Resharing this essay I wrote for @creativecritical.bsky.social. When I wrote it, I thought it was a reflection on the past. I now see it was a guide to my future. creativecritical.net/why-im-no-lo...

This October, I'll be hosting an @interintellect.bsky.social salon with the brilliant Lea Ypi. We'll talk about her new book, but I expect the conversation will be wide-ranging. Details below! interintellect.com/salons/the-t...

"...the Institutional Gothic involves uncanny spaces, malevolent forces, and overwhelming discomfort... But where the traditional Gothic is dark + looming with ornate architecture, the Institutional Gothic occurs in winding or otherwise empty office spaces, consumed by machine-made mundanity..."

Happy International Day of Struggle of the Working Class, everyone!

At Cambridge Elements, Sally-Ann Ashton’s new _ Profiling Cleopatra: A Psychosocial History_ is free to read until May 8. I am quite hesitant about the application of cultural psychological framework to the ancient past (e.g. with Caligula). I haven’t read this yet but will try it prior to critique.

I'm reminded of a quote I love from this article by @irinadumitrescu.bsky.social: "Ballet, like opera, is wonderful because it is monstrous, the hyper-development of skills nobody needs, a twisting of human bodies and souls into impossible positions, the purchase of light with blood."

Some books find you exactly when you need them. This was one. www.instagram.com/p/DXQwYw2jML...

In a review of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's novel "Taiwan Travelogue," and two other books featuring translators as central characters, Irina Dumitrescu examines the age-old trope of translation as an act of fraud: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

Bold response from the gentleman whose TikTok videos are entertaining the bus at 6:55 am, once I ask him, gently softly politely, to turn his phone down: "How am *I* supposed to hear it?"

Best. Unboxing. Ever. “Hey, a book,” he says. #ThePublicScholar from @hopkinspress.bsky.social coming this month. Order yours today! www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

My newest column for the @thetls.bsky.social is a thought experiment in seductive media, then and now: www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...

Possibly nice to read with Jack Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure (2011). @dukepress.bsky.social “Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing, may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world.”

... this wonderful article, immediately started reading and couldn't stop, I cannot recommend it enough as it's both super interesting and brilliantly written, I love it and don't regret my lack of discipline this evening!

This looks fantastic, from Irina. As an aside, I once had dinner with Willis Barnstone, one of Borges' colleagues and friends. Willis kept repeating an exclamation he'd say to Jorge with fondness: "Borges, you monster!" Whenever I read Borges (or of Borges) I've this phrase rattling in my skull.

@irinadumitrescu.bsky.social writes: '...one man's conscious embrace of a doomed quest allows him to connect to a knowledge that moves beyond simple notions of success or failure... Time and again, throughout his work, Borges shows the beauty of impossible ambition and epistemic failure.'

Irina … on Borges. Well at least I have something to read that all be fabulous.

"The fragmented nature of the medieval material record, and the difficulty of understanding spottily attested medieval languages, added a layer of epistemic failure. Of course, Borges could and did find these themes in any material, given his vast reading. But the medieval world was ideally suited "

"The pleasure of studying, not the vanity of mastering, has been my chief aim, and I have not been disappointed these past twelve years." - Borges [slagging AI is not the point of this article at all, but there's a few pointed moments...]

FINALLY.

medieval Borges, fantastic, truly the peanut butter cup of combinations

I have a new article on Jorge Luis Borges and failure (the latter being a topic on which I am somewhat of an expert) up on early view at Critical Quarterly. The article is open access, and reads a bit better in the PDF version: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

BREAKING: @EuropeanSlpr's new sleeper train from Brussels & Cologne to Zurich, Como & Milan will start 9 September. Tickets go on sale from 17 March with couchettes from €49.99, single/double/triple sleepers also available. 🥳 Press release: mcusercontent.com/5ffbd133c9ab...

Some books are so well done you wish you'd written them yourself. Next best thing is blurbing them! This is a very smart and thoughtful book, readable and interesting for a scholar who isn't already waist deep in the sources.

Amazing bio of the translator of the Penguin edition of Froissart's Chronicles

"Viele Forschende schreiben mir, dass es ihnen sehr ähnlich geht." Und dennoch wagen nur wenige den Schritt, sich beruflich neu zu orientieren? Warum ist das so? Gründe sind vielfältig. Aber sie haben sehr oft mit einem diffusen Angstgefühl zu tun. 1/4 #ichbinhanna #ichbinreyhan #leavingacademia

Lovely to see that Hetta Howes' book on the lives of medieval women is now in paperback!

once your email storage is full you should be allowed to graduate from it. no more emails for you. you’ve seen enough emails. you’re free now

One effect of the Epstein files is that from now on, no conspiracy will seem too outrageous, too far-fetched. It's not the key issue now, but I can imagine a few historical timelines where this winds up hurting a lot of people.

Some thoughts on what Duolingo is actually good for: irinadumitrescu.substack.com/p/how-to-act...

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!

Timely & Necessary

It has been pointed out to me that this would be a good time for me to reshare my @timeshighered.bsky.social piece on succeeding in academia through upward toxicity. Applicable to other parts of life as well. www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ten-...

This piece poses some great questions: "Can a culture be said to be narcissist, not just in the superficial sense of that word? That is, can a culture think the way a narcissist does?". And I love how they are answered in a way that affirms our capacity to refuse the bullshit

fyi mine and @lollardfish.bsky.social's THE BRIGHT AGES is on sale as an ebook for only $4.99! bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

I wrote some things about narcissism and creativity. With a lot of anger. And no small amount of hope. open.substack.com/pub/irinadum...

I keep thinking again, in light of the latest Epstein files dump, about how MeToo “went too far.”

The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria, invites applicants for the position of Rector. This is an exceptional opportunity to lead a renowned institution dedicated to the humanities and social sciences. www.iwm.at/news/the-iwm...

Yay, so happy about this! Watch this space and prepare by reading the Romanian authors we've published at @corylusbooks.bsky.social

Ich beteilige mich am Hochschulaktionstag mit einer Veranstaltung zu Machtmissbrauch in der Wissenschaft für #TVStud Bielefeld an der Uni Bielefeld. Offen für alle Statusgruppen! #IchbinTina #IchbinHanna #IchbinReyhan #PDprekär

Pagina web a ediţiei româneşti / We have a webpage for the Romanian edition! Traducere de / Translated by Irina Vainovski-Mihai În curând în librării / Out soon polirom.ro/studii-roman...

"Whatever we have done so far is not enough, it disappears into the past, the reckoning that matters is still to come, and it is ruthless. It’s double entry bookkeeping with infinity in the credit column, so that we are always, always, in debt." irinadumitrescu.substack.com/p/who-told-y...

"When I try to write in Romanian, my tongue does not feel injured."

"How many darling diminutives I had ready for each part of his body… Romanian has a treasure of endings to make each noun Lilliputian: -uțuri, -eluri, -ioruri. English seemed a bulky way to speak… the same heavy word for the coarse fist of a grown man and the delicate hand of a newborn." #LangSky

This essay on my odd relationship to my mother tongue is still one of my favourites -- probably because I first wrote it in Romanian, basically the only essay I've ever done that for. therumpus.net/2021/10/12/t...

Condé Nast forgot to renew the trademark for Gourmet and so a group of journalists grabbed it and are relaunching the food magazine as a worker-owned co-op. Love it. [gourmetmagazine.net]

I worked with Robert Potts for years at the TLS — an excellent editor, but I only knew him that way. So I’m very excited to order a copy of Berryman’s Dream Songs and follow along with his new project here. substack.com/home/post/p-...

COLOURSCAPE: An ottava rima in iambic pentameter, intersected by a sonnet in iambic monometer — such that the third foot of each line of the ottava rima belongs also to the sonnet.

Do I know anyone who has worked with the Nerva app and would be willing to share their evaluation of it with me?

Such a richness of dreams to step into, for what feels like pennies. Thank you all for your advice and suggestions.