For the first day of class/syllabus, I of course had to cover my AI/LLM policy (which is that it is never allowed in class). I think students are used to being scolded about it. We read this poem; & I told them that they're worth knowing & I want to know them. This seemed to resonate much more.

One mistake I seem destined to repeat over and over is "do not order long sleeve shirts on the internet." NOT ONCE have I been happy with the result, and yet...

Re-upping my appeal to the whale hive: there has *got* to be a properly detailed illustration of the Pequod by someone, somewhere‽ 🐋

Really hoping that this low-level sense of dread I've been experiencing for weeks will all disappear when my cardio dance class starts back up.

Didn't even make it through Monday without succumbing to my worst habits (volunteering myself to give presentations I'll later regret having volunteered for).

This year's little list of the books that stuck with me from 2025 (this exercise is more for me than for you, reader): The Ministry of Time, Bradley The Hollow Places, Kingfisher Homegoing, Gyasi Days of Shattered Faith, Tchaikovsky The City in Glass, Vo Dayswork, Bachelder & Habel Katabasis, Kuang

SPEAKING OF SINCLAIR LEWIS: You can pre-order Dodsworth! www.unnamedpress.com/all-books/p/... (out in June, and featuring an afterward from me & @seeshespeak.bsky.social )

TIL Upton Sinclair almost became governor of California!

Good riddance to 2025.

The final #ModWrite of 2025! 🌟 Don't forget to sign up to attend New Work in Modernist Studies 15 before the end of today: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

My goy husband has made latkes for Christmas Eve, as one does.

things are precarious and the specter of Christmas looms, but happy 8th night, all!

Compilation is resistance: We Are Here. We Are Researching & Publishing. Against All These Odds. As a member of the faculty majority -- at least 70% of higher ed faculty in the US work w/out tenure -- normalizing & recognizing our scholarship starts real change in the structure of higher ed.

Stay safe!

I know disciplinary standards differ, but I've been at this for decades and I've never cited a paper I didn't read. Didn't like, sure; didn't understand, often; kind of drifted off in the middle there, it happens. But didn't read at all? Nah. Come on.

Maybe someone with more creative and intellectual chops than me can write the piece that links The Nothing to the emptiness at the center of so many things in our contemporary world.

With @modernistudies.bsky.social we're pleased to announce our keynote speakers for BAMS/ MSA in Loughborough in July 2026. First up is Catriona McAra, art historian, curator and Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art History at University of Aberdeen.

I, an inveterate plan-maker, appear to have exhausted my ability to make plans.

retvrn to mystery stories based around the actual mystery and not whether the detective is sad and/or wet

I'm still thinking about this article and all the things that frustrated me about it (both in form and topic), from current personal experience... My kid goes to middle school in a famously not-great district. 4 months into the school year he's read SIX novels in English!

Quick: what might you assign your students to read about AI and revision?

Few books have gotten stuck in my head the way this one has the last few years! So full of big ideas! Also, I came out of it better educated about the Enlightenment, which is not something I can say of most SF...

Settling a domestic dispute by sending my husband a 1982 article titled “An Overview of the Historic Use of Textiles for Residential Interior Insulation,” as one does.

What a lovely meditation on life and art!

Living the McTeague hive dream in a San Francisco library surrounded by dental students (every time I look up from my computer I see pictures of teeth).

Last call, friends! @hartmann-villalta.bsky.social and I are finishing up our annual list of lit studies publications—articles, books, book chapters—by NTT scholars for @contingent-mag.bsky.social. Please spread the word and send me your pubs by tomorrow/Tues 12/9! 🙏🫡

Flashback to that time in 1966 Seventeen Magazine found my dad on the beach and put him in their photoshoot.

Nothing screams "googledocs isn't made for writers" like the fact that it now takes 4 subsequent levels of drop down menu to add page #s.

An exciting thing is that the MLA now has a bi-annual competition for short form work by contingent and independent scholars (and I got honorable mention) forms.mla.org/proxy/file.p...

Last night I had an existential crisis about the nature of (my own) human consciousness. Everything's going great.

Was just contemplating doing something similar!

I've fallen down the annual "there's a big sale on the moisturizer that MIGHT change my life" rabbit hole.

Ok teaching friends: tell me about your tricks for getting students to take notes during class!

Haven't received as many contributions as usual for this year's lists--could be many things, but one aspect is surely that our ability to get this in front of people is much diminished. If you know folks whose stuff should be on here, please suggest it! contingentmagazine.org/yearly-pub-l...

My 11 year old city kid has just learned that, if you have a mailbox, the postal worker will pick up your mail 😂

IMPORTANT NEWS!

”I am sure that as a doctor of philosophy, you have a better comprehension of a poet’s ideas than the poet him“ -McKay’s SCORCHING 1927 letter to Alain Locke

11 year old and I are working on our sushi skills.

Even weirder was the time I gave a conference paper in a hotel room with the bed folded up against the wall (I get that the power dynamics on this are different, but it was WEIRD).

TFW your ILL comes from the library you were a student worker in 24 years ago...

Pretty sure if you haven’t experienced multiple Thanksgiving day fires by the time you’re an adult youre doing something wrong

Now is obviously the perfect time for me to remind you of two early 20th c. passport facts that always entertain me: (1) the most common adjective used to describe peoples' facial features (forehead, nose, mouth, you name it!) was "medium"; and (2) Ezra Pound had an imperial chin.

Aging parents are no joke, but at least I get to add the legal title "Responsible Person" to my resume.

Kind of feel like as a society we've moved past the point of "out of office" replies.

Reading Claude McKay’s letters and doing my best not to just live-tweet the whole thing at you BUT I do need you all to know that in 1925 McKay wrote Langston Hughes a letter about meeting Jean Toomer at Le Dôme!!!!

Bummed that I voted by mail instead of finally seizing my opportunity to vote in a neighbor's garage! (this article old, but proof we have garage voting!) www.sfgate.com/bayarea/arti...

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that any time you have a deadline for one project you’ll be full of thoughts about another.

One of those pesky days where the more emails I send the more emails I get!

Can't believe I've only this year realized my inevitable lazy Halloween form.

Also, maybe we come up with, like, two more holidays, say in the early and late spring, that involve walking around the neighborhood and talking to your neighbors?