@johnubacon.bsky.social ‘s book on the Edmund Fitzgerald is pretty engaging but loses the plot @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social catches: the ship was part of a whole infrastructure of crazy, ecocidal, midcentury extraction the likes of which we seem to be returning. open.substack.com/pub/thecurre...

My co-editors Andrew Taylor, Sarah Ruffing Robbins, and I are so proud of this latest book in the Interventions series published by @edinburghuniversitypress. The Asian American Renaissance: Literary Encounters Across Time by Mai Wang will change the stories we tell about US literary history.

Apropos of nothing: "... we find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This move toward English Department websites that do not list faculty members, or that place faculty behind labyrinths, is obviously intended to disempower said faculty, but the actual effect is to disrupt the establishment of connections and the flow of opportunities toward the institution.

I’m listening in this coffee shop to two guys in their 60s wax on about A.I.—they actually believe it is a better source of medical information than their doctors; one believes it when it tells him he can get rich developing NFTs. So many boomers have lost their minds in their phones and its apps.

If you’re in Phoenix, call David Schweikert (House R) and blame him for shutting down the government: (480) 946-2411, (202) 225-2190. Call him a radical.

I can’t wait for the reporting to come informing us of the actual costs of firing all these coders to outsource their work to AI, as if it won’t hallucinate just as often as it does when a student uses it to write an essay on Whitman

I can’t wait for the reporting to come informing us of the actual costs of firing all these coders to outsource their work to AI, as if it won’t hallucinate just as often as it does when a student uses it to write an essay on Whitman

The staircase Harriet Jacobs was pushed down (producing injuries so extensive that she “was unable to turn myself in bed for days”) is in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem and examined now by @molliebarnes.bsky.net and Susanna Ashton: theconversation.com/a-staircase-...

Guy I know passing me at the line at the coffee shop: “Hi Chris; how are you?” Me: “Reeling, thanks, how about you?” Him: “Good, thanks, see you later.”

@jeffreyinsko.bsky.social just this afternoon took home an award the @sierraclub.org named for another Michigan environmentalist, Burton V. Barnes. If you haven’t read Insko’ relentless work on pipelines and especially @enbridge.bsky.social here’s your daily quota: open.substack.com/pub/thecurre...

“A foreigner of any nation, not in open war with us, becomes naturalized by removing to the state to reside, and taking an oath of fidelity: and thereupon acquires every right of a native citizen […]” Thomas Jefferson, Query 14, Notes in the State of Virginia

Eternally grateful for recommendations on texts to include!

From “The Times” forum on higher ed now in the current issue of The Dial, @jennifergreiman.bsky.social ‘s statement on the criminalization of student activism: muse.jhu.edu/pub/562/arti...

Now they’re going to get the sixties they wanted

Luminous, urgent issue of @thedial2024.bsky.social. Thinking this am about Stephanie Foote's challenge to us: "Now is the time for the unglamorous daily work of collective meaning-making, as difficult as that is for universities under threat." muse.jhu.edu/pub/562/arti...

I decided to write about the backlash against Emerson’s Divinity School Address as a controversy over college students receptive to radical moral independence. muse.jhu.edu/pub/562/arti...

The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society invites participants in a panel on "Emerson and Power" at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy from March 12-14, 2026 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. More info: american-philosophy.org/saap2026/

The first query I made just over a year ago; the second, just this morning.

Two new very C19-oriented journals, _The Dial_ and _American Gothic Studies_, covering all things between the sunlight and the darkness.

Woman next to me on the train just asked if I’d watch her pockabook while she finds the toilet and I know I’m in Massachusetts

Like it says on the facade of the Boston Public Library: “THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY”. 2003 all over again, it’s a Massachusetts court that says enough.

“Cleared of any wrongdoing “ my ass. news.gcu.edu/gcu-news/u-s...

I think I’m going to start penalizing student essays that exhibit perfect grammar.

Reading these papers makes me wonder how many lit faculty are reconsidering our long-standing commitment to essay writing as a primary means of assessment.

James! www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Very sweet all these students wishing me well on my “recovery journey“

If ASU’s newest PR campaign is any indicator, we are moving into an exciting period of change, impact, and drone shots. youtu.be/9zFqplVV0fI?...

Um the Arizona Department of Public Safety estimates yesterday’s crowd at the Capitol at 3k? This video capture a small fraction, maybe 1/20th of the ebullient gathering I witnessed.

TODAY WE MOBILIZED OVER 3 MILLION PEOPLE ACROSS THE NATION!!! This movement has entered the next chapter: the people will mobilize again, and again, until we make a difference. It only takes 3.5% of the population in a sustained resistance in order to make a difference. #50501movement

UVA Rotunda where Virginia students heckled and mocked an aging Emerson invited to speak in 1876.

You know these people bloviating about how we lost the election bc of “woke” “excesses on the left” would have totally turned in their Jewish neighbors if this was Kraków in 1942.

“relentless antisemitic eruptions” god the purple prose www.ed.gov/about/news/p...

Hey @lastweektonight.com as author of an LA Times piece on fake Emerson quotes, I have to step in. He isn’t talking about tipping as he writes: “I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, but it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.” He’s whining about charity.

Truly ashamed of my university today. www.statepress.com/article/2025...

I mean all this talk about the House of Windsor “bending the knee” the Trump; I’m sure they agree with him!

Economic boycott today on major companies that have followed Trump’s anti-DEI directives: bit.ly/boycottcentral

I love these NYTimes commentators saying that the Resistance last time around was pointless. What we did was to permafuck his administration back then.

Apple Maps v Google Maps:

Super Bowl booing TS a true Sophie’s choice for @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social

What could possibly go wrong

One of my former students from one of my woke courses wrote this and it couldn’t come at a better moment to remind me how lucky I am to get to work with students like this. urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Having a sneaking suspicion not all of my online students are paying attention to my recorded lectures