Objectively hilarious headline

You are the best and you deserve the world to be better for your kids because I am proud to say I have been a teacher and teacher and a great friend and I will continue working with my kids to help me get my kids and I am so grateful — my daughter’s autocomplete

I don’t do end-of-year publication roundups, but I’m deeply proud of this essay cluster on “Modernism in Comics” that I edited for @mmodernity.bsky.social, and I encourage everyone to spend some time with the brilliant pieces in it.

Happy to see this, written with the excellent @mattseybold.bsky.social , out in the world. Solidarity to everyone fighting for education and civil society! www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

"fear of an educated proletariat+ resistance to secular, integrated public schooling have been the central motive for defunding public education... public education, the closest thing to a lasting success amid the broader failure of Reconstruction, is in danger." www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

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

Our photographer Alex Kormann captured the exact moment the presses stopped for the last time in Minneapolis, ending a 158 history of locally printed newspapers.

DOI another day.

December 25: A really great day to remind people who try and tell you otherwise that actually, Mithras didn’t even have a birthday—he was born from a rock 🪨—and Christmas really doesn’t have anything to do with Mithraism. Mythbusting: the gift that keeps giving historical truth.

I didn't do any writing this year anywhere near as important as this. I miss him so damn much, but he's with us, today even more than ever. www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...

My 15yo gave me a very useful Christmas present. You are welcome to it, my old friends

Schmidt on how the Time on the Cross debate shaped the rise of digital history. He uses a fantastic Ash Chen and Naidu paper as a contrast to what digital history isn’t - but argues that it’s mostly a good thing. Super fascinating if you follow digital humanities or social science history debates.

Wrote a little about Sarah Mesle’s Reasons & Feelings — a tremendously galvanizing and clarifying read; the book that so many of us needed right now. kasiareads.com/2025/12/24/r...

Everyone involved in the publication and promotion of this book should be embarrassed. It's not a "harsh truth" that COVID mitigation was a mistake, it's ghoulish and false.

Tis the season

I wrote a little thing about "Fairytale of New York" and about hope for a better year, but mostly I wanted to share the rendition of the song played at Shane MacGowan's funeral in 2023 because it's so beautiful. Happy Christmas, I love ya baby. dansinker.com/posts/2025-1...

Congratulations to Christopher Fan, whose book ASIAN AMERICAN FICTION AFTER 1965: TRANSNATIONAL FANTASIES OF ECONOMIC MOBILITY was shortlisted for the Biennial Book Prize from MELUS. tinyurl.com/4nkhu8sh @chrisfan.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social

A) This course looks incredible B) My reading of The Teaching Archive really has me thinking about the entanglement between our research & our course design C) Reason 1 of 937 that outsourcing course design to AI or boxed curriculum prevents the very sensemaking that makes good teaching possible

“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...

Writing up my conclusions on a great discussion-based class: they are congruent with the principles Lara Hope Schwartz suggests in the useful conversation and book below. 1. We are not here to say what we already know (adapting @kwazana.bsky.social's classic essay) megaphone.link/NBNK5789069827

New CUP #lit cup.org/4pmwMu5

Reviews of my no tech, analog seminar were all positive: “this class gave me room to breathe,” “I loved not having screens in class,” “writing in our attention notebooks gave me space to think,” “this was the most immersive class I’ve ever taken,” “I felt like I could think freely,”l loved Sebald.”

New book, Derek Ryan ed www.cambridge.org/core/books/h...

We all have squirrel-brain! We olds might even miss our pre-internet brains! So in Intro to Media Studies this term, students borrowed a book from a curated list and discussed their books in a recording for part of their final. Here's the list my librarian pal helped curate...

Here are some standout philosophy/theory reads of the year (in no particular order) 1. Pierre Macherey, La Chose Philosophique 2. Steven Schaviro, Fluid Futures: Science Fiction and Potentiality 3. Gilah Kletenik, Sovereignty Disrupted: Spinoza and the Disparity of Reality

as adam kotsko teaches us, all gods long to die

This is so dumb/good youtu.be/1Tev6Q4AvUE?...

Un grand livre.

Voici le grand colloque que nous organisons fin juin avec Anna Arzoumanov, Mathilde Barraband, Anouch Bourmayan, Arezou Dadvar et Amina Damerdji : www.fabula.org/actualites/1... Vive le débat des idées !

No

the key to these molasses cookies is chilling them in a parchment lined loaf pan for maximum slab shape

Since 2019, one of the proudest services I do for the profession is collaborate w. @rcolesworthy.bsky.social & Erin Bartram @contingent-mag.bsky.social to compile a (limited) list of pubs by contingent lit studies scholars. Here is our 2025 compilation. contingentmagazine.org/2025/12/16/2...

Only thing we are missing here currently are Rachel Kushner’s epic rewritings of Cormac McCarthy, with associated Playgirl centerfolds.

(Also, icyi, here are the 42 papers citing our non-existent paper which includes a "meta-analysis" - often called the evidence "gold standard" - of "LLM effects" in education 🤮 scholar.google.com.vn/scholar?star...)

A+ cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023...

I still recommend this dramatisation every year since its launch. The sound design is magnificent so worth listening on headphones. Interested in discovering any other winter listening rituals that others have. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

“My students hungered for an absolute disconnect…What I witnessed in the four weeks that followed has convinced me that we owe it to today’s college students to create internet-free spaces, programs, dorms and maybe even entire campuses for students committed to learning with far fewer distractions”

Thrilled to announce my new book (electronic version out now, print next month) — it proposes a new value theory grounded in the longue durée of literary institutions, 1800–present.

chop from the top chop from the cop chop from the bot

CUP Lit is not on Bluesky, but will def read this

Just finished wonderful class on Normal People / normal genres, with the Hunger Games and dystopian YA, and how I wish I could send them this www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

CFP on the legacy of Black Mountain College / Time Cycles (Jan 18) : www.blackmountaincollege.org/call-for-pap...

Not too late to snap up those stocking stuffers, folks

100%. Perhaps even only

it's incredibly lovely to see that CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY is on the year-end list for @publicbooks.bsky.social not once but TWICE!! thank you to @njdames.bsky.social and @leahprice.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy!! and among such amazing books!!! www.publicbooks.org/public-picks...

Colors of dissent: “Lime green… was dubbed Fierce Rebellion, and a shade of pastel pink was called Primal Dissent. After averaging out the hex code values of all 4,063 votes, Semple announced the winner Anarchic Venom, a purple he calls powerful and potent.” www.culturehustleusa.com/products/ana...

Perfect for the color project www.pantone.com/media/color-...

Institute for Empirical Aesthetics is a delightful surrealist aptonym

Astonished that Publishers Weekly has put out this great review of DISPATCHES FROM THE AVANT-GARAGE. (What is happening I never get mainstream attention, my world is the weird world (good)) But what I hope is that more people will find out about the Alternative Press, and you know?, now they might!

The British Academy International Fellowship scheme opens 15 January (final deadline 11 March). If you are an international early career researcher interested in applying through the Centre for American Studies or Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, please get in touch asap.