NYT headline from 8:29 AM: “Strong Hiring Likely Continued Early This Year”
NYT headline from 9:11 AM: “US Employers Cut Jobs in Sign of a Shakier Economy”
Shot. Chaser.
Academic Spideys in emotional collapse solidarity
Old meme, still true
Heinous, racist drivel. This is what forever war is meant to be. We saw this same “shock and awe” playbook in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere after 9/11. “Homeland security,” whether abroad or domestically, comes at the expense of non-white bodies.
My book has a cover! IN LATIN AMERICA YOU COULD BE FREE: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY tells the story of the place and promise of Latin America in the political imagination of African Americans and of their movements to the region in the antebellum period.
Out on Basic Books, November 11, 2026! 🥳
🤷
“Iranian attacks on Dubai and the closure of its airport have triggered a scramble among the wealthy to leave the emirates via alternative routes on private jets.”
Well.
Okay but where’s the lie?
Thank you for reading! 🙏
The Feb. 20, 2026 episode of Vibe Check with @theferocity.bsky.social has an amazing discussion of Serpell's book, too!
😍 i can’t wait to hear what you think!
The 24 beers feels like the real restraint.
Have you submitted your panel/roundtable/seminar proposal for ASAP/17 yet? There's still time! Deadline is March 12. You can submit here:
asap17.exordo.com
they never (2013-2014-2015) took me up on my idea to serve Larb at LARB events and that's the real scandal.
“To notice the difficulty of reading Black literature is to acknowledge the difficulty of rendering Black lives. And to call Black life difficult is not simply to describe the hardship of being Black in an anti-Black world. Complexity, ingenuity, beauty—all are contained within Blackness…”
I received over 90% of the votes at the department and college levels, yet the provost denied me tenure. I met and exceeded the promotion and tenure guidelines and expectations as well as my annual and mid-tenure reviews.
The Provost at Texas Tech University had denied a talented and extremely productive faculty member tenure, despite 90% approval at the department and college levels, because of his outspoken critique of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Academic freedom in the US is a myth.
Stunning cast in the second of the three-part podcast miniseries on the symposium, Close Reading for the 21C: "Why is close reading best understood as a conversation? What are its evaluative standards? How does it extend the conversation beyond literary studies?"
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...
appalling theft of public funds as corporate welfare for the kleptoplagiarism cognitive decapacitating machine
Shocking given the author. 😒
noBOdY cAReS ABoUt CRiTiciSM
"Philistines are always declaring that no one reads literary criticism, but the record shows that publishers systematically underestimate the popularity of book reviews."
I have a big new essay out that argues that Erich Auerbach is the crucial figure for historicist reading in lit studies today + argues that the epistemology of such reading depends on the profoundly humanist criterion "sufficient passion" muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Can’t wait to read this. I’ve been thinking through similar questions recently.
"This fresh and smart volume of criticism on Morrison’s work pierces with a playfulness that can only come from intimate knowledge and diligent intent." — @omweekes.bsky.social on the latest book ON MORRISON by Namwali Serpell:
www.bookforum.com/print/3203/a...
My latest review for @bookforum.bsky.social is also out now. In it, I think alongside Namwali Serpell’s resplendently rigorous new book on Toni Morrison about the last greatest living writer’s legacy and how we’re meant to read her.
R1: No we're not hiring on the tenure track because our peers aren't hiring on the tenure track
R1: Our peers aren't hiring on the tenure track because we aren't hiring on the tenure track
R1: wtf our grad students aren't getting hired on the tenure track
R1: No one could know how this happened
Pretty sure this is the first (and probably only) time I’m on a podcast. ☺️
This is my first attempt to capture a live event of this size.
I’m thankful to @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social for letting me adapt the launch of their tremendous book.
I think these episodes will be an additive supplement to it.
