I'll be at the CUNY Grad Center on Friday, Feb 20 to give a little talk and lead a workshop on close reading. Thank you to @sinsleyh.bsky.social for hosting it, and you can RSVP to her below.

👇🎯 As always, ~every single problem in American higher education is downstream of the fact that we should <all together now> Fund. The. Damn. Public. Universities. Like. We. Used. To. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Close enough. Welcome, spring!

To have one ICE employee arrested in in a Bloomington, MN underage sex trafficking sting may be regarded as a misfortune; to have two looks like carelessness.

I don’t assign my own Austen editions because I’m not really allowed and the workaround is a pain, but I talk about them, my choices, my approach, etc. Today it became clear that my Austen ind. study students only just realized I meant *my edition* not just a copy I had I was bragging about owning.

Listen to the Emory launch…and then join us for the NYC one! @johannawinant.bsky.social will be at the CUNY Graduate Center Friday, Feb. 20 at 5pm for a talk and workshop, followed by a reception. RSVP here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

It does not matter if you take the child you use as bait and then kidnap to McDonald’s!!!!!

Question re: accreditation site visits for departments. Are your institutions doing these online now? In person again? Curious what these are looking like these days. (Also welcoming answers from those who serve on eval teams.)

My kids insisted it was real, and I told them no. But they were right!

Through this #SuperBowl weekend, you can get the e-book edition of "P FKN R" by Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau for $9.99 or less! Links to retailers are on our site. #BadBunny buff.ly/c3O101k

“Mommy, who’s that?” “That’s the closest we had to Bad Bunny when I was a teenager.”

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

That Dunkin ad is breaking my heart.

One of these days, people will look back on these sports betting ads like we do on the ads for patent medicines featuring cocaine.

Ok now which ones are locked in a steamy secret love affair?

Quarterbacks are supposed to be in their forties. Who is this small child?

Sports betting has already ruined so many things, and now it’s ruining Super-Bowl commercials.

Making lots of mistakes at work, but you know what? Still not in the Epstein files.

Thanks former English PhD candidate AO Scott for bringing some close reading into this conversation. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The kids are watching A Kid in King Arthur’s Court (1995) and so far I’ve spotted Kate Winslet and Daniel Craig.

I’ve often said I aspire to be the equivalent of a hard-working character actor in my profession but I really meant I want to be the Catherine O’Hara.

Happy snowy Woolf Day/Burns Night.

Let’s go!

If I have a Mt Sinai dr appt next week (routine, not urgent), I should reschedule so as not to cross the picket line, right?

Plenty more work to be done, but I turned in my book manuscript!

Omg omg omg

Excited to take a very big step toward my goal of creating a Graduate Writing Program.

Well, color me gobsmacked, I got an NEH grant! tinyurl.com/3a37thbk

Very proud of @dhersh.bsky.social, whose NEH grant will help graduate student writing flourish at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social!

In other news of family triumph, Big Kid Pajama Day is a go!

Very proud of @dhersh.bsky.social, whose NEH grant will help graduate student writing flourish at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social!

Close enough, my 8yo has joined the union.

I was always good at math, but I’m worried my kid has inherited how I FEEL about math.

BOOOOOOOOOOO

8yo is rightly disturbed that in Bluey they don’t wear clothes but do do laundry. (He checked: it’s not just bedding.)

I dust my house. My AI robot watches. "It should be you doing this." "Can't. I'm writing a novel for Primark." "That's not why you were invented." "These 153,000 fan letters say otherwise." "They're all from upcycled toasters. And you programmed them." "Literary snobbery will get you nowhere."

Happy New Year! We love sharing these pro-book posters from the Works Projects Administration Poster Collection in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest.

Me, a professor: *orders a course pack* Campus bookstore: give us two months to make sure these 18 copies you requested you don’t violate any publisher’s copyright Me, an AI company: *violates every publisher’s copyright* Campus bookstore: we will pay you to offer your services to all students

Shheeeeeeit 💗

Bwahahahaha

Fun mini timeline: 1987 Solvej Balle gets the idea for a time-loop novel 1987-1993 David Ives writes All in the Timing, including time-loop plays 1990 David Rubin starts writing Groundhog Day 1993 All in the Timing premieres 1993 Groundhog Day premieres 2020 On the Calculation of Volume published

If I started a novel in 1987 about a single repeating day, I would have been so pissed when Groundhog Day came out. Even more so, almost 40 years later, to see my novel repeatedly described as “Groundhog Day-like.”

Reminder that I’ll be hosting the 2027 Defoe Society conference in NYC. Should we do a panel on Solvej Balle? Should you translate Lyrefugl for the occasion?

Started reading On the Calculation of Volume (my present to myself), and thought that it felt a lot like Robinson Crusoe. Then was delighted to learn that Balle’s first novel is a Robinsonade! I hope it will be translated into English.

I’ve been super excited to share this. The full TOC for TEACHING POETRY NOW, ed by Caroline Gelmi and Lizzy LeRud, is online & chock full of assignments, experiences, and resources from a range of college classrooms. Out in Feb, available for preorder now. sunypress.edu/Books/T/Teac...

Hey, guess what you can buy now? #clarissa2025 allgrimprints.shop/products/i-f...

I wasn’t sure they were going to publish this. So good for them.

Listening to an audiobook of O, Pioneers! and the narrator is doing all the characters with Swedish accents, and I’m not sure what I expected but I’m not sure I can handle it.

Nice review of Close Reading for the 21C. I love the appreciation for the contributed essays: "The rediscovery of the past and the disclosure of new perspectives opened by the current generation of close readers are convincing and frankly contagious" leonardo.info/review/2026/...