I am in CT for a very brief amount of time and attempting to drink as much Foxon Park birch beer soda as possible before I leave.

Great playlist on The Amplifier this week. (To be fair, this opinion may be generationally specific. But I am definitely being HAILED here.) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/a...

I am a zombie who has just spent hours and hours of her life reconfiguring assignments and reprogramming deadlines on Canvas. And I'm still not done. Tech bros, stop telling me to AI generate syllabi and start designing an AI tool to build Canvas shells from my syllabi.

One of my favorite lines from reader debates on sex and romance in 1999: "a veritable sex bath of perversions.” Honestly, why did we settle on a tasteful term like erotic romance when we could have gone with a "sex bath of perversions!"

Apparently “660,000-word serialized novel” is secret NY Times code for “Harry Potter Fanfiction now?” 🙄 (It feels like this article like it is skipping over A LOT of significant details for fear of lawsuits from wealthy people.)

fire's currently working on this case with student newspapers suing Rubio. this is really important, imo. thehill.com/regulation/c...

Dealing with law enforcement can be stressful, so it’s important to know your rights before you’re face-to-face with ICE agents. While there’s never any guarantee that law enforcement officers will follow the law, here’s what they can and can’t legally do to you and what you can legally demand. ⬇️

I know lots of you have strong opinions on this topic, so I hope this will be of interest: "You are being asked to participate in a survey of romance authors and readers that is being conducted by Prof. Bridget Kies in the Film Studies and Production program at Oakland University."

CFP for Convention cultures workshop in February and Toronto now up! Deadline Sept. 8. roccetlab.ca/convention-c...

This article may be of interest to our readers!

Thread explaining how warped coverage that constantly promotes bad news (e.g. about crime rates) and ignores good news about the same topics, creates a distorted perception of reality — dynamics that make it difficult for a democratic country to identify, diagnose, and address actual problems.

CfP 🚨 The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is now accepting paper submissions for its Special Issue "Romancing the Posthuman", focusing on romance, critical love studies and posthumanism: 📆 Deadline: 31 October 2025 📄 Send 300-word abstracts ➕ More information: www.jprstudies.org/submissions/...

“These moral dilemmas and compromises aren’t accidental; they’re often embedded in the institutional structures of higher education itself… These pressures become structural conditions that not only invite moral injury but almost inevitably enforce it.“

I'm writing about romance while traveling and without access to my bookshelves. So, super basic question for my romance peeps: Harlequin was reprinting M&B after '58. Bought M&B in '71. But... the reprints went both ways, yes? The NA/Harlequin titles were being reprinted as M&B in the UK too, y?

"Bogus upsides" is officially my new favorite phrase. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/s...

Academics turning to fundraising platforms to fund their research projects.

I have no idea what I want to do for SCMS this year. If anyone has ideas, please feel very encouraged to reach out. :D

Very sad to hear about Mark Snow, the brilliant composer of #TheXfiles theme and much more. Super nice guy too variety.com/2025/artisan...

Does anyone have solid info on how this massive new Trump bill does/doesn’t impact the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program? I know they’re eliminating a ton of payment plans and that the SAVE payment plan is still in legal limbo. However, none of the articles I’m reading discuss PSLF.

A deeper look at when/where/why students are using AI tools and how much it's tied to systemic issues. We have to do a better job recognizing our system is not working. The 4-year model was designed for privileged, highly educated/supported students who can make college a full time job.

New research from MIT found that those who used ChatGPT can’t remember any of the content of their essays. Key takeaway: the product doesn’t suffer, but the process does. And when it comes to essays, the process *is* how they learn. arxiv.org/pdf/2506.088...

Breaking news: The State Department is requiring that all student visa applicants make their social media accounts public to be scrutinized for hostility toward the U.S., according to a cable obtained by The Post.

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy: - two academics start dating - discover they are each other's terrible reviewer - hijinks ensue Working title: Love is Double-Blind

“In May, more Americans watched television on streaming than on cable and network television combined”

Do I have any comics studies ppl reading this? Are there any good pieces on how digital interfaces are reworking/remediating traditional comics layouts/pages to be more modular and operate across digital platforms/interfaces? I'm assuming there are some pubs I should cite on this topic?

I’m reworking my writing assignments to develop in-class analysis exercises that focus on process & specific critical thinking skills. Formal analysis assignments like mise en scene & editing breakdowns are classics. What about activities for theory and cultural analysis though? Anyone have ideas?

After Middlemarch's audiobook, my next song of the summer: gizmodo.com/star-wars-an...

On some level, it’s simple. Students want what we all want: to feel seen. They want someone they respect to look them in the eye and say, “I see who you are and what you’re capable of and I believe in you.” The problem is, I increasingly feel like I’m fighting my university to get there.

Wow no one could have predicted this. I’m sure AI will fix all this up. futurism.com/computer-sci...

“researchers found that apps from Meta and Yandex…circumvented privacy protections in Android devices in ways that allowed their apps to secretly track people as they browsed the web”

I'm forever in the New Haven Apizza camp. ;)

“Unemployment for recent college graduates has jumped to an unusually high 5.8 percent in recent months… unemployment for recent graduates was heavily concentrated in technical fields like finance and computer science, where A.I. has made faster gains.”

I have three things due next week, but all my brain wants to do is worry about how I’m going to reorganize my class from a 3-day version to a 2-day version this fall. 🤦‍♀️

New in Television & New Media ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Cameron, K. (2025). Contesting Captions: Netflix, Fan Campaigns, and the Labor of Access #FanStudies doi.org/10.1177/1527...

my totally unsolicited end-of-the-semester advice to junior scholars is to keep the nice notes that students write to you in a safe place so you can reference them when things get tough in the future.

Upcoming article deadline for special issue of m/c journal on 'fan' 13 June 2025 #FanStudies Scroll down for info journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mc...

Some of my students need to read this. Maybe all of them, actually. Pity we only have two class days left; it would have been great to discuss as we got started this (difficult) quarter.

The perfect bird feeder doesn't exi--

It's not unusual for studios to let "influencers" into earlier screenings than critics. But to allow influencers to give "spoiler-free enthusiasm" for two full weeks before the review embargo drops is a whole new level of marketing effrontery. Blecch, I say.

tired: people AI-generating rando images of themselves as anime WIRED: AI’s energy use already represents as much as 20 percent of global data-center power demand, new analysis has found

Is anyone else watching the TikTok series from Erika on emailing men? Because it speaks to my soul in very deep ways. (Hashtags: notallmen, defwomentoo, whyarepplsobadatemail?!?!)

“just one 100-word email drafted by ChatGPT-4 uses about a water bottle’s worth of H2O, and enough electricity to power 14 LED lightbulbs for an hour” “Take your house and increase that by 10,000. That is the difference between your house and a data center.”

Feed: "Latinoamérica 21" By: David Nemer   |   Arthur Coelho Bezerra on Sunday, May 11, 2025

For the love of god. I JUST REWROTE AN ENTIRE BOOK CHAPTER in an attempt to deal with the HBO Max —> Max name change. Are you kidding me right now?!?!

Just curious. Is anyone using Perusall in really big classes? Like 100-200+ students? My gut says anything over 100 students is too much for me to manage, even if I break them in groups. Wondering if anyone is trying it.

I’m not surprised by this at all, more fascinated. Although, I continue to find it telling that the m/f fic —> commercial romance is done so publicly while the m/m is not.

I’m spending a whirlwind 24 hours in San Francisco for important k-pop reasons (🐰☀️💎❤️), which means I haven’t had time to meet up with anyone. But! SFSU!! I’m going past you on the BART and sending you my love!!

I love what Sinners does with music. It reminded me of the ending of Beat Takeshi’s Zatoichi, which is just an explosion of energy/dance/music.

I’m intrigued…