My watch says today's temp range is 47 degrees to 74 degrees. This is three seasons for New Orleanians and "shorts weather" for midwesterners.

reviewed great collection on writers & new media in the 19C print culture sublime! ed and intro by alexis easley w essays by @jenniebatchelor.bsky.social & more! in Review 19 -- www.review19.org/view_doc.php... & looking forward to talking about it at @navsa2025.bsky.social !!

A timely roundtable at #NAVSA2025: "Victorianist Work After the University as We Knew It." A great conversation with Sarah Allison, Gordon Bigelow, Ruth McAdams, Rachel Sagner Buurma, & Kyoko Takanashi.

🦇 #BatAppreciationMonth #BatsInArt #PreciousBats #Contemporary mystacinidae (pseudonym) AFRICAN YELLOW WINGED BAT, 2010) Watercolour

Broad St underpass is the only reported road closure so far. All you cities new to flash flooding - this is my pay attention to Louisiana pitch. New Orleans' community-sourced real-time flooding map. Streetwise.nola.gov

The first look at a book cover is always so exciting (w/ @cookiegoth.bsky.social)

New review up on Review 19--Ruth McAdams on Lindsey N. Chappell's Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean: Writing British Heritage in Ancient Lands: www.review19.org/index.php

I have for several years been obsessed with so-called PKM tools -- it's what I play with instead of Being Productive -- and I think I've finally found an actual long-term winner with the db version of logseq (which is still not formally released).

So there's hope?

Are you the only human being who remains uncorrupted when given power? Consider moderating a panel!

Ben Franklin:

as the poet has it: you're my soda pop my little soda pop ah ahhhh)

Did you publish a book in 2025/2024? Are you attending NAVSA this November? Do you want to celebrate your book? If so, fill out this form: docs.google.com/forms/d/1tJH...

Re-posting for no reason: New Orleans has recorded fewer murders through August this year than any year since 1970 (includes Jan 1).

The grey stone walls, the broken country, the meagre trees, seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that painful past which he knew so well by heart. But no story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

does anybody need me to explain frankenstein

Now available! A rich account of the competing and complementary forces that shape images of authors, THE RISE OF CELEBRITY AUTHORSHIP reveals the collaborative work of literary production and celebrity. buff.ly/GpP4bcV @sarahdallison.bsky.social

for real and for true, the RISE OF CELEBRITY AUTHORSHIP is out!! The code CUP20 will get you 20% through the Columbia University Press website; let me know if you are dying to read it but need a presentation copy from the author, who is very excited about it------!! cup.columbia.edu/book/the-ris...

Do I eat this cold meatball or do I walk it upstairs to the microwave in the history dept pls vote ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Now available! THE RISE OF CELEBRITY AUTHORSHIP: 19th-CENTURY PRINT CULTURE & ANTI-SLAVERY, by Sarah Allison Use the coupon code CUP20 and save 20%: bit.ly/3V9ygLk @sarahdallison.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social

Excited to finally announce the release of my first ever book, and the first ever book from we here press. It is a pocket-size guide to my archival theories and experiences in the form of essays- some you may have heard in part as lectures, some which are unpublished until now. www.weherepress.org

Someone asked me this week what's good about being a professor. Today my answer is, I bought the bad edition of Spence's Anecdotes because it is printed from the corrupted copy of the master MS that Garrick read, which Johnson used in writing his Lives. It gives me perverse satisfaction to cite.

Did you publish your first book in Victorian studies in 2024? If so, submit it for consideration for the Rudikoff Prize. More information here: nvsa.org/rudikoff-pri...

huge if true

WWOZ, WYES, WWNO AND Antigravity are critical parts of our community and need financial support asap www.nola.com/gambit/comme...

Save 30% on #NewBook "As If!" by Chase Gregory, which explores the stylistically strategic, often campy, and productively fraught cross-identifications of early queer criticism. buff.ly/9CMH1iw #QueerTheory

"Before I wrote this book, I was determined not to."-- Ragini Srinivasan In OVERDETERMINED, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan explores the politics of identity in literary studies and the complexities of teaching minoritized literatures in the West. bit.ly/3IhmpHX @columbiaup.bsky.social

🌱Dahlia Night Butterfly. This has usually been ravaged by earwigs, but is faring better this year. The red is nearly velvet.

see eg Holly Devon and @marginalmarisa.bsky.social in @antigravitymag.bsky.social "against despair," which opens w a reflection on Robin McKinley's Maur, the dragon who proves most powerful in its defeat because "its evil insinuates itself into the air" antigravitymagazine.com/feature/agai...

best $5 i spend every month -- dirt nerd's garden philosophy is with me always -- would love to see a supporter-level subscription tier! @antigravitymag.bsky.social

If you want to return the favor, you can go to one of the singular New Orleans businesses that support us, knowing that your money will not be plummeting into the abyss of corporate profits, never to be seen again. antigravitymagazine.com/column/lette...

Nothing says quality tomatoes like Martin Luther.

there’s a certain slant of light summer afternoons that looks the mask of mf doom

Here's who to gift this to: - likes reading, but not fiction - likes reading, but not women - likes reading, but not people of color - don't like reading, but they like history - doesn't know what they're teaching next semester - doesn't know what you, a humanist, do or why - hasn't read Baldwin

friends the new book is AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!! cup.columbia.edu/book/the-ris...

scooped!

New book from @uncpress.bsky.social: Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement by Ashley Howard uncpress.org/book/9781469...

on teaching & noticing -- first Elaine Auyoung in PMLA tinyurl.com/3r7rtzznKara and now Kara Wittman in Essays in Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy tinyurl.com/2d5k5zph

on peer review ------

This is a SUPER useful guide to peer reviewing for humanities and social sciences — the thought that the primary audience is generalist editors not authors is incredibly helpful

[just adding that if you want a copy, the Press has a code, UCPNEW, that will take 30% off via their website, and if you want one but can't buy it pls reach out and i'll get you a PDF ASAP. thanks everybody 🌿🙏💙]

*Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse* is out today! The official release got pushed back due to an issue w the art, & despite being mostly about literature it's very visual. So to celebrate its full entry into the world, a thread of some of my favorite images from it:

Welcome to your June 2025 ANTIGRAVITY—we’re 21 years young!

seasonal content

1872 (last one for now)

I can’t stop reading “Dante: a Penguin since 1949.” Which is a pretty cool reincarnation story if you think about it?

In the red

“Sorry I’m late, a chickadee was collecting my dog’s hair on the porch and I’d be a monster to interrupt.”