@manshel
Assoc. Prof., McGill English | Book: WRITING BACKWARDS (Columbia UP) | Articles: The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, LARB, Public Books, Post45, PMLA, and MELUS | Next Up: The History of High School English |📍Montreal
Hear me out, @npr.org... new weekly show featuring authors, editors, agents, publishers, prize judges, fanfic aficionados, TV scouts, and READERS of all kinds. It's called "BookTalk" and you've already got your new host IN STUDIO!
A selfie of a woman trying very hard to contain her glee in a WHYY podcast booth.
A big day to be a person with zero chill.
Modern Language Association Call for Papers. TEACHING DYSTOPIA IN DYSTOPIAN TIMES. This roundtable invites papers from educators at all levels who are working with dystopian texts or at restrictive institutions to share pedagogical, political, and interpretive strategies. 200-word abstracts due March 15 by email to alexander.manshel@mcgill.ca Deadline for submissions: Sunday, March 15, 2026
Calling all High School English Teachers, Professors, and Educators of all kinds!
Do you have thoughts on TEACHING DYSTOPIA IN DYSTOPIAN TIMES?
Then please join us for this roundtable at next January's MLA convention in Los Angeles!
Thanks for sharing + please get in touch with any questions!
Remarkable graph here of James Patterson's productivity over time
Call for Papers for MLA 2027 in Los Angeles. The session is titled "Literary Studies Beyond the Academy." What forms of literary study, critical inquiry, and bookish identity-making exist beyond university literature departments? How have readers in marginalized communities and the Global South developed para- or even anti-academic institutions of interpretation? 200-word abstracts. Deadline for submissions: Sunday, March 15, 2026 Alexander Manshel, McGill University (alexander.manshel@mcgill.ca )
If you're thinking about attending MLA 2027 in Los Angeles, please consider submitting an abstract to this *guaranteed session* on "Literary Studies Beyond the Academy"! Details below...
Come to LA! Let's talk Huxley!
P.P.S. The character limit wouldn't let me add this, but...Grad students and NTT folks also VERY MUCH WELCOME!
P.S. This is a guaranteed session, hosted by @modernlanguage.bsky.social's K-16 alliance! Thanks for sharing with anyone who might be interested!
@ncte.org, @edutopia.org, @ebonyteach.blacksky.app, @heymrsbond.com, @annieabrams.bsky.social, @mraleosays.bsky.social, @johndownesangus.bsky.social
Modern Language Association Call for Papers. TEACHING DYSTOPIA IN DYSTOPIAN TIMES. This roundtable invites papers from educators at all levels who are working with dystopian texts or at restrictive institutions to share pedagogical, political, and interpretive strategies. 200-word abstracts due March 15 by email to alexander.manshel@mcgill.ca Deadline for submissions: Sunday, March 15, 2026
Calling all High School English Teachers, Professors, and Educators of all kinds!
Do you have thoughts on TEACHING DYSTOPIA IN DYSTOPIAN TIMES?
Then please join us for this roundtable at next January's MLA convention in Los Angeles!
Thanks for sharing + please get in touch with any questions!
One of the things keeping me afloat is that today I teach one of my favorite essays in recent years, Ted Underwood’s “Why Literary Time is Measured in Minutes” alongside Yauney et al’s “update” from a year later, after teaching Genette last week. The little formalist in me is so happy
Yet another reminder to read Annie’s fabulous history of the AP!
www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...
🚨 If you're in Montreal for #ACLA, come see this outstanding seminar! On Saturday at 4:00, I'll be talking about the secondary school's fascination with dystopia in a paper called "The Individual vs. Society: Doublethinking High School English"!
JOB ALERT! 📜📚
Who wants to be director & curator of special collections & archives at Middlebury College (Vermont!) — & work for a wonderful boss (& one of my favorite people), Rebekah Irwin?
apply.workable.com/middleburyco...
I keep reminding people that admins hate English departments because they are popular (read: inefficient), not because they aren’t. AI is in a long line of technologies that promise to solve that problem for them.
Years ago our admin did a red and black report. It took salaries & how much $ each instructor made in tuition $ for classes we taught-you were in the red or black. They released numbers once & shut it down bc humanities were producing huge $ for uni & engineers, business and scientists were losing $
Please do come to our ACLA session on Conspiracism. I'll be presenting on the comic book series, *The Department of Truth*, and revealing all about the secret history of U.S. Unless They get to me first.
🚨 If you're in Montreal for #ACLA, come see this outstanding seminar! On Saturday at 4:00, I'll be talking about the secondary school's fascination with dystopia in a paper called "The Individual vs. Society: Doublethinking High School English"!
So awesome to see this international bestseller data *out in the world*! That's the goal!
Thanks to @jamesfolta.com, @literaryhub.bsky.social, and F. Poretti for these great pieces.
James Folta (@jamesfolta.com) and F. Poretti (@fporetti on Substack) dive into our International Bestsellers dataset to investigate what the world has been reading and what great books we might have been sleeping on. data.post45.org/news/intl-be...
There's so much great (peer-reviewed!) data hanging out at @post45data.bsky.social for people to explore and play with! 100 years of major prizes (and the judges)! Everyone who went to Iowa Writers' Workshop (and who they studied with)! All NEA lit awardees! The Canon of Asian Am Lit! So much more!
"it's time for ideas, people, and critical thinkers to flourish. That means that, after years of mocking, English majors are finally getting recognized for their usefulness."
www.businessinsider.com/ai-job-marke...
This is, of course, why we're also the best funded. After all, as Plato says, um... wait, I'm just getting a note here...
Last week, scholar Alexander Manshel published a vital paper about American reading habits. He noted that “high school English is the place where many lifelong readers are made,” he declared the high school English classroom “the most influential literary institution in the United States.”
Call for Papers for MLA 2027 in Los Angeles. The session is titled "Literary Studies Beyond the Academy." What forms of literary study, critical inquiry, and bookish identity-making exist beyond university literature departments? How have readers in marginalized communities and the Global South developed para- or even anti-academic institutions of interpretation? 200-word abstracts. Deadline for submissions: Sunday, March 15, 2026 Alexander Manshel, McGill University (alexander.manshel@mcgill.ca )
If you're thinking about attending MLA 2027 in Los Angeles, please consider submitting an abstract to this *guaranteed session* on "Literary Studies Beyond the Academy"! Details below...
There’s a section on the history of “themes” in HS English in this amazing article:
bsky.app/profile/mans...
Job posting for a lecturer position at Harvard Hist & Lit--please share! histlit.fas.harvard.edu/lecturer-pos...
It’s a great idea!
I would love to read this! I’m really interested in Silas Marner as the prime example of a work that fell out of the high school canon!
💥🤯💥