in case this hasn’t made it over here yet amsaccountabilityarchive.carrd.co

Call for Papers: Global Musical Modernities and Local Agency, 7-10 May 2026, Toronto https://www.rma.ac.uk/2025/11/09/call-for-papers-global-musical-modernities-and-local-agency-7-10-may-2026-toronto/

Have you checked out our fall sale yet? Save 50% on books & journal issues with coupon FALL25. buff.ly/Bk390cu

"Communism must become ecological. And yet this argument is incomplete if it does not include its corollary: political ecology can become truly revolutionary only by becoming communist"

Sensory studies 2026: a state-of-the-art review www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Will reading become obsolete? How A.I. could transform our relationship to the written word.

I’m presenting new material—on “The Science of Sight-Reading: Notation and/as Ocular Technology in fin-de-siècle France”— at the American Musicological Society Midwest Chapter on Oct. 11. The conference will be livestreamed. amsmidwest.weebly.com/fall-2025-co...

Intense-looking slide from my upcoming talk,"The Science of Sight-Reading: Notation and/as Ocular Technology in fin-de-siècle France."The hands are Alfred Cortot's, recorded in slow motion then freeze-framed bar by bar.The slurs in the score are not phrasing; they denote lateral/vertical motion.

Autumn 2025 issue is out! Read articles by Martha Feldman, James E. K. Parker, Anne M. Thell, Jennifer Rae Greeson, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, Wendy Anne Lee, and Brian Massumi. criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...

Very proud to be able to share, via @dissentmag.bsky.social, Marshall Berman's essay "Sympathy for the Devil," about the Pentagon exorcism, The Rolling Stones, Faust, and the culture of the 1960s. It's been out of print for forty years, and it's a masterpiece www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

A kind review of my book is out in the Journal of Modern History. I’m reviewed by James H. Johnson, whose own book, “Listening in Paris: A Cultural History,” I read as a graduate student and have referenced and taught ever since. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

I wrote about pianist John Ogdon's infamous sight-reading abilities, and whether they could be called superhuman or something else. sightliteracies.wordpress.com/2025/08/27/j...

Today, we designated Wayne State University (WSU) a “Hostile Campus” for its repeated repression of Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and allied students who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Learn more: islamophobia.org/hostile-camp...

Excited to present new stuff at MLA 2026 in Toronto

Slightly diminish a band: The Maybe Maybe Maybes

New blog post: sight-reading on the Ondes martenot, and how Kittler could make sense of it. sightliteracies.wordpress.com/2025/08/04/s...

If only I could write like this

"As musicology has become more conscious of the monumentalizing forces of canon formation in music historiography, object lessons can offer a 'punctuating' alternative." In its new issue, "19th-Century Music" publishes its first "Object Lesson." online.ucpress.edu/ncm/issue/49/1

My first short fiction has just been published in Gargoyle Magazine. It’s loosely inspired by a recent family trip to Florida. My last piece of published creative writing was a poem I wrote when I was nine. This feels good. gargoylemagazine.com/jack-blaszki...

Excited to host the North American Conference on 19th-Century Music at Wayne State University next week! Check out the program here: sites.google.com/view/nac19cm...

My latest blog post discusses new reading-related lit that has had me thinking hard. I also link to my latest review, published in Exacting Clam. sightliteracies.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/s...

Exacting Clam No.17 is here. Gina DeMartino's A Clam at the Bellagio adorns the cover. Stunning fiction, poetry, criticism and essay adorns the rest of it. Subscribe today https://www.exactingclam.com/subscribe/

Sometimes a book's physique, more than its contents, dictates the format of a review. For @exactingclam.bsky.social I wrote about Mike Corrao's Surface Studies. www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-17...

Another review of my book “Fanfare for a City” just came out—this time in Nineteenth-Century French Studies. The review is by Mark Seto, a musicologist whose work I read and assign often. www.ncfs-journal.org/mark-seto/se...

The program for the North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music is here! I'm so excited to host these fine scholars on the campus of Wayne State University from June 25-27. sites.google.com/view/nac19cm...

Great review-essay of books by Roxane Martin, Tommaso Sabbatini, and myself. "There are very few people, these books invite their readers to reflect, who cannot succumb to the richness and complexities of Paris, no matter how familiar the capital appears." www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Bro is lost

It’s the UC Press 40% Spring Sale! Visit ucpress.edu and use promo code MAY40 to enjoy 40% off any UC Press book. ⁠ Terms: For US & Canada orders. Sale ends May 31, 2025. Not applicable for pre-orders publishing beyond 90 days.

I got promoted and tenured at Wayne State this week. I feel all sorts of things: relieved, lucky, emboldened, refreshed creatively, and ready for a broader perspective on what it is that I do.

A very thoughtful review of my book was just published by Erin Brooks in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, in which she articulates the importance of sonic urban history better than I could. online.ucpress.edu/jams/article...

“Some will say a bit of harmonic knowledge can’t hurt; others will protest, for the love of God, keep out the subpar would-be conductors, soloists, composers.”

I taught this article in music history. The title image is the Wabot-2, a Japanese-built robot specially designed to sight-read music.

I highly recommend @ucpress.bsky.social if you identify as #firstgen. www.ucpress.edu/blog-posts/f...

Wayne State University is hiring a tenure-track choral director. Please share widely. Detroit is an amazing city; happy to answer any questions.

I’ve always been an András Schiff fan. Krystian Zimerman has boycotted the US for years, but that’s because TSA fucked up his piano. symphony.org/pianist-andr...

Our „to be or not to be” www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIT...

Please sign Wayne Academic Union's petition. It asks that Wayne State's president take a stand against the continued assault on education. 300+ have already signed: www.waunion.org/announcement...

If you’re consulting lists out of fear of being on them, congratulations: you live in a fascist state. www.ed.gov/about/news/p...

Dames’s “exhausted reader” also describes the staff/student accompanist after jury week: “The almost-burned-out, frayed, fried, edge-of-collapse reader, just barely keeping it together.”

I’d love to review this. Szendy’s new book promises to add a new layer to how we read about reading. But what might it teach us about reading music? press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

RIP

Classic

My whole book was an humble attempt to emulate City of Quartz’s first fifty pages, but for Paris.

Severance owes me 10 minutes. I’ll accept another goat scene.

Devastating, empowering critique of the “crisis” of academia (refreshingly, from a chair), finger pointed directly and unwaveringly at the culprits in boxy suits (also: loved the s/o to Wayne State ✊).

Today, 12:30 pm EST! Registration for Zoom link below. "The theme of this Books in Dialogue is Urban Culture and will feature books by Jack Blaszkiewicz (Assistant Professor, Music) and Michelle Jacobs (Associate Professor, Sociology)." events.wayne.edu/humanities/2...

For our new "Interlingual Reviews" initiative, we invite pitches for reviews of books published in languages other than English & not—or not yet—translated into English. Email the reviews team w/ any pitches, drafts, or Q's: www.full-stop.net/masthead/.

I wrote about Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn, and about the pleasures of sightreading handwritten music. sightliteracies.wordpress.com/2025/02/26/m...

I’m giving a joint book talk next week. Stop by via Zoom! Registration link below. events.wayne.edu/humanities/2...

As I find myself itching to write more criticism, Bartoszyńska articulates why: “Whereas an artwork confronts its maker as an alien object,with an enduring whiff of the otherworldly or sacred,the work of criticism remains stubbornly mine.”