What if we just went back to reading a bunch of books and thinking about them together, and that was the class? With syllabi no longer than three pages.

Resharing, for the Friday crowd, the news of this crucial special issue, in which I'm honored to appear alongside scholars and humans I deeply admire and to share the article I wrote when I thought it might be my last. Solidarity with all who have wondered the same. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

I cannot WAIT for my copy of @johannawinant.bsky.social's first monograph to arrive! I've just ordered LYRIC LOGIC from Columbia UP with the code CUP20. This review from Oren Izenberg tells you what you need to know. We all need pleasure, thought, & both buoyancy and precision, right now & always:

BRILLIANCE ALERT!

Fantastic job by @devingarofalo.bsky.social and the authors in this issue. Already scheming about how to make space for this on my undergrad intro to literary studies syllabus (required course for majors). These kinds of issues need to be center stage in our classrooms.

ICYMI yesterday afternoon, a new, currently ~open access issue of Victorian Poetry—abt VP & so much more—dropped ft a stellar intro by @devingarofalo.bsky.social, essays by @carolinelevine.bsky.social, @lerikscline.bsky.social, Ruth McAdams, & me, and a keywords essay by @ryancarroll.bsky.social.

Cannot wait to read this.

I'm so grateful to @devingarofalo.bsky.social for organizing this special issue and for offering me the opportunity to contextualize the events at St. Norbert College within a broader range of attacks on higher education. The thinking that went into writing this has been vital to me, in all senses.

The essay is dedicated to Alan and to my mom and was revised in a fugue state after she died in August (still feels so unreal to write that--it can't be true). I couldn't not finish it and have exactly zero idea how I did quite frankly. It was the culmination of too many yrs of thought & frustration

Another reason I wrote it is because Victorian Poetry, the journal, was the home of the one essay published by my grad school comrade and friend, Alan Young-Bryant, who died far, far, far too young and is dearly missed by me and others on here (hi @yblent.bsky.social & @docsthilaire.bsky.social).

One of the reasons I did--even though Victorian poetry is NOT my home field--is because the journal was formerly pub'd by WVU Press, formerly helmed by the great @derekkrissoff.bsky.social. WVU & and the badass staff, fac, & students there are near & dear to my (anti-Gordon Gee) heart.

I also call for not only more support but also more *STUDY* of university presses to keep up with & advance critical uni studies but also soc of lit, etc. Biggest of thanks to @devingarofalo.bsky.social for including me in this special issue and for bearing with and supporting me as I wrote it.

And don’t overlook the contributor bios—they’re worth a peek, too. The enture issue is OPEN ACCESS — so excited to see out in the world. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

@ryancarroll.bsky.social kicks off VP’s new keyword series with a brilliant essay on INFORMATICS. muse.jhu.edu/article/987315

Ruth McAdams turns to Ernest Jones to trace how structural forces position scholars analogously to Chartist poets. Chartist poets show NTT scholars how to demand space for their creative—& how scholarship is not activism but at its best makes activism possible. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

@rcolesworthy.bsky.social turns to the uni press, whose workers have a shared stake in fields like Victorian poetry. Discussing fantasies of crossover success & the little book genre, she attends to manufactured amateurism as struc condition & collaborative affordance. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

@lerikscline.bsky.social writes abt cuts at St. Norbert College & broader patterns of agentless budget shortfalls, “transformations,” admin hostility to protesters, & crackdowns on higher ed—these expose the tactical limits of a category like “Victorian studies.” muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

@carolinelevine.bsky.social explores how the first-person plural foments the speaking & breathing together, the collective sharing of energy & joy, that’s needed to confront structures of isolation & despair. Chartist fury meets union protests at UW-Madison. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

@devingarofalo.bsky.social shows how VP, the journal, exposes probs of intellectual labor, adjunctification, & attacks on higher ed. VP recently went through simultaneous ed & press transitions due to the gutting of WVU. The intro tells this story in convo w the field. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

This issue of VP is incredible — it was important to me to make space in the pages of VP for a timely convo abt the forces surrounding its simultaneous editor & press transitions. First time I’ve said anything in print as ed for reasons that become clear in intro. More importantly, the essays are 🔥.

Just hit send on my final book ms and all final submission materials. If anyone needs me please know I’m facedown on the floor. (This would be a good away message.)

Cover drop! Extremely excited to have this incredible sculpture, Marisol’s Love (1962), on the cover of Relatability, out later this year press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

labor brings us together

Turnout at the downtown San Diego protest was massive. I have yet to see video footage or photos that actually convey the number of ppl there.

if nothing else, there is something to be said for spending time outside in the sun with thousands of people who share your anger at the state of things

As of this fall you’ll be able to major in English at UNT, but it will no longer exist as a dept. Its faculty will be split across 3 different “schools.” There will be no more department chairs. Interdisciplinarity at its worst: mush. No real exp as to how any of this addresses the deficit, ofc.

To my surprise I got invited to be on a panel here called "The Problem of AI" and took the opportunity to try to shift the discussion from boosterism & normalization, however "thoughtful and deliberative," & toward the political economy of higher education nathankhensley.net/uncategorize...

Our special issue for @j19journal.bsky.social honoring Frances E.W. Harper's 200th birthday is now out! It features *8* terrific essays on intriguing facets of Harper's work and concludes with a stirring afterword by @profkori.bsky.social. @dark-stars.bsky.social @c19americanists.bsky.social

Our special issue of Arizona Quarterly on the American novel at the turn of the 20th century is now out! In addition to an intro by @natewolff.bsky.social and me, it includes 6 original essays and a bracing afterword by Jennifer Fleissner (which, among other things, urges us back to Lears).

Hey! Is the dream of the 90s (sustained ambitious attention to the fin de siècle American novel) alive? Yes! In this AzQ special issue @rafaelwalker.bsky.social and I co-edited with intro by us & afterword by Jennifer Fleissner 😎 Open access! @hopkinspress.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/issue/56582

the whole introduction of LYRIC LOGIC— titled "Philosophical Poetry"— is available to read via preview at @columbiaup.bsky.social 's site cup.columbia.edu/book/lyric-l...

always read tricia matthew

Red States: We're going to cut all the programs that don't support our theology Blue States: We're going to cut the same programs, but because they don't support the business school

Administrators spend $17 million of CSU money on ChatGPT while shuttering departments essential to the job of a university in developing, archiving, and teaching all kinds of knowledge

Fashion history peeps: fact checking, am I correct in describing this guy’s fit as naval (looking at the jacket under the smock)? And as (vaguely?) Victorian? C19? Have also been trying to ID the coin he is wearing on his finger (my eyes 😭). Any thoughts or refs to scholarship wd be v appreciated.

obsessed with this article

This typographic cover/homage to @uminnpress.bsky.social ‘s Theory and History of Literature series is 12/10. Congrats to all involved—look forward to reading this asap

Very pleasing cover design; very pleased to be a part of this. Can’t wait for you all to read it!

Honored to be part of this, thrilled to see it in all its intellectual pink!!

Likewise lucky, and over the moon about this cover!

🌸🤟🎉 Special points for everybody who’s old enough to get the visual reference of the cover design (I love it!)

Coming this fall! Started as a Twitter (RIP) conversation and now it’s got a most pleasing cover!

THE BARBARA JOHNSON COLLECTIVE has a cover, a website, and is available for preorder! (Use code NUP2026 for a discount.) See the full contents at the link below — lucky to be part of this extraordinary project and excited to see it in print this fall! ✨🔥 nupress.northwestern.edu/979889948066...

The first round of mergers and cuts to “certain academic programs” have been announced at UNT and it is an atrocity. Among them: no more degree programs in Linguistics, no more MA in WGST, and… www.unt.edu/budget-updat...

It’s easy (more easy than accurate) to dismiss academic critics of generative AI as uninformed or emotive, which is often anyway code for “moralizing.” But it’s remarkable how much gen AI boosterism requires feigning ignorance that theft and impersonation are widely seen as wrong, for good reasons.

Lovely to be able to share this 18th-century bound herbarium for a workshop on botany and the book, funded by the Isaac Newton Trust and Trinity College, Cambridge. We’ve also digitised the volumes, so everyone can take a look! cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...

this feels silly to say given the context for it but: huge news

crucial coverage from The Guardian that features our collaborative, movement-building website against-a-i.com

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public. I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are. 1/ Here's what I can share:

Everything is terrible, but talking with my students today about Kehinde Wiley, Titus Kaphar, Julian Charriére, Just Stop Oil museum protests, and determination in the face of a broken and breaking world was a much needed respite.