Happening tomorrow!

I had an Athena joke, but I can’t remember it, what with this terrible headache…

so exciting that this book is in the world it is fierce and rigorous and also fun to read

Now that Faculty Council has been dissolved and our administrators from the Dean level up have been replaced by political appointees, a free press is the only place UT Austin faculty have to speak up. www.austinchronicle.com/news/ut-head...

Friends! We are looking for a visiting assistant professor with expertise in 17th century literature. Help me spread the word? It’s limited term, but I can promise wonderful students and lovely colleagues for a very nice bit of teaching experience… wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

PSA @weslpress.bsky.social is now accepting applications for its Cardinal Poetry Prize, for poets over 40 who have not published a poetry book. www.weslpress.org/the-cardinal...

What a set of lines!

7year old this morning: Mama can I look up where brain rot came from? Me: Oh, sure—I think it’s an internet thing but look it up… 7: It says here it’s from some author, Henry David Thoreau?! Me: ?!?!?! Dying laughing—but the OED also cites Walden for the first usage of the word…

It’s here! I’m delighted to share a new theme issue of @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social, “Philology Now.” Valeria López Fadul and I edited this issue, featuring smart contributions by Emily Apter, Peter de Bolla, Alan Durston, Cymone Fourshey, Claire Gilbert, Anthony Grafton… historyandtheory.org/64-4

CFP: “Embodied Knowledge Practices in the Early Modern World” Conference at the University of Amsterdam Monday, 15 June 2026 How do material conditions shape how & what we know about the natural world? #earlymodern #C18L 1/6

Has anyone written about nonmetrical rhyming in contemporary poetry? Like in Maggie Millner’s Couplets? I want to read something about how people (who aren’t carrying around the kind of historical associations I am) understand forms and formings and breakings in this kind of verse…

Cate Marvin’s “Death of the Humanities”:

I’m so excited for this book!

First sign (literally) on campus of something I’m REALLY looking forward to this fall! www.wesleyan.edu/dac/exhibiti...

Ah! I just saw that Ruth Mack’s new book is out! Forget what I was planning to do today, will be reading instead 🤩 www.sup.org/books/litera...

We are hiring a tenure track poet! I’m so excited / spread the word… wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/career...

being in Indonesia and having a perfect breakfast is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it… :)

in CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I wrote a 36 page three-part introduction: What Close Reading Is, What Close Reading Does, and What Close Reading Has Been 30 pages of it is now online at @princetonupress.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

I’m feeling pretty obsessed by @publicdomainrev.bsky.social / CP Cranch’s “literal renderings” of Emerson’s figures. The transparent eyeball! publicdomainreview.org/collection/c...

Writing the introduction to my book and basically trying to be reading and citing all of these books at the same time; gotta keep them all right next to me so I can delusionally attempt to simultaneously treat all of them in coherent sentences, going poorly…

Cleanth Brooks writing about “the much advertised demise of the Humanities” in 1947 😳

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

Who Wore It Better, Met Gala 2025 celebrities or Duke University Press book covers? Ava DuVernay or Work! by Elspeth H. Brown? #MetGala

The muse of poetry, looking appropriately un-chill.

Fun etymology in class today as we talk about how the word “vaccine” is from the Latin word for “cow.” Also nice to see 18thc English folks being super chill about vaccination, no modern parallels here… 😳

Rhyme-lovers, a call for papers! David Caplan is hosting another symposium on poetic form at SMU—the first one was *fabulous*, generating real conversation among scholars & poets. Propose a paper to join us for the second iteration?! www.smu.edu/dedman/acade...

We’ve just started the show but I’m actually cackling at Parker Posey on White Lotus. People are saying it’s a bonkers accent or she’s unrealistic, but let me tell you I’ve MET this woman!

I write on Elizabeth Elstob in this book I’m trying to finish—she’s completely fascinating!

Posting again for the Friday crowd: What are some interesting models for non-workshop format creative writing courses, as a supplement (not replacement) for small workshops!?

My department is brainstorming ways to scale up to some larger classes. We have plans on the scholarly side, but I want to ask hive mind: does anyone know of good innovative models for non-workshop style, slightly larger courses in creative writing? (To be taught in addition to small workshops ofc)

Here are some neat historical resources for teaching if you, like me, are obsessed with Tyehimba Jess’ sonnet crown about the Fisk Jubilee singers! bookshop.org/p/books/olio...

Will someone talk to me about this wild moment in Phillis Wheatley’s “On Messrs Hussey and Coffin” when she breaks her couplets with a prose (?) wish? I can’t think of anything like it in period poetry. Can you? Has anyone written on this?!

I *loved* the tv show “somebody somewhere”—such a beautiful, funny, heartwarming vision of middle America. I have no idea if this’ll make a difference, but just in case: sign the petition! (And, for a move with even surer results, if you haven’t watched it DO THAT IMMEDIATELY !) chng.it/qb9RhhDB6n

#ArticleSnapshot📸: Read Johanna Drucker's "Inventing the Alphabet: The Technologies of Knowledge Production" in our September issue. This article is a revised version of the lecture Drucker delivered at @RemarqueNYU in Feb. 2024 as the 9th H&T lecture. doi.org/10.1111/hith...

Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy but isn’t a selfie.

I am always looking for interesting but *compulsively* readable bedtime books that I can slurp down during bruising bits of semester when I need smthng fun to take my mind off life. Thought I’d share some recent favorites in this category, as everyone trudges through the end of the semester!

Fun fact: according to recieved wisdom in early modern thought, angels did not have imaginations.

Come join us at @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social for all the latest news about publications and events for theory and philosophy of history! historyandtheory.org

Christopher Ricks 🔥: “People often speak as though there were something inherently trivializing about the anagram against rhyme. This, as though there were sound effects and then those other things, unsound effects… That ‘room’ rhymes with ‘doom’ is in itself no more arbitrary than…”

on what is otherwise a grim, muttering rock-paper-scissors on repeat day, what a pleasure to see this post and then read Clarke’s *stunning* poem! A day to hold on to meaningful language folklife-media.si.edu/docs/festiva... 💜

I just bought the Virtual Sentence and I literally can’t wait for it to arrive!

Alright, I’m ready to be here now. I like the vibes. Tonight, I want someone to talk to me about Steve Coogan chewing the scenery in What We Do In the Shadows. Did I catch a reference to the Hellfire club? LOL

Thanks for all the ideas! I wasn’t clear enough about what I’m after. I am looking for scholarly writings about poetry or scholarly analyses of particular poems—so readings as in “close readings.” What essays or ideas will help get students thinking more generatively about poetry?

Poetry people of the interwebs! I’m designing a new introduction to poetry course for first year students. What are your favorite secondary / scholarly / poetics readings to get students interested and excited? Accessible and mind blowing readings of particular poems welcome too!

Virtual mentoring happening now. You don’t have to be registered for asecs—if you want to come chat, about anything, log on now!

NYT flashback quiz is worried we haven’t talked enough about the Alexander Pope / Ariana Grande connection.

I’m so glad you mention this—yes! Women took this (all-male author!) test. (Picture from special collections blog: sca.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2012/04/24/f...)

Here is the Wesleyan English exam for students in 1899. Anyone want to take a stab at answering any of these?! 🤓

1/5 After three years of editing, annotating, headnote writing, and permissions getting, it is completely thrilling to hold a physical copy of Vol. F of The Norton Anthology of English Literature in my hands! A thread on its new features: