At @whyy.org, professor @margulisa.bsky.social talks about the power of music to transport us to other places, connect us with other people, and where music is stored in the brain.

Wisdom from @samcorbin.bsky.social of @nytgames.bsky.social: on the nourishing brain power of solving puzzles through epiphanies, and why AI diminishes our paths toward having them.

Excited for this event at Rutgers University in April 2026: "Networking Black Print: Reimagining Black Bibliography" with the Black Bibliography Project, co-directed by Jacqueline Goldsby and Meredith L. McGill. Save the date, and I'll see you there!

Join me tomorrow for a conversation about chapters 4-6 of **The Sisterhood** with this community of readers created by @litfree.bsky.social. onebookonebronx.com

Love how the POULTRY TRIBUNE, the trade magazine for the poultry industry, brought Art Deco to the Midwest, for which region (from the Dakotas down to Oklahoma) the magazine produced a "Central Edition." www.appledorebookshop.com/details.php?...

The article's title would be more accurate if it said "Why TEACHERS Are Assigning Fewer Books in English Class." The students seem hungry for the challenge, but, for a variety of reasons, it's the teachers who balk at it. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...

All of the Princeton University Art Museum's design choices — from having most of the art displayed without protective glass to cases with drawers that visitors can open to view more art — invite the experience of close looking. Even if it’s just for 10 minutes: https://bit.ly/48aDaPv

Ronald Purser offers a blistering critique of the AI doom loop into which wide swaths of higher education have trapped themselves. Most troubling is that public universities have scrambled to take the biggest bite of this poisoned apple. www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Smart, reflective commentary by @prof-peacock.bsky.social on the 0 grade we've heard about in the news. Prof. Creel explains why this was a (missed) teachable moment and how the student followed the grading rubric's own invitation to share personal opinions. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

Congratulations to Priyasha Mukhopadhyay for winning the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies from @modernlanguage.bsky.social for REQUIRED READING: THE LIFE OF EVERYDAY TEXTS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE, which is also a SHARP Book Prize winner! www.mla.org/content/down...

Wonderful to see @modernlanguage.bsky.social recognize an English instructor and 16 high-school students for their collaborative scholarly edition of a hybrid verbal-visual book of verse from 1812. A student-friendly edition produced FOR students and scholars alike. www.mla.org/content/down...

Terrific talk-in-progress by Karin Wulf, Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director of the John Carter Brown Library @brownupolisci.bsky.social, on her new book LINEAGE: GENEALOGY AND THE POWER OF CONNECTION IN EARLY AMERICA @amantiquarian.bsky.social www.youtube.com/live/0cnn1x7...

RIP Mel Leipzig, whose philosophy of art is as existentially substantive as it is grounded in his working-class background: "Creativity is very life-giving. Van Gogh would have shot himself a lot earlier had he not been an artist." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/a...

Tuesday, 12/2, at 5:00pm: an open house for the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities @princeton.edu, which I direct. Hear graduate students and faculty discuss how IHUM makes interdisciplinary teaching, research, and independent study happen at the University.

Stories like this make me wonder if there's any there there anymore. College football isn't all there is to higher education, but this carousel, Wild West, highest-bidder, casino-type behavior feels like it's of a piece with what's going on in the industry. www.nytimes.com/athletic/684...

A sex-fiend thriller whose incel villain is portrayed as a queer hunk: glad I got to see the newly restored WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? at @lightboxfilmcenter.bsky.social. Sal Mineo, of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE FAME, steals the show (in the gym scene) 👉 www.lightboxfilmcenter.org/events/who-k...

Catching up on RUSTY BROWN as I conclude my lecture course on contemporary American comics and graphic narrative. @gerrycanavan.bsky.social's review is the best bridge I have to connect JIMMY CORRIGAN to the latter work. lareviewofbooks.org/article/does...

Have a dream research project involving the study of texts in all their material formats? Apply for one of @bibsocamer.bsky.social’s many fellowships. Students, academics, librarians, archivists, independent scholars, and others invited to apply!

An engaging, provocative, conversation between @mattseybold.bsky.social, @whitneytrettien.bsky.social & @cnewf.bsky.social on research and teaching in the age of AI. The question of AI democratization yields contrasting views of humanities' future. theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/criticism-...

Still in awe at the new @princetonartmuseum.bsky.social: “We live in this incredibly visually saturated world... So we asked ourselves, as curators, how do we do this work in such a way that actually causes someone to stop for a moment and ponder?” www.princeton.edu/news/2025/11...

Panel at 2:30pm @princeton.edu: in conversation with Anne Finger, Hertha D. Sweet Wong (@ucberkeleyenglish.bsky.social), and @avramalpert.bsky.social on the uses of the essay across publics and counterpublics. Stop by the Friend Center for food, drink, and dialogue.

Essay Week @princeton.edu begins its capstone day with a conversation between Christy Wampole and Denise Gigante on editing the @universitypress.cambridge.org Histories of the American and British Essays, respectively. Come by for the dialogue and brunch!

Join us for #BibWeek26! And stay tuned for more information about our weeklong program. The 2026 Keynote lecture, "Erle Stanley Gardner and the Case of the Mexican Pirates" will be delivered by the @universityofga.bsky.social's @norabenedict.bsky.social  #bookstagram #bookhistory #bibliographyweek

Honored to have introduced @nkjemisin.bsky.social last night for the 2025 Spencer Trask Lecture @princeton.edu. Terrific questions about craft and writing process from the audience!

Legends of the fall @princeton.edu.

Fun night out @lightboxfilmcenter.bsky.social to watch the restored THE CAT AND THE CANARY, a comedy-horror silent film directed by a master of German Expressionism, Paul Leni. The creepy-crawly hand reminded me of Murnau's NOSFERATU. www.lightboxfilmcenter.org/events/the-c...

TODAY (10/30): Nan Z. Da (@jhuartssciences.bsky.social), "LEAR and the Occasion of Criticism," @princeton.edu. Coleridge, Cavell, and invoking "data" in literary criticism: KING LEAR as a test of interpretive validity. Lecture is free and open to the public. english.princeton.edu/events/inter...

Insightful moment of “unselfing” at the end of DOPPELGÄNGER, where @naomiaklein.bsky.social reveals how formative Naomi Wolf had been to her authorial self-making. It’s a great twist because it suggests our ideological doubles are far closer to us in the ways that matter than we tend to admit.

An absurdist dramedy on the wages of unemployment under late capitalism. Luc Moullet may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm very glad I got to see THE COMEDY OF WORK (1987) @lightboxfilmcenter.bsky.social www.ticketleap.events/tickets/ligh...

The Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities @princeton.edu will host its first student-led salon of the year: wrinkle, fold. Andrew Kensett and Sophia Millman ask, "What has drawn photographers, again and again, to the wrinkles and folds of the body?" ihum.princeton.edu/events/ihum-...

Wonderful! Tomorrow (10/23) Margo Natalie Crawford will deliver the 2025 James Weldon Johnson Memorial Lecture at the Beinecke Library at Yale. Co-sponsored by the Department of Black Studies. events.yale.edu/event/2025-j...

My fourth-year seminar, Minor Morrison, will host @kinohi.bsky.social this Monday for his lecture: What Comes Before the Haunting?: Toni Morrison’s Late Style in A Mercy. Check the Qualtrics link👇🏾 to register. (And apologies for the late arrival of this announcement due to the holiday.)

Trent Walker (Michigan) delivers a wonderful talk on Cambodian Buddhist manuscripts inscribed on dried palm leaves. Part of the symposium celebrating the special collections exhibition FORMS AND FUNCTIONS: THE SPLENDORS OF GLOBAL BOOK MAKING.

Really interesting inaugural workshop of a Princeton-Humboldt initiative exploring “socionarratology.” Juliana Spahr’s keynote address, which addressed the foundation and government underwriting of radical poetry in the 1960s, was characteristically provocative. socionarratology.german.princeton.edu

Call for proposals: “Bibliographical Mysteries” at the Annual Meeting of the @bibsocamer.bsky.social, January 23, 2026. Panels, workshops, and creative and experimental formats are welcome. Come share your favorite stories about going down bookish rabbit holes 👉 bibsocamer.org/news/cfp-bsa26

Glad to have seen Alexander Horwath’s film essay HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT (2024) @lightboxfilmcenter.bsky.social. Horwath makes a compelling argument that Fonda’s career and the kinds of roles he played constitute a shadow history of the United States www.lightboxfilmcenter.org/events/henry...

📢We are now accepting applications for the position of Executive Director of the Bibliographical Society of America. View the full job posting📝, including application instructions, at the link below. Please share with your networks! 🔗https://bibsocamer.org/news/job-posting-bsa-executive-director

It’s lunchtime. This will make you hungry, and nostalgic — a perfect combination. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/w...

Not a fan of “pillowy” egg sandwiches, but I would go to 7-Eleven every week for a bento lunch break. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/b...

DEADLINE EXTENDED! The 2026 New Scholars application will remain open for submissions through Friday 12 September! Please share with your bookish networks. BSA membership is not required for New Scholars Program applicants. Link in bio to learn more. 🔗https://bit.ly/bsa-new-scholars

Join Julius Fleming, La Donna Forsgren, Jo-Ann Morgan, and me 5:30 on 10/2 for our conversation "Black Arts, Black Spaces, and Black Performance." This is the second event in0 the Schomburg Center's 13th season of Conversations in Black Freedom Studies. www.blackfreedomstudies.org/events/fall-...

As if you needed another reminder to spend some time browsing the shelves at your local charity shop, Salvation Army, or Goodwill. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/w...

A terrific database for scholars and teachers of premodern critical race studies. Pedagogy videos, original essays, reading lists: a teaching-oriented, public-facing resource about why an education in the premodern humanities matters to engaging our contemporary world www.throughlines.org

Comments are pretty brutal about the state of book design these days. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/b...

Congratulations to the winner of this year’s SHARP Book History Prize, Martin Paul Eve, for THESES ON THE METAPHORS OF DIGITAL-TEXTUAL HISTORY @stanfordpress.bsky.social #SHARP2025

Leaders wanted!  Serving on the Council is an excellent way to build professional relationships and engage in our constantly growing community. Nominate yourself or others by 15 August 2025 by contacting the Nominating Committee at [email protected]. #Leadership #Service #Bibliography

Chris Rock’s “He speaks so well” bit from BRING THE PAIN (1996) is the only response one can have to the insult of complimenting President Joseph Boakai of Liberia for his command of English. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mc7...

A reminder of why marginalia, gift inscriptions, and little personalizations are important to the lives of books. A man in England bought several used children’s books only to discover that three had belonged to his wife (when she was a child) 50 years earlier. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/w...

In TWO AMERICAN FAMILIES: 1991-2024 Bill Moyers didn’t report on so much as listened to the struggles of ordinary Americans trying to make ends meet over a 30-year period. Moyers did more to ground discussion of class in this country than nearly any other public figure. www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontli...

Excited that I get to see @quintessencephl.bsky.social's adaptation of GIOVANNI’S ROOM next week. (Sold out after this story appeared.) The perfect way to cap off a year of commemorating the Baldwin centennial. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/t...