kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

never underestimate the time it takes to handle someone's "estate"--an overly grand word for the reality of dealing w/ even the relatively humblest of existences. no one talks abt it! I'm not even talking grief and feelings. I'm talking bureaucracy. stuff. phone calls. documents. all of it.

Underrepresented in the amazing Billy Joel doc is the crucial role that the Undeniable Fun of Singing Billy Joel Songs Very Dramatically has played in his endurance / legacy

It's 2026, which means the digital embargo has lifted and you can read my Spring 2024 cover story for North American Review (a magazine which also published Mark-fucking-Twain) on JSTOR with Gary Kelley's superb illustrations. www.jstor.org/stable/27314...

I am struggling with what might be a generational experience. The gulf war was pretty politically formative for me. It’s not history so much as memory this time. It is destabilizing to see almost the exact same gameplan but this time without the guardrails that at the time I took for granted.

Obsessed with Billy Joel’s first wife / former manager about whom I knew NOTHING before this doc

10/10 highly recommend getting and wearing on your first day of classes, instructor friends

Alrighty! Decisions made: - skills focus on *reading* - no devices + designated notetakers - print books + course reader - commonplace books, adapted from @jmadelman.bsky.social - sit-down short answer hourly exams - in-class essays adapted from @katemanne.bsky.social (Links to models below)

Day 3 of the New Year

If anyone needs a place to start learning about the long, intertwined history of the US and Latin America, Greg Grandin's America, América is pretty good.

“He did not need boiled meat. He needed pizza. And we were the sauce.” Bless this Billy Joel doc. It may get me through a full month of existence.

You can get the ink in GOLD!! I just bought one.

I heard through the grapevine you guys don’t like AI slop. Might I recommend buying this shirt that says “FUCK AI SLOP”?? (made by @allgrim.bsky.social; cardboard Minecraft Steve and Creeper heads behind me not included) allgrimprints.shop/products/fuc...

Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social and co-collaborators Sylvia Fernandez, Miriam Posner, Anna Preus, & Amardeep Singh’s project titled “Responsible Datasets in Context” received a Digital Project Award (Newcomer) from the American Studies Association. www.responsible-datasets-in-context.com

Bravely, possibly obnoxiously, responding honestly to the happy 2026/how was your 2025? group email

not to be all parental gender normie but the most dad move ever is to not know where stuff is. the most mom move ever is to throw away stuff in a tidying craze that turns out to be v impt to your child--like say scratch-off codes for an in-game purchase they hadn't yet used (it me! I'm the mom!)

Went looking to see if @miriamudel.bsky.social had posted about her translation of Labzik recently and found this. Friends, @sunypress.bsky.social will be publishing Miriam’s translation of this. I’ve talked about it before but couldn’t resist reminding you because look how great! I’m so excited.

*vickie miner voice* “oh pvolve. I am beginning to like the sound of that” the nichest skeet ever. I’ll explain: Instagram is now trying to sell me Pvolve (worst name) 24/7 & all I can think of is Janeane in Reality Bites saying “oh PFLAG, I am beginning to like the sound of that.” And scene!

all i see here are fast and free buses

I love Bridgett Everett exactly as she is in the latest Knives Out BUT ALSO imagine how great it would have been if they’d given her Mila Kunis’s role

Anybody up for a bicentennial read-along of Mary Shelley’s THE LAST MAN?

Belatedly coming here to remind you all that I read three (3) books for funsies (whatever that is) in 2025. Yes, a mere 3. But I loved them all: Juneteenth, Riot Strike Riot, and Intermezzo. I did however publish about 35 so there you go. And prob bought about 2-3x that many so I’m doing my share.

My only New Year’s resolutions are to watch Heated Rivalry and get a Criterion Channel subscription

Reaching the sending friends extremely earnest texts portion of New Year’s Eve

It’s wild how the most recent season of Stranger Things was released so late in the year AND I will have spent most of the year watching it

My experience in fundraising taught me not to trust any end-of-year solicitations that promise any sort of matching gift—double, triple, quadruple your impact, etc.

Listen, I got a CD/tape player for Xmas. My nostalgia and/or midlife crisis is already out of control. There's no 1 fave, just entire 80s/90s oeuvres: Madonna, Michael, Janet, Mariah, George Michael & so much that defined an era (looking at you "November Rain" & Aerosmith/Alicia Silverstone trilogy)

A highlight from this impossible yr: I was v anxious before NWSA. Didn’t want to fly, leave my fam; crying before going to the airport. When I got to the conf, I saw a table for Shout Your Abortion, an org my mom loved. I thought: she’s here w/ me. The staff was incredible. I fucking love feminists.

I already bragged abt being in the top 1% of AV listeners on sp*tify. I also own a T shirt w/ the below mentioned slogan on it. I cite at least 3 eps from this season & last in a forthcoming essay (+ Matt's rev of Kramnick). You don't need me to tell you how great AV is--but I figured I wd anyway.

As 2025 ends, I'm thankful for Matt Seybold and his extraordinary, synthetic, research-intensive, innovative, podcast scholarship, which is a gift to us all

Thanks for sharing, @rcolesworthy.bsky.social! If anyone wants an even more detailed guide through the book peer review process, I have a free webinar on it too (but today is the last day to get it) courses.manuscriptworks.com/courses/surv...

An author asked for guidance on how to write a response to reader reports. My answer was pretty quick and dirty for practical reasons, but here's what I said. It ends with a link to much more thorough, helpful advice: Responses can take the form of a letter to the editor/press . . . 1/?

Taking extremely deep breaths and telling myself “do not respond, do not respond, do not respond” to the latest unhinged and frankly pretty cruel email from this dude. Like, maybe don’t tell an editor that their job is “probably killing” them while also berating them for rejecting your manuscript.

To give you an idea of how total a staff brat I am: I still have a key to the bldg where my mom’s dept used to be—a bldg that was demolished to build a dorm 20 yrs ago. I roller skated in the halls, pretended to teach imaginary students in the classrooms, wrote my college apps in her office.

The best thing to be blamed for. FYI you can STILL get 50% off titles since 2020, including preorders, with code SHDAY2025 all day. Get those orders in before the end of this otherworldly hard bonkers year. sunypress.edu

Here goes: My fierce, funny, impossibly supportive badass mom died in Aug. It feels weird to share here but I want ppl to know how great she was. I wrote this notice at the time—the barest glimpse of her awesomeness, incl her decades of work in an academic dept www.abbeycremation.com/post/pamela-...

The classic thing is that so so so many people could much more justifiably say this kind of stuff to me—not for rejecting their projects but for failing to reply at all b/c their proposal came in at a crazy time and got buried and then there were more ppl than I cd ever follow up with.

Someone in my inbox compared my emailing them on NYE their time to let them know that we couldn’t invite their ms for peer review to my “shooting torpedos and sinking ships at sea” and you know what?! I can’t. I truly f-ing cannot. (NOT a jr or precarious scholar. Let me stress that.)

no end of year list for every cold the kids had, every doctors appointment, every student emergency, every elder care hospital visit, every word of support to a struggling friend, but i see you comrade

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

"There is no sense calling for independent or solitary action by something called “the humanities” when that category has been so thoroughly absorbed by concerted attacks on democratic governance, due process of law, rights to privacy, security, assembly, and expression. We are all humanists now."

The Clarissa fans have found me.

This Nazi passed a bill to imprison trans kids' parents two weeks ago.

I've probably pressed a copy of Lonesome Dove on you at some point if we've met IRL--and now I am beyond excited to work with @philipleventhal.bsky.social in writing LONESOME DOVE REREAD for @columbiaup.bsky.social's Rereadings series.

Me: I know you’re not very impressed with my progress on the puzzle but it’s a thousand pieces and I’m doing it all alone 5yo: ask dad to help you Me: then who would play video games with you? 5yo, eyes widening in recognition: oh 😳

Stranger Things, the show that dares to ask, again and again, how many hours *will* you watch me??

If you are, as I am, assuredly _not_ a fan of AI slop, might I recommend ordering this most excellent shirt, as I just did? allgrimprints.shop/products/fuc...

(If you think I’m annoying here, just say a prayer for the suckers I have DM or text access to)

Reaching the sending friends extremely earnest texts portion of the holiday season

Reopened a few days early. Might as well get some printing done while on break. allgrimprints.shop