A new book from After Oil drops this fall. I had the great luck to write the chapter on "fuckedness" (that's three syllables) with some other awesome After Oilers. www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...
ahh I saw they were running concurrently – doppelgänger conferences !
this folk horror film fest in Edinburgh looks so cool (and look at the amazing poster design!)
The Cloisters at University of Glasgow: fluted columns and archways connecting the campus's East and West Quadrangles.
University of Glasgow quadrangle with Gothic turreted buildings, sculptural form, and sun shining through tall tree.
Holding Denis Johnson's novella Train Dreams with minimalist black wolf illustration on a beige cover.
very much enjoyed my first @officialbaas.bsky.social conference at university of glasgow, presenting on contemporary rewilding narratives about wolves in the US and UK 🐺
grateful to the fantastic speakers and settings – even picked up an on-theme novella for the train ride home #BAAS2026
if you work in a UK uni, drop everything and read this (not news to many of us, but sobering to have the dots joined up; the stories are outrageous and heartbreaking)
"criticizing AI use in journalism or other creative industries is classist" NO IT IS NOT
there is a class that benefits enormously from cognitive surrender, epistemic warfare, and the enclosure of all hitherto produced culture and it is NOT THE WORKING CLASS
Covers of shortlisted books, titles on the link
The 2026 James Tait Black Prize shortlists spotlight some of the most exciting work being published today: james-tait-black.ed.ac.uk/indie-talent...
I'm on a Scottish mini-tour reunion this week: discussing Decadent Editions at University of Glasgow on Wed and giving my first paper from 100 Years of The Well of Loneliness at University of Stirling on Thurs. Excited to see faces old and new! www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/art...
Calling Cormac McCarthy’s authorial style a “mistake” that AI no longer makes is so funny
Interregnum in Green logo with white text. The Dangerous Thrill of Destabilisation: Interview with Dr Jacob Engelberg on Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression. Two white men flank a white woman against a pink wall.
Interregnum interviews @jacobengelberg.bsky.social on his new book, Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression. The book argues that the way we look at queer film centres the gay/straight binary and considers what happens when bisexuality breaks the rules.
interregnum.ghost.io/the-dangerou...
#bisexual
This new paper by @zeitzoff.bsky.social looks at the evolution of tactics in the environmental movement in the US, finding that repression has a substantial affect. Read all about it here:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
The Guardian on our new study, which shows that global heating is significantly gathering speed. Our efforts to overcome our fossil fuel addiction should do the same.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
continuing the canine theme in my new research, I'm looking forward to presenting on home turf at Loughborough for the MSA–BAMS 'Weird Modernisms' conference in July on the topic 'Modernism's Mad Dogs'
@moderniststudies.bsky.social
@modernistudies.bsky.social
It was a pleasure and a privilege to be in conversation with my amazing colleague and dear friend Jade French about our books - and to share it with Feminist Modernist Studies. If you're interested in women's writing, periodisation, ageing and thinking across generations, check out our little chat.
looks fantastic, look forward to reading!
Raises some important issues but also ignores the fact that many Humanities staff outside the magic circle are facing redundancy. They are naturally willing, indeed desperate, to apply for entry-level Oxbridge posts. The situation is grim. 1/2
This is why in higher education you should not let your curriculum be driven by 'demand.' You need give students the precious opportunity to discover the things they don't already know they will be excited about.
great state-of-the-field essay on cli-fi, I can see this being very useful for teaching the genre
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...
Brainwashing, 2026 edition. This paper shows how X's algorithmic feed shifts people's views rightwards. It's a sophisticated, highly effective form of reorientation. And it is utterly chilling.
If you're still on that platform, unhook yourself now.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Excerpt from forthcoming article, reads: '...exhaustion novels underscore the violence and precarity of oil extraction and even anticipate a future post-Peak Oil; but while actual oil production continues largely unimpeded, that future shows little indication of arriving anytime soon. The irony of exhaustion as an aesthetic mode is that more energy—including fossil-derived energy—is being used than ever before. Instead of generating more exuberance, contemporary culture is increasingly defined by exhaustion, and often in ways that lack a critical impulse: in the creative malaise of endlessly repeated remakes, franchises, and cinematic universes; in burnout culture and the fatigue of long Covid; and in the rise of generative AI to replace human creative outputs, collectively resulting in limp, uninspired productions. If Ezra Pound’s demand of modernism was to Make It New, the driving force of contemporary culture might be to Make It Again—Fredric Jameson’s “nostalgia mode” in hyperdrive.'
ooo I have an article forthcoming in MFS about oil fiction & exhaustion aesthetics ...
Invited to write this short piece for The Conversation on the dark, poetic origins of Wuthering Heights. Her Gothic imagination was nothing short of electrifying.
#books #gothicliterature #wutheringheights #bronte #bookstagram
the settlement process is already extremely complex, lengthy, and expensive; these proposals to make it even more difficult to settle in the UK are cruel
please take the time to respond to the consultation, which closes tomorrow
Strongly endorse this call. Please do this today!
Also, be careful when filling it in, as the survey is framed in a heavily biased way, and much of it is poorly designed. But if completed with care, this can really make a contribution to pushing back on the government's hostile agenda.
Registration is now live for my VPFA Study Day on 'Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities'. It's free to attend, thanks to funding from the VPFA and the Health Humanities Hub at Loughborough University. The programme and the link to register here: victorianpopularfiction.org/sensation-fi...
Herd of large, brown woolly mammoths walking out of a forest into a snowy clearing.
So pleased to have an essay in the latest issue of Configurations! It's called, "Stories of Arctic Crisis and Alaskan Mammoths: Neocolonial and Anticolonial Approaches to De-Extinction and Rewilding."
muse.jhu.edu/issue/56326
#mammoth, #Alaska, #neocolonialism, #woodbison, #colossal
If you're not laughing, you're crying...
Seriously, though, grateful to be a part of this fabulous collection!
