What a bunch of utter shits. This is awful news. I’m so sorry. It will be a terrible loss to students and the research community too. Solidarity!

An amazing #TwinPeaks Day to all my fellow freaks.

3 dreidels, made of wood and plastic

Has anyone ever *actually seen* a dreidel made of clay?

1. In the wake on Mamdani’s win, we’ll see a lot more far right anti-urban sentiment. Here’s a thread on its roots and evolution.

The idea that the city is evil and corrupt, and the countryside innocent and pure, goes back a long way: to Theocritus in Alexandria, and to the Old Testament. 🧵

The Day of the Triffids: Wyndham vs Sci-Fi Spectacle Podcast Episode · Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever* · 26/10/2025 · 59m

“When a day you happen to know is a Wednesday starts off sounding like a Sunday…”
I had lots of fun on @everyscififilm.bsky.social talking about the 1963 film of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

This looks amazing

Cover image of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) Diary, December 21-30, 1972. A purple and green poster-style image featuring text and a leafy plant design.

New online: The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) collection is now available on LSE Digital Library! We’ve digitised and published the GLF Diaries and the GLF newspaper Come Together. Further series from the archives will be added as digitisation continues.
1/2
digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/...

Israeli Settler Colonial Genocide The article examines the combined violence of settler colonialism in Israel and the US in two parts. The first part discusses the Jewish supremacism at the heart of Israeli settler colonialism, foc...

Our series of essays and commentary relating to the ongoing genocide in Gaza is free to read, share and download until the end of September 2025. #OpenAccess @jich.bsky.social

[1/4]

● Raz Segal, "Settler Colonial Genocide" (doi.org/10.1080/0308...)

In “The Nature of Fascism”, Roger Griffin argues that generic to all fascisms is a paligenetic myth of national renewal or rebirth. Starmer’s plan for “patriotic national renewal” is another dangerous signal of how close to fascism he is prepared to tread, effectively preparing a path for them

Image of 'The Empress' tarot card by Pamela Coleman Smith, depicting a figure with long hair, crown, and sceptre. Text: Weird Modernisms, BAMS/MSA 26, 1-4 July 2026, Loughborough University, UK.

We're delighted to share that the CFP for the joint @modernistudies.bsky.social and @moderniststudies.bsky.social 2026 conference, Weird Modernisms, is now live!

1-4 July, Loughborough University @lborouniversity.bsky.social

More info here: moderniststudies.org/conference/MSA2026/CFP/

I’m travelling from Assen to Utrecht tomorrow (1hr 34minutes) for €21 for a ticket on any train between 9-12pm. 1.5hours from Newcastle will get you to Leeds on a good day, but it’s £74 at 10am tomorrow on the cheapest train. Is the Dutch network highly subsidised or is the UK network just very bad?

Looking forward to listening to this one!

Oh wow, congratulations!

A fitting tribute to a lovely man and a wonderful scholar.

"So I Am Confusion" YouTube video by Shane “Xicon” Brown

This site encourages mass follows to try to amass follow backs, especially by American Democrat boomers. It gets annoying.
Case in point: I just got followed by a gubernatorial candidate for Arkansas.

Me, whenever I see the word Arkansas: youtube.com/shorts/U7X7c...

It’s good he’s acknowledging these events are a genocide but I feel compelled to point out the inherent supremacy of a piece which does not cite any Palestinian scholars or journalists. This is a version of what Miranda Fricker calls “testimonial injustice” and Kristie Dotson “epistemic oppression.”

This is an important piece from a senior Holocaust scholar (who grew up in Israel and is an IDF veteran), and it’s important that it’s published in the NYT.

journal cover

New issue of Apocalyptica Vol. 3, No. 1 (2024) heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/apo... #openaccess @uniheidelberg.bsky.social @prisjo.bsky.social @sztockmann.bsky.social

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Publication day for my article “Desert Settings and How to See the Apocalypse”! heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/apo...
Come for the George Miller putdowns, stay for the analysis of deserts as visual fields.
#academicsky

And now the British Medical Association suspends links with the Israeli Medical Association, seeking to remove the IMA from the World Medical Association:

www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opi...

I'm humbled and delighted by this most thoughtful and generous review of my book on Janelle Monáe's queer Afrofuturism 🙏🏻💜

Sent! Hope you like it. 🙂

Utopian Studies 36.1 out now, with articles by Jack Halberstam, @sean-seeger.bsky.social & @alothian.bsky.social which I'm excited to read. Oh, plus my review of @danhf.bsky.social Janelle Monáe's Queer Afrofuturism: Defying Every Label scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/utopian... #academicsky

Notice on a journals bookshelf reading “due to theft/vandalism Literary Review will now be kept permanently behind the desk. Please ask a member of staff if you would like to read it”

Nothing speaks more to passive aggressive hostilities in literary studies than this sign in the Lit&Phil library. There’s a whole campus novel waiting to be written (and critically panned) about how this sign came into being.

I've just realised that by putting the video for Janelle Monáe's PYNK on the same week of an environmental humanities module as the C19th sonnet Ozymandias I can legitimately use the pun "if you try to grab this Percy, this Percy'll Bysshe you back", so now I'm packing up and finishing for the day.

He was also a great editor, and had an eye for detail: one of my thesis corrections from him was to check every footnote ended in a full stop since he found the 2 that didn’t 🙃. I looked up to him personally and professionally.

My internal examiner, Prof Simon James has passed away. He was a wonderful, kind, lovely person who was very generous with his time for me ever since my viva. His work was a pleasure to read and he’ll be sadly missed.

Cover image for MFS 71.1. Features two black and white abstract human figures against a vibrant yellow, read, and blue background.

Modern Fiction Studies has joined BlueSky! We'll be posting CFPs and announcing new issues.

Our Spring 2025 issue is now available and open-access on Project Muse! Look for us there, or check out our newsletter here: vr2.verticalresponse.com/emails/48378...

A coastal shelf of tamagotchis