Letter | Giving Thanks by Giving Notice: Decrying Core Staff Firings at USC The current financial crisis is not of our making — but we are being handed the bill.

USC Faculty have just published a letter in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about recent staff layoffs in our college of arts and sciences. Please read and share! Title: "Giving Thanks by Giving Notice." www.chronicle.com/blogs/letter...

Textual Practice Elemental Melodrama. Guest Editors: Monique Rooney, Gillian Russell and Stefan Solomon. Volume 39, Issue 3 of Textual Practice

Excited to share 'Elemental Melodrama,' special issue of Textual Practice I edited w/ @moniquerooney.bsky.social & @gearuss.bsky.social! Essays by Sarah Balkin, Millie Schurch, Meg Brayshaw, @devo3000.bsky.social, and Marcie Frank on revisiting melodrama's elemental roots thru theatre, lit and film

B-Sides: “Under the Sea-Wind” by Rachel Carson - Public Books Bill McKibben proclaimed nature’s demise in 1989. But Americans who cared about DDT’s poisonous effect and the extinctions that would follow had been

New album just dropped. Check it. www.publicbooks.org/b-sides-unde...

Dear Fellow College Presidents: We Need to Do More Than Wait This One Out Why civil society needs university leaders to speak up.

From Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University: slate.com/life/2025/02...

Saw this at the MLA exhibit. Beautiful!

Opinion | Disasters Have Made L.A. What It Is Los Angeles may have a reputation for being superficial, but it is in fact a territory that might, at any moment, upend (or even end) your life.

Before long, I hope, this will all be over. Before long, I will be back home. In the meantime, it is tearing me up not to be there.

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/o...

Like many, can confirm! This year really has been about becoming part of communities. Start with sitting in the back, if you need, but if it's the right community for you, they'll be happy to have you!

Libraries are absolutely the first-stop for community building: you can find so many groups, learn about events, volunteer opportunities, it's all there.

Free internet, sometimes a little shop. Bonus all around.

This is a must read! Excited, Manu!

I guess this question asked: can you tell what part of speech this is? A Better question: has it ever been effective (within or without a sentence)?

NY Times Word of the Day: provost Subhead: "This word has appeared in 87 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?"

Don't tempt me with questions like this, @nytimes.com

Small Boston terrier with halo effect

Accidentally took a photo of my dog like she’s performed three miracles and is now a saint 😂😂😂

Totally wild. I am happy they are now asking at least. But I’ve already found other @CUP work of mine in an AI search. Feels more like they are on to the “ask for permission later” step. I wonder what would happen if we fired off a legally couched letter of response?

I’m excited to announce this new CFP for scholarly chapters to be included in “Contemporary Indigenous Horror” edited by myself and Krista Collier-Jarvis! The CFP is open to self-identifying Indigenous scholars and creatives, as well as allies.

call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/11/...

[Too bad he doesn’t speak German.]

Hi y’all—been off Bluesky and twitter for a few months. Anything happen while I was gone?

Delighted to share the 2nd of 3 faculty openings in the Dept. of Media Studies, Univ. of Colorado Boulder. If you're focusing on ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIA, please consider applying. It's a tenured or tenure-track OPEN-RANK search. Deadline: Dec. 10 |
jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

This week, the Griffiths of Houston, TX have volunteered as the matching family.
Please use this link to find the store, and please share widely. Info about the donations, etc., are all posted to the website.
Forward!

Kids 4 Kamala | Proceeds matched! Info below. | Bonfire We are a group of kids raising money for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. All proceeds will be donated to the Harris Victory Fund (more info below).

that will raise money for the Harris/Walz campaign. You can buy campaign T-shirts, hoodies, and totes *all designed by kids.* Plus, your contribution ($10-$15 per item, depending on type) will be matched by a second family. www.bonfire.com/store/kids-4...

Harris/Walz Kids Fundraiser, version 2.0!!!
Four years ago, Grey started a poster fundraiser, and her hand-drawn posters, which ended up all over the US, raised $600 for the Biden-Harris campaign.
This year, she and a group of friends created a web store instead ...

BOOKS ARE WEAPONS IN THE WAR OF IDEAS

Bet her opponent wishes he’d seen this.

620 Necromantics (with Renee Fox) | Herman Hesse on What We Learn from Trees What was the deal with the Victorians and their obsession with reanimating corpses? How did writers like Mary Shelley, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, W.B. Yeats,…

I had such fun talking about The Necromantics on the History of Literature podcast 🧛🏻‍♀️❤️ www.historyofliterature.com/620-necroman...

Review: After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Devin Griffiths and Deanna Kreisel Darwin’s theories of natural and sexual selection established that survival is a matter of adaptation. To pass on its way of life, a population must show a certain degree of variation among its own me...

What a pleasure it was to review the excellent new collection *After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century* edited by @devo3000.bsky.social and @doctorwaffle.substack.com! The review is below…but if you’re into Darwin, just buy it already!

The Moral Economy of the Shire Who paid for this? There's a certain meme that I see making the rounds on Facebook every so often about the bucolic nature of life in the Shire, from Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, an...

I don't know if he's on here but in case he isn't, Nathan Goldwag wrote a blog essay on "The Moral Economy of the Shire" looking at how a society can function based on custom & clientalism rather than the state and you should read it, it's fantastic.

nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/05/31/t...

Santa Cruz ACLU panel examines privacy rights With the technologies that now exist, how could anyone reasonably expect that anything that they do is private?

Here's a great summary of last night's ACLU NorCal event that I spoke at about police surveillance and resistance.

www.santacruzsentinel.com/2024/05/21/s...

Very excited about Victorian Poetry’s new Early Career Essay Prize! Deadline for submissions is June 30. Details below! Please share widely — and encourage untenured scholars working on great projects to submit their work!

It's time to start talking about the new academic security complex. It is not simply administrators -- there is a revolving door of security experts and a growing industry of private contractors who have captured the minds and fueled the nightmares of uni leaders. I see it every day at USC.

Every time I teach my Luxury class, the potential final projects become more and more disturbing

When I was a grad student @rutgers, I was active in the AAUP & helped organized a week-long occupation, w/ tents. We camped. It was peaceful. Admin was annoyed but permissive. We got our contract. Healthcare incl. for the first time. Wtf is wrong with modern admins and their security fever dreams?.