One of the best pieces of writing advice I got recently was, “of course you are going to write a smart book, but what else is it going to be.”

A lot of academia is just folks trying to perform being smart like long irrelevant questions after talks, unnecessarily critical reviews, & sounding like a journal article in social settings when folks just chilling. There are different ways of being interesting in these settings.

The Newcomb Department of Music in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University is seeking an assistant professor of music (tenure-track) with expertise in the history and practice of Black American music.

I can’t let my students get finessed out of their own education. I let them know that when learning feels like a chore it’s not by accident. That feeling is inevitable in a society that undermines critical thinking & rewards complacency. I ask them who benefits from that?

Now is the time to be curious about our universe, to be imaginative about all its possibilities, including the potential for humans to live in good and sustainable relations with each other and the ecosystems that we depend upon. This is a time of stubborn freedom dreaming.

there is no training to prepare you to deal with the passing of one of your students. so much of our engagement with them is about their future that we take for granted, particularly for Black students, how much is denying them of one

When I was young, people adultified me to assign me all tesponsibiiity. Now that I am old, people talk to me like I’m a child, granting me no autonomy. I do believe the colonial brain will make whatever true that it needs to be true, I swear.

They're messin' with Texas! How gerrymandering shapes Southern politics. Plus, a great conversation with Tulane professor @coreyjmiles.bsky.social, who guest-edited this summer's hip-hop themed issue of the journal Southern Cultures. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-15...

Too many of us have replaced building power with telling our story and being “heard.”

"You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all." James Baldwin 🌸🌸

@jpmorrell.bsky.social‬; ‪@helenamorenola.com‬; @coreyjmiles.bsky.social‬;

🇵🇸 by Naomi Shihab Nye

"Every bombed village is my hometown." — James Baldwin

Great new issue of Southern Cultures with a bunch of smart writing and thinking about Southern hip-hop!

Stop whatever you doing & check out @scquarterly.bsky.social summer issue on the Hip-Hop South. Talm bout some of the leading voices on southern Hip-Hop celebrating 30 years since Dre declared “the South got something to say." Available to read FREE on Project Muse

Man. I just got an email saying that Gaza is biggest spiritual crisis for Jews since the Holocaust and like ... the problem in Gaza isn't a Jewish spiritual crisis you guys, it's a fucking colonial genocide.

I know this feels right (and flattering). But that man doesn’t hate smart people. He hates people who won’t do what he wants. Smart people comply all the time.

i hate having random conversation with white folks in Ubers & other spaces I can't easily get out. they are going to ask me what i do and when i say professor, we are two questions away from stuff getting uncomfortable

mine ain’t scared 😂

when our mother died my sister faced so many challenges like “how do you fill out FASFA without having an active parent.” She got a full ride to Chapel Hill & is graduating this weekend. Thank you for trusting me to be your brother. Thank you for loving me even when I didn’t always get it right.

June Jordan demanded we bring back the human to science & humanities long before this supposedly AI crisis. The issue is far much larger than ChatGPT.

as a social scientist who cares about craft & prose the irony in this is that students work is a lot better than what AI can do. we have focused so much on answers & objectivity at the expense of personal voice, slippages, & creativity that we created an opening for AI.

“I question how bearing witness to the violence this country has done to my community primed me to bear witness to the violence it does elsewhere?” On being southern Black American in an going global crisis.

In the bigger scheme of things the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that's a whole different thing. ~ Lucille Clifton

we shouldn't have to compete for empathy. if talking about Gaza, Sudan, immigrants, or anyone who has had to fight for their existence makes me as a southern black man less free - i'm not sure freedom was ever possible in this country.

I know there is some young black artist out there painting reimagined images of black boys with shiesty masks. Keep being creative.

I have an essay coming out about how southern Black art has been at the forefront of American art but has not been able to undo the assumptions about southern Black people because of how our art gets separated from the soil and histories that birthed it.

You can't disconnect the success of Sinners from the fact that we are in a Black Southern art renaissance. Writers, music artists, painters, photographers, and more are sounding the South and showing that our stories have international appeal.

Ain’t nothing in the world worse than looking at your children drowning, knowing ain’t nothing you can do because you scared that if you get to trying to save them, they might see that you can’t swim either. ~Kiese Laymon

it has been a beautiful ride. writing this book has let me connect with so many amazing thinkers. forever humbled

Seeing my students get into grad school, win awards, and get amazing jobs is one of the best things about working at a university. Thank you to my students for trusting me enough to be part of their journey, even at moments when I didn't feel I had much to offer.

when I get compliments on my writing, so much of it is owed to the folks who edit it. the best are folks who bring your voice to the front...its a brilliant skill

I want to see more research & art about Black grandfathers. Their dreams, desires, and how they create life. I want to see more work on Black grandmas' relationships outside of their family obligations. Who they are as people, how they love, how they hurt.

Such a generative conversation with some of my faves: @coreyjmiles.bsky.social @shaonta.bsky.social @blkschlr-bmiles.bsky.social

excited about this new paper, where @profince.bsky.social pulls me in to think about what does research look like outside of always assuming black disparity and then indexing our way to knowable facts of blackness. what does it mean not to solely be interested in black people but to care for them.

Listening to @baldwinvidal.bsky.social talk about hip-hop crews’ haircuts as an ordinary note of care. I CANNOT WAIT for her book to drop. #PopCon2025

To be an academic is to acquire an excuse for not owning the pain you see. ~Danielle Allen this is one of my favorite quotes pushing back against the belief that research should be objective and neutral.

I am so pleased to announce a Palestinian Studies cluster hire at @huntercollege.bsky.social - we are hiring one person in the arts and another in the social sciences. This is an incredible source of pride for me as a faculty member & one of the many reasons that I feel so lucky to work here 1/

New Orleans welcomed me back last weekend with open arms—thanks to Baldwin & Co. for its immense hospitality; @coreyjmiles.bsky.social for his wise engagement with #StayBlackandDie (@dukepress.bsky.social); and all those who attended from near and far who are dear to me. Content coming soon!

Having long stretches off from work doesn’t rejuvenate me & make me feel ready to go back. It just shows my body how unhealthy it is to work the amount of hours we do.

Despite the state of the world, New Orleans remains a special place to me. That said, I hope you can see me and @coreyjmiles.bsky.social next week as we discuss #StayBlackandDie (@dukepress.bsky.social) at Baldwin Books & Co. Details 👇🏾 and see you then. www.eventbrite.com/e/i-augustus...

May anyone who seeks to mention you be called to learn the language of those who first loved you. `Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I prefer making inconspicuous markings in physical books that I have no real way of locating beyond turning page by page. This is the only way I know how to read.

If you are in or around New Orleans on January 11, 2025 at 2p CST, come through Baldwin Books for the next #StayBlackandDie book tour stop as I converse with @coreyjmiles.bsky.social for what will be an exciting event Details 👇🏾 and info to register—until then! www.eventbrite.com/e/i-augustus...

I don’t even know where to begin with what it means to be without Nikki Giovanni. Dear Nikki, Grappling with your work brought out the best writing I have ever done. You were a Martian, born in Knoxville, TN. May you rest in peace, #NikkiGiovanni. thebaffler.com/salvos/becom...

Being a Black grad student at Virginia Tech gave me the opportunity to live in proximity to the brilliance of Nikki Giovanni and also experience her generosity. If invited to an event, class, or show she would always show up with care & genuine interest. Rest in love!!!

part of my southern upbringing is men always drive so when I get an Uber and it’s a woman driver I be wanting to tell her to get in the passenger seat and let me drive

i was afraid to use my year of leave to take creative writing courses, write for popular publications, & other things to cultivate my writerly identity. i thought a year without traditional academic production would look bad on my CV but I am so happy I trusted myself to do this

as a person who doesn’t take surveys as serious as I should when I complete them, I always questioned what surveys revealed. But also questioned disciplines that believed running a regression on survey data was more rigorous than sitting in community with people you want to know.

I started reading a lot of creative nonfiction and fiction to help with my writing but what it has also done is reshaped how I understand data & what is knowable. It has given me different routes of seeing and hearing, complicating what we call research.