Now this is a movie plot!!! Someone understands grad school.

I'd like at add a few things to this. (1) humanists have not been able to convince any political party that curiosity-driven humanities research is a public good that should be funded using tax dollars. Republicans don't believe this, but neither do Democrats.

My article on the last line has just been published over at Critical Quarterly. I’d ❤️ to know what you think 🤔 doi.org/10.1111/criq...

It's possible to do a non-reactionary critique of the current landscape of humanities research funding: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

A barn-burner essay from @manshel.bsky.social in the recent issue of ALH!!! “High School English and the Making of American Readers.” academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

I hope literary scholars are proud of the fresh, grounded stuff coming out lately. Big Fiction, Teaching Archive, now Manshel on high school English, McGrath forthcoming on literary agents ("Middlemen"). All the concrete aspects of literature-as-human-activity we used to ignore. +

Eliminating gender studies courses helps to ensure that universities and other institutions will continue to protect men who benefit from the abuse of women and girls, either directly or through their connections to those who exploit girls and women for profit. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

There are so many fucked up things with the current administration that it's hard to focus on one but this recent move is basically a death sentence for the planet. I've been involved with more boots on the ground actions over the years than I can count and this really bums me out.

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

I have a big new essay out that argues that Erich Auerbach is the crucial figure for historicist reading in lit studies today + argues that the epistemology of such reading depends on the profoundly humanist criterion "sufficient passion" muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Computational Cultural Studies replaces Literature and Cultural Studies sounds like a David Lodge novel without the humor.

When engineered scarcity & competitive entrepreneurialism become defining features of intellectual life, terms for understanding material struggle tend to metastasize into tokens of prestige accumulation & self branding. This should be resisted. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

A leading historian of decolonization, Fred Cooper, on the uses and pitfalls of the inflationary invocation of decolonization. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Nan Shepherd (1893–1981), b. #OTD, 11 Feb. Recently her nature writing & her memoir THE LIVING MOUNTAIN have gained attention—but she was also an important #modernist novelist. Charlotte Peacock weighs her contribution to Scotland’s literary renaissance 🎂🧵 1/9 www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/quie...

“How revealing, then, that a New York Times staffer recently suggested that literary fiction has been declining in quality, because of its supposed progressivism … Given this lament, we must ask: Is the cissexual literary world okay?”

My latest review for @bookforum.bsky.social is also out now. In it, I think alongside Namwali Serpell’s resplendently rigorous new book on Toni Morrison about the last greatest living writer’s legacy and how we’re meant to read her.

Philippe Gaulier founded the École Philippe Gaulier, a prestigious clowning school where he taught the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen, Emma Thompson, and Helena Bonham Carter. He was also once the subject of a viral tweet.

It's here! I hosted a symposium on close reading at Emory in November. Matt Seybold recorded it for his podcast, American Vandal, and the first of three episodes is out today. Catch me, @johannawinant.bsky.social, @becimay.bsky.social, @bakaari.bsky.social + more podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

mid life more education, mid life gap year, mid life prosocial movement: and universities can be the beating heart www.npr.org/2026/02/09/n...

‘I saw the writing on the wall’: Austria offers safe haven for US academics as Trump wages war on universities

Thrilled that this is finally coming out! I'm so proud to have collaborated on Linda Williams' incredible last work on melodrama. The intro to our volume is now available -- and look at that killer cover!!

“I don’t understand why so many people have conceded that the university is a left space. Can someone show me a Marxist university president?”

One of Maurizio Lazzarato's best books is finally coming out in English. www.dukeupress.edu/revolutions-....

Wait, THIS is young Anton Chekhov? This? Good lord. Let that gun go off, daddy

this has been going on in non-fiction and low content books for a long time -- it was only a matter of time; Ms. Hart is selling access to her technique and developing proprietary tech, just taking advantage of how many people out there are desperate for some kind of income

So it looks as though you can access my new book already if you’re subscribed to OUP. Here’s the link :) 🎉✨ academic.oup.com/book/62228?s...

Really enjoyed this Q&A with @biblioracle.bsky.social, who pushed me to think about my work in terms of the somewhat amorphous, but not obsolescent principles of academic freedom.

This new edition of George Templeton Strong’s diary is fantastic. #booksky

Thrilled to have galleys of my book in hand! Final corrections & index pending. Please consider preordering, gifting, & teaching. Via the archive, interviews & more I show how the crisis we face now reflects failure to listen & act on the democracy Black folks have envisioned, but we still can.

A friend has a theory that we’re getting adaptations of famous books (Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights) that are more about the writer/director’s “feelings” or memories of the books rather than an actual interrogation of or engagement w. what source material is doing bc only IP is getting greenlit rn

what do we talk about when we talk about energy? my answer features (among many others) adorno, bogdanov, and the austrian communist wilhelm frank, who experimented with national exergy balances in the 1950s. out april 2026.

Another turn on the Genre Turn (and a review of Jeremy Rosen’s excellent Genre Bending). www.chronicle.com/article/is-l...

some useful reflections on romantasy as a therapeutic genre

Evening viewing recommendation? Watch Fran Rubel Kuzui's TOKYO POP (1988)! This unsung gem of 1980s American independent cinema is a breezy tour through bubble-era Tokyo, brimming with knowing nods to the city’s vibrant pop culture.

if we lived in a world where copyright didn't exist, highbrow literary authors would be publishing fan fiction. you would just accept that a multigenerational family novel based on Duck Tales was on the lit survey syllabus.

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

What a treat to come across this article in Monocle about @charcopress.com (@jacquiwine.bsky.social got me hooked on their publications last year). monocle.com/culture/book... One of the many fab links in @bookjotter.bsky.social's weekly wind-up of #bookish ephemera. bookjotter.com/2026/01/10/w...

Very excited to announce that on Monday I'll be dropping an interview with the incredible (and Hugo award winning) @jordanscarroll.bsky.social on his most recent work, and the themes inherent to Fascist Sci-Fi in general. This will be a conversation of cosmic proportions, and importance...

Bonus - Green Energy and Fossil Capital w/ @triofrancos.bsky.social Thea Riofrancos is on the show today to talk about climate politics and what's actually possible in a green energy transition. Link in the replies.

I always learn from watching @adamtooze.bsky.social but I think he's right when he says in the Q&A that climate/energy is a "nerd's" dream topic. It presupposes rational government—one reason it can feel like a limited lens for understanding the present. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...

another reason to anticipate the new one from @zetkincollective.bsky.social, out in May: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/804528...

Can't describe the honor of sharing the page with @jamellebouie.net, Masha Gessen, Martin Luther King III, Norman Ornstein, and more with my latest, for the @nytimes.com on what the show 'Landman' gets right - oil is a deadly, dangerous industry it is time to replace. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/o...

happy first day of school to semester colleagues please enjoy this jameson syllabus from January 1996

"In every society fallen to authoritarianism, the state goes after the press first+ closes in on universities next. All of us who live, work,+learn within the university should think of our institution as part of the larger constitutional structure of the nation." www.chronicle.com/article/univ...

He said this on Wednesday. It's Sunday now. It's way past time for the full transcript of this interview to be released. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...