Congratulations to Jess! You can read her piece for MTC on precarity and platform hygiene MTC: mid-theory.com/2025/04/03/o...

adaptation really IS everywhere!

Adaptation is everywhere! This spring MTC is running a new series called ADAPTATION ANXIETY, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. To kick off our managing editor Martha Henzy takes on the unsexy absolution of the gothic monster.

MTC is running a series of reading & writing groups this spring & summer. Our first reading group on the recent English translation of Punjabi novella Keeru by Fauzia Rafique hosted by Nico Millman & the translator Haider Shabaz will meet on April 15 @ 6pm ET. Sign up here: tinyurl.com/yfvycxut

MTC is running a series of reading & writing groups this spring & summer. Our first reading group on the recent English translation of Punjabi novella Keeru by Fauzia Rafique hosted by Nico Millman & the translator Haider Shabaz will meet on April 15 @ 6pm ET. Sign up here: tinyurl.com/yfvycxut

Reading the pedagogy column at @mid-theory.bsky.social and finding it to be quite good! mid-theory.com/category/ped...

Our monthly newsletter just went out. And because humans, committed and overcommitted humans do our homework the newsletter which goes out on February 23 can have "January" in its subject line. Check out what we have been up to and what is coming! tinyurl.com/53tanrns

MTC is launching a pedagogy section, where we invite our colleagues to reflect on a question, an assignment, an activity, an experience, a challenge, or a joy they have had in the classroom. To kick off, Alec Abramson, a recent college graduate, discusses his adventures with "dramaturgy design."

Love this idea and encourage my HS pedagogy people to follow along!

MTC is launching a pedagogy section, where we invite our colleagues to reflect on a question, an assignment, an activity, an experience, a challenge, or a joy they have had in the classroom. To kick off, Alec Abramson, a recent college graduate, discusses his adventures with "dramaturgy design."

This episode opens with an extraordinary—if also utterly banal, routine—story of a professional ethical lapse told by @bakaari.bsky.social, which you must hear. It's in the first four minutes. But you won't want to stop after that.

Some friendly corruption from us!

This is just another way of saying that I love mixed methods work, I guess. Archival research? Yes! Data collection? Yes! Quantitative analysis? Yes! Close reading? Yes! Case studies? Yes! Theoretical speculation? Yes! Let’s do it all why not

For MTC, our contributing writer Charline Jao writes about Shih-Ching Tsou’s new film LEFT-HANDED GIRL and the melodrama of late capitalism. Illustrations by MTC Contributing Illustrator Carolyn Jao

"There is a lose-lose conundrum: male characters repeatedly make each female character’s life harder in some way (debt, romantic disappointment, etc.), yet the absence of a patriarch or “protector” is its own burden." Catch Charline Jao on Shih-Ching Tsou’s new film!

For MTC, our contributing writer Charline Jao writes about Shih-Ching Tsou’s new film LEFT-HANDED GIRL and the melodrama of late capitalism. Illustrations by MTC Contributing Illustrator Carolyn Jao

Our colleagues at Lateral Journal are working on a special issue, titled "Performance Between Post-Truths." Check out their CfP at the link below and consider submitting.

For @newyorker.com, I wrote about Bruce Springsteen and also the guy from Staind: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

For the Saturday crowd.

For MTC, a reading group reflects on Tsai's WALKER, the literature & legacy of the flâneur, and why thinking needs straying. "After metaphysics, the monk becomes the aesthete; the empty space left behind by the death of God is filled up by art, literature, and, of course, Tsai Ming-Liang’s cinema."

I ordered this book because of the review. Just a shout out to book reviews.

Today we have such a cool practice-focused piece out! The talented folks of Los Angeles Performance Practice let us peek behind the curtain and eavesdrop into one of their post- mortem conversations. It's also an experiment in coauthorship, with the Co-Directors of LAPP speaking as one voice! 🎭

Book clubs! This essay was so interesting—and I can’t wait to read the book. More convos about reading and what it means for all of us.

Today we have such a cool practice-focused piece out! The talented folks of Los Angeles Performance Practice let us peek behind the curtain and eavesdrop into one of their post- mortem conversations. It's also an experiment in coauthorship, with the Co-Directors of LAPP speaking as one voice! 🎭

Check out the CFP for this pair of VIRTUAL mini-conferences on SLOP and NOSTALGIA, held by DLC+. I attended some of the previous mini-conference they put on it and it was great. Highly recommend. Keynote by the great Tess McNulty @dlcplus.org docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

So grateful for this engaged and thoughtful review of my book!

Maggie Boyd reviews Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s 'Reading Together' and reflects on the democratic, indulgent good of the book club! "Reading Together testifies to the contemplative mode that both books and book clubs can spark," Boyd writes.

"The main reason college football will not be abolished is the fact that people love it deeply and dearly, and they simply do not want to hear of its dark side."

"The main reason college football will not be abolished is the fact that people love it deeply and dearly, and they simply do not want to hear of its dark side."

Dylan Davidson reflects on the legacy of Bob Dylan's songbook, which captured a generation's collective revolt against racial segregation and U.S. imperial aggression and which now belong to corporations hostile to those very politics. "Folk music is about giving credit, not claiming ownership."

Dylan Davidson reflects on the legacy of Bob Dylan's songbook, which captured a generation's collective revolt against racial segregation and U.S. imperial aggression and which now belong to corporations hostile to those very politics. "Folk music is about giving credit, not claiming ownership."

In case you missed it, Matthew Moore writes about the double in Nathan Fielder's work. "With fiction and reality explicitly blurred, The Rehearsal’s participants offload the burden of possessing a self onto their ideal doubles"

I wrote about Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal and the Gothic doubles of reality tv for Mid-Theory Collective!

For our first essay of the new year, Matthew Moore looks a closer look, a double take if you will, at the doppelgänger in Nathan Fielder's oeuvre and his many attempts, albeit in vain, to stage his and our doubles so we might succeed in our repression of them. Give it a read!

MTC New Year's Letter from our editor-in-chief plus our editors' picks of 2025. Thank you everyone for helping us have a great year! See you next year and happy holidays ✨ tinyurl.com/bddh3y4r

New Year’s resolution is to write more publicly about teaching—have a couple things in the works that I’m excited about. Grateful for places like @mid-theory.bsky.social, who helped me make something I’m proud of, that are open to writing from some guy who teaches public school 🫡.

MTC New Year's Letter from our editor-in-chief plus our editors' picks of 2025. Thank you everyone for helping us have a great year! See you next year and happy holidays ✨ tinyurl.com/bddh3y4r

Our last piece of the calendar year goes to our "For Your Consideration" column, where Thomas Higgins reviews three recent poetry collections that meditate on loss, homeland, and the shape of memory. mid-theory.com/2025/12/29/f...

For MTC, Marie Lambert takes a closer look at the Gordon Ramsay televised media empire, its perils and parables. "How is it that a man who spends no small amount of his time on television being literally censored has become so omnipresent in primetime American media and culture?"

Thank you to the brilliant editors at @mid-theory.bsky.social for the chance to write about some of my favorite subjects: transfictional character, gender performance, and Daniel Craig’s tenure as a post-9/11, “serially straight” James Bond.

yesss central questions from brilliant #navsa2025 paper but make it 007 & benoit blanc

"It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. This year Amazon acquired full creative rights to the James Bond franchise. And as the quest for the next 007 drags on, Lauren Eriks Cline reflects on Daniel Craig's legacy in making palpable the character’s coerced masculinity.

we just finished the last editorial meeting of the calendar year for @mid-theory.bsky.social. it’s hard to believe we’ve only been up for 14 months. personally & professionally 2025 has been quite the year for me, but MTC remains the thing i am most proud of & the one i’ve worked the hardest at! 🎉🥂

Stephanie Insley Hershinow surveys recent Austen-related works on Jane Austen's 250th birthday: "Austen offers endless opportunity for examination and reexamination; still, it might be fair to ask what more one can say about our dear Jane." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/happy-birthday-jane/

please enjoy this tiny-font version of the TOC! (w alt-text to actually read) 🌸

"With no closure in sight, readers join Alex in his pursuit of the unspeakable, hovering in an endless silence thick as blue smoke." Read Korey Williams revisiting of Richard Bruce Nugent's “Smoke, Lilies and Jade" for MTC celebration of Harlem Renaissance Centennial mid-theory.com/2025/12/11/h...

"With no closure in sight, readers join Alex in his pursuit of the unspeakable, hovering in an endless silence thick as blue smoke." Read Korey Williams revisiting of Richard Bruce Nugent's “Smoke, Lilies and Jade" for MTC celebration of Harlem Renaissance Centennial mid-theory.com/2025/12/11/h...

In honor of Harlem Renaissance Centennial, Korey Williams revisits Richard Bruce Nugent’s blazing queer short story ‘Smoke, Lilies and Jade.’ Williams reflects on the story’s treatise on love and beauty, its abiding legacy, and its singular lesson for today’s living. #HarlemRenaissance100

In honor of Harlem Renaissance Centennial, Korey Williams revisits Richard Bruce Nugent’s blazing queer short story ‘Smoke, Lilies and Jade.’ Williams reflects on the story’s treatise on love and beauty, its abiding legacy, and its singular lesson for today’s living. #HarlemRenaissance100

we endorse this 2026 new year's resolution for you all! send us pitches for your book reviews, book essays, and all your other bookish thoughts! 📚