it’s been so long since I posted a photo of my dog

"TNS senior management has multiple decent revenue options that allow it to close its deficit over 3 years without gutting large parts of the academic workforce and existing curriculum" -- @cnewf.bsky.social on the New School conjuncture

more than you ever wanted to know about my midlife crisis 🫣 www.roifaineantpress.com/post/pleasur...

I wasn’t sure they were going to publish this. So good for them.

"The great honesty and authenticity of both editors and contributors should help put close reading where it belongs: in the center of the humanities."

Nice review of Close Reading for the 21C. I love the appreciation for the contributed essays: "The rediscovery of the past and the disclosure of new perspectives opened by the current generation of close readers are convincing and frankly contagious" leonardo.info/review/2026/...

I like writing bios where I say "her essays have appeared in..." like they're little sorcerers in puffs of smoke

everyone knows that Starbucks workers are on strike and until there's a contract, don't buy anything there, right?!?!

Wrote about the state of sociology of literature and about Gisèle Sapiro’s The Sociology of Literature. I respond, salty, to my most vituperative critic and explain what the aesthete fears (true pleasure). My most self-indulgent piece of writing, I fear. DM 4 PDF read.dukeupress.edu/novel/articl...

going to get into regular sinus irrigation in 2026

Part 1: West Virginia U as Case Study Part 2: Fighting Fiscal and Political Interference Part 3: Building Communities of Care Part 4: Shared Governance and Organizing for Solidarity Preorders available NOW 🎉🔥

If someone says to you, "what are you doing about students' use of AI?" ask them, "do you think that this should be my problem? How good do you think my response can be? Should it not be up to legislators & administrators to defend against a commercial industry's attack on your child's education?"

I just made the joke "avec moi, le deluge" and no one thought it was funny

Ok friends, help me out with a syllabus question. So I’m reimagining “bibliography & research methods,” a mixed grad/undergrad research practicum, for our current moment, which means that alongside research praxis we’ll discuss a series of readings on AI, epistemicide, &c.

it’s amazing in this moment for anyone in public education to say “you know what kids don’t really need to learn? how to speak for themselves and how to piece together their own arguments about what’s real and true in the face of a lot of bullshit”

I'm not good at Christmas but I'm pretty good at making chocolate babka once a year

Whose bird this is, I think I know His falcon cannot hear him though; He will not see the widening gyre That set the blood-dimmed tide to flow. That great rough beast must think it queer, That Bethlehem is very near In what strange desert did it wake As centers fell apart this year?

Where we send you if we catch you inferring future events on the basis of resemblance to past occurrences. Or, at least, where we've sent people so far.

whenever I visit southern California in the winter, I bring an atmospheric river

reporting from hour 11 of a road trip with two kids and no screens

My daughter just described me as “chalant”

Oregon has two seasons: blackberries and moss

I feel like "academic hiring" discourse is always kind of downstream of the fact that in the 50s we started building a giant public system to make a college education almost universally available and in the 80s and 90s we started taking it apart to go back to the only-the-rich model

Well I made a list of books I couldn't forget this year... and left a few off (which means I will open the new year with another list! like a dog! ) nevertheless I'm leaving this here for those who love books and living like dawgs in the mind of Kafka! www.alinastefanescuwriter.com/blog/2025/12...

one of these three books is mine (with @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social), one is my current obsession, and so obviously I just ordered the third

because of moving across the country and starting a new job and getting two books out into the world, I did not make a holiday card happen this fall, but my kids are really cute and I want to do one in the next few months what about a groundhog day card?? or what other holiday would work?

NYC! February 20! We're going to launch Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century with contributors, friends, and me!

Tickled to see Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century mentioned twice here. I’ll be hosting the NYC launch on February 20. Save the date and stay tuned for details!

Wrote about my admiration for Sarah Chihaya's BIBLIOPHOBIA for this year's Public Picks, a sort of "Best of" list, at Public Books. Amazing to see CLOSE READING FOR THE 21C on there from both Nick Dames and Leah Price, scholars whose writing I love very much ❤️ www.publicbooks.org/public-picks...

it's incredibly lovely to see that CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY is on the year-end list for @publicbooks.bsky.social not once but TWICE!! thank you to @njdames.bsky.social and @leahprice.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy!! and among such amazing books!!! www.publicbooks.org/public-picks...

Honored to be on this list with some of the true greats—Patricia Lockwood, Parul Sehgal, Namwali Serpell—for my review of John Guillory's ON CLOSE READING in The Nation lithub.com/the-10-best-...

they should invent a kind of writing where it doesn't feel physically painful

Lovely year-end notice from @tonydomestico.bsky.social in @commonweal.bsky.social of CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. "Sinykin and Winant convincingly argue that close reading isn’t just an intellectual but also a social and ethical practice" www.commonwealmagazine.org/books-domest...

Dreams — are well — but Waking’s better

it’s a joy to be part of THE BARBARA JOHNSON COLLECTIVE

“We are not here to simply express personal opinions or repeat talking points, but rather to engage a set of ideas and research findings that have a long and complicated history and are therefore subject to ongoing debate.”

when my kids were babies and woke at night, I held them and did knee bends until they fell back asleep I timed the stretch between when they would relax and when I could put them down by humming "rock of ages" chanukah's about hanging on a little longer as you hold the ones you love in the darkness

one of the great, pernicious myths perpetrated about higher ed—which media, higher ed administrators, politicians, and a number of faculty are complicit in spreading—is that humanities departments close due to some combination of cratering student demand and unjustifiable cost. It’s not true

Through the disasters of this year, our writers delivered fearless analysis and creative resilience—refusing to compromise on fundamental values of justice and humanity in the face of brazen cruelty and democratic decline. Revisit the writing readers turned to the most:

Just wanna say this is the SECOND time I've been robbed in @lithub.com.web.brid.gy's year-end list of best covers. I mean, look at the beauty of this 70s throwback, that classic look, the nod to highlighting, the building blocks, c'mon! press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

In fact, CAN I PLAY TOO pairs beautifully with CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

vs. versus v

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

Carnegie Mellon’s literature PhD is being liquidated in favor of “computation,” casualized labor, and AI. That has profound ramifications for, students, faculty, and program alums like myself. I wrote it about it (w/ Catherine Evans, a current PhD student). www.chronicle.com/article/a-co...

Happy to see my review essay on Jewish anti-Zionism make @bostonreview.bsky.social’s list of most read essays from this year. If one had to read a summary of this year - it’s agonies and ecstasies (but mostly just agonies) - this is a compelling list. www.bostonreview.net/reading-list...

I will not be able to stop myself from reposting any teaching materials drawing on CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (and also zooming in to read every word and then then getting a little emotional) cc @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social

two slides from my penultimate undergrad Chaucer class. thanks a million for the book!

I'm honored to share that just in the past two weeks since it came out, my essay "The Claims of Close Reading" became the fourth-most read piece of the year at @bostonreview.bsky.social Thank you for reading it. This is truly amazing company to find myself in.

Just finished my ”methods in literary studies” course. Still looking for material on annotation as part of reading strategies. @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and @johannawinant.bsky.social 's recent book has some material but most teaching materials tend to be on writing. Any suggestions re note-taking?