to see Pocock's colour photographs here

James Merril’s poem “Christmas Tree,” written while he was dying of AIDS. 1995.

Still time to send me an abstract for Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities. It’s shaping up to be a fascinating day!

“there are only 7 full-time book critics left in the US: three at NYT ( Jacobs, Garner, Szalai), 2 at WaPo(Rothfeld, Charles), 1 each at WSJ (Sacks), NY mag (Chu), Slate (Miller) more people have walked on the moon than write book reviews for a living” worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

14 two-year postdocs for academics of any nationality who cannot continue their research due to US politics. Do share if you know of such.

@smillermcdonald.bsky.social considers Black liberation, the abolition of slavery, and the myth of progress.

Geographer @smillermcdonald.bsky.social on the myth of progress — a delusion that's been following us for 5000 years and justified endless wars, genocides and ecological destruction. Full episode out now: www.planetcritical.com/the-myth-of-...

'How progress has legitimised violence for over 5,000 years, recycled through Holy Books, colonial legislation, international development, and even technological innovation.' Had a great chat about my book on Planet:Critical. Have a listen: www.planetcritical.com/the-myth-of-...

AI is a Performance of Progress, Not the Real Thing. Despite driving "growth", AI is failing to improve anyone's life, and its harms are piling up. substack.com/home/post/p-...

It's time once again for my annual #treebybike post. This is the 12/19/42 cover of @newyorker.com, so one full year after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This would be the first real Christmas alone, or without a family member, for millions in the US. Gas and tire rationing had begun earlier that year.🗃️

Another sketchbook piece i've been meditating over in recent weeks, little Cabinet of Curiosities. Really enjoying having something like this on the side to doodle on.

🔴 Nigel Farage’s Reform is more reliant on super-rich backers than any major party in modern British political history 75% of *all* Reform donations *ever* have come from just three rich men Is this what democracy looks like? New on Democracy for Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/75-of-refo...

Today is my first day in my new job at the Uni of Manchester, and I have a new article to share! ‘Operation Hurricane’: Narrating Climate Change as Imperial Mess. This article is something a bit different, playing with format to explore why climate storytelling matters. doi.org/10.1002/geo2...

december's TBR pile has arrived (a happy accident that all have animals in the title)

New review of my book out! www.truthdig.com/articles/is-...

"Reading is a curious thing. A book read in a happy fog is one thing; the same pages when the world has turned to ash can be another." Cynthia Zarin traces the rise of fascism through the diary entries of Virginia Woolf: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dont-close-your-teeth/

🔥🔥🔥 While everyone is distracted by other budget news, Labour have just announced that they will allow more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea 🔥🔥🔥 Genuinely catastrophic for our climate and further proof that Labour care more about corporate profits than people or planet.

I wrote an essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social about what I learned about close reading when I taught at West Virginia University www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

nice to spy my former PhD supervisor @timothycbaker.bsky.social and fellowship mentor @sadiseshiah.bsky.social in this cambridge companion to british utopian lit & culture!

I’m really surprised this isn’t bigger news. Just under 10 million people live in Tehran. Where can they go? Where else in Iran will have enough water? This will undoubtedly strain the country’s and the region’s politics, finances and governance capacity.

Nick Gaskill and I are organising a panel on Whitehead, focused on Science & the Modern World, for the MSA/BAMS conference in 2026, and are looking for an additional contributor. Email me by 25 November on [email protected] if you’re interested! #WeirdModernisms #BAMS2026 #MSA2026

I have a piece on Post-Holocene Progress at St Martin's Press History Reader: 'we cannot assume an ever-increasing energy expenditure...fossil energy use must stop and everything dependent on it must be abolished or reformed' www.thehistoryreader.com/world-histor...

excellent state-of-the-field conversation about the energy humanities

If you email us proof of cancellation of your New York Times subscription (send to [email protected]), we’ll give you a FREE year-long digital subscription to Current Affairs.

I'm giving a short talk about my new book, The Help Deficit and the Stories We Tell to Dispel It, in my department's research seminar series on 3rd December, 4.15 pm - 5,30 pm. It's hybrid so let me know if you'd like the Teams link.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Radclyffe Hall and Lady Una Troubridge rendered in papier-mâché. A masterpiece, I'm sure you will agree.

Doctoral Researcher, Liam Young, is co-organising the first @bacls.bsky.social graduate conference, held at the Uni of Leeds on 20 May 2026. Participants will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the journal Alluvium. Deadline for abstracts: 4 January 2026. CFP here: bacls.org/news/188/

Heather aims to curate an original history of protest and sabotage in mainstream culture to better understand how fiction influences both activism and its suppression.” www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/eng...

This open letter to COP30 calling for the arts and humanities to be central to responses to the climate crisis chimes with the current research project of our Vice Chancellor’s Independent Research Fellow @hrmilligan.bsky.social www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/op...

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.

My old pal Pete Coviello — one of the best writers and thinkers I've ever known — wrote the piece of the moment lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

This put words to the thing I keep coming back to: "Ducks, Newburyport" is the only novel that makes sense of this moment thebaffler.com/salvos/ameri...

I made my students a little “book” (just using Google slides) to show them how you all answered my question about how you take notes for research. Just to show the variety.

lovely to visit Toppings bookshop in Edinburgh today for @smillermcdonald.bsky.social to sign copies of his book Progress - a street over from where we used to live and the final edits were completed

Those pesky double endpapers in full...

absolutely blown away by this introduction – immediately requested my library acquire a copy!

PhD opportunity with fee-waiver. I'm always interested in supervising projects in textual scholarship and editing, literary archives and modernism (especially the work of James Joyce and W. B. Yeats). www.lboro.ac.uk/study/postgr... #phd #humanities #lboro

Stop using AI. Stop using it NOW.

“Geographer McDonald debuts with a sweeping reappraisal of the notion of historical progress. … The result is a provocative interrogation of the very foundations of modern society.” Very honored for PROGRESS to receive a starred review from @publisherswkly.bsky.social

Believe it or not, it's already time to think about MSA 2026 in Loughborough, UK. The conference will meet July 1-4, and proposals for panels, papers, roundtables, workshops, and seminars is December 1. Please note this MUCH earlier deadline. The CFP is here: www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M...

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

"Often described as postmodern, Krasznahorkai is known for his long, winding sentences, dystopian and melancholic themes, and the kind of relentless intensity that has led critics to compare him to Gogol, Melville and Kafka." #Nobel #Literature #Prize #novels www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye sold just 2,000 copies in its first year. Today, it’s a number many authors can’t recover from. Writer @tajjaisen.bsky.social examines how the publishing industry’s sales track can make or break careers before they even begin: thewalrus.ca/the-publishing-i...

We need this in Scotland. It’s not even wishful or fanciful thinking: it’s financially astute. Our creative industries are absolutely vital