"An impressive achievement and a masterly act of literary devotion." -- Samuel Otter
Use the coupon code CUP and save 20% on THE MELVILLE EFFECT: A LITERARY AFTERLIFE ACROSS THE ARTS, by Joseph Boone. bit.ly/4tvxYNS @columbiaup.bsky.social
A pleasant surprise in today's mail!!! 🎊 Grateful to the Consulta Universitaria del Cinema for sending it all the way from Italy! ❤️ @columbiaup.bsky.social
"[A] highly perceptive ... analysis of the unexpected ways in which creators in our multimedia age continue to draw inspiration from Melville." -- Robert K. Wallace
Now available: THE MELVILLE EFFECT, by Joseph Boone bit.ly/4tvxYNS @columbiaup.bsky.social
Graphic featuring the book cover of The Classroom and the Crowd by Al Filreis, surrounded by a collage of faces, with text reading “AI Filreis on The Classroom and the Crowd” and a vertical “Author Post” label.
Why are nearly 100,000 people choosing to spend their time reading and discussing difficult poetry online? Al Filreis explores what draws people to ModPo and the power and promise of digital community. buff.ly/s0yIWVJ @afilreis.bsky.social #DigitalCommunity #ExperimentalPoetry #Poetry
In a chapter so expertly woven together that you cannot help but envy the mind capable of doing the weaving, Alexander Manshel shares an anecdote about teaching the novels of Colson Whitehead. Having shown convincingly how Whitehead’s novels are shaped by the “structures, institutions, and forms of labor” surrounding their writing, Manshel tells us that “the most common typo in my students’ essays on Whitehead, the misspelling of the title of his first novel, is also a brilliantly apt description of him as an author: The Institutionalist” (142). A cursory read of Manshel’s influential monograph, Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon, might lead readers down the same false path. Manshel’s attention to book clubs, literary prizes, university English departments and their syllabi, MFA programs, and grant-giving agencies makes it easy to label him an institutionalist, a scholar who makes sense of how we read by training a sociological eye on the organizations that determine what we read. But this would be, like the typo made by Manshel’s students, an apt mistake. Because while it is true that Writing Backwards considers the work of Julia Alvarez, Michael Chabon, Yaa Gyasi, Ben Lerner, Toni Morrison, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tommy Orange, Julie Otsuka, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Whitehead against the backdrop of the literary and academic institutions that have elevated them, the book is at its most powerful when Manshel uses the fine instrument of close reading rather than the broader brush of institutional analysis. This is not to say that the two modes are opposed; in fact, Writing Backwards is a rare work that brings sociological methods into harmony with formalist and historicist approaches, not just by alternating between them but by drawing real conceptual and interpretive energy from the exchange of text and context.
Hard to put into words how I feel about this review of my book in the latest issue of NOVEL from the brilliant @sarahlwasserman.bsky.social.
To have my work read this closely, and (I feel) seen this clearly, is an honor that I will not soon forget!
drive.google.com/file/d/1oNLF...
If only every month were national poetry month? While we work on that, check out this list of CUP books by @kristingrogan.bsky.social and @xenoglossic.bsky.social and @johannawinant.bsky.social and @afilreis.bsky.social and
yours truly. 🤩
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/afterlives-of-the-plantation/9780231215756/
We are pleased to announce that Jarvis McInnis's AFTERLIVES OF THE PLANTATION is Winner of the 2026 Pauli Murray Book Prize, African American Intellectual History Society. buff.ly/y0C0jh7
The Erotic Cinema of Radley Metzger - New Restorations
Showing at Metrograph, New York
April 18 to April 25, 2026
Introduced in-person by Ashley West (The Rialto Report) and Rob King (author of ‘Man of Taste - The Erotic Cinema of Radley Metzger’)
Tickets on sale now!
Devastating: Hampshire College is permanently closing following the Fall 2026 Semester. A beautiful institution & community that has done so much for so many. My child is a current Hampshire senior. Hampshire's approach to education is so unique, humane, & exciting—I've seen it first hand. Tragic
"By engaging with what might in the past have been dismissed as trash or filth, we might learn something new about both the art of film and our own desirous selves."
A review of MAN OF TASTE by Rob King, in the @thetls.bsky.social tinyurl.com/2cpeehhj @columbiaup.bsky.social
"This highly original and essential book challenges the conventional wisdom that restoring public trust should be journalism’s top priority." -- Rodney Benson
Now available! DOES TRUST MATTER? Use the coupon code CUP20 and save 20%. tinyurl.com/4wtfdmfh @columbiaup.bsky.social
Beginning this Saturday (4/18), Rob King, author of MAN OF TASTE: THE EROTIC CINEMA OF RADLEY METZGER, will be introducing new restorations of the films of the porn auteur at Metrograph! tinyurl.com/hvp37x4k @columbiaup.bsky.social
With the series "The Lubitsch Touch" now underway at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social (tinyurl.com/t89bmspd), it's the perfect time to pick up a copy of Joseph McBride's now-classic, HOW DID LUBITSCH DO IT?. tinyurl.com/9hxdra2b @columbiaup.bsky.social
From Charlie Tyson, on a slew of recent novels that try to offer a portrait of the influencer at work—most of which can’t resist mimicking the vapid form they seek to analyze. thebaffler.com/latest/they-...
In this Q&A, Kristin Grogan discusses STITCH, UNSTITCH and how modernist poetry reimagines labor, art, and life beyond work.
The Blackbuster synthesized and distilled the complexities and multitudes of Black life into digestible narratives that could be celebrated as authentic. Rather than locate Black characters within the various systems of relations that could illuminate the layers of their experiences, the Blackbuster largely ignored material circumstances altogether.
In Issue No. 10, Ian F. Blair examines Black films from the 1990s and 2000s — from "Boomerang" to "Love & Basketball" — that represented a golden age of Black upward-mobility cinema and projected fantasies of racial representation. hammerandhope.org/article/boom...
Watch an interview w/ A.J. Bauer as he discusses: his new book THE MAKING OF THE LIBERAL MEDIA: HOW CONSERVATIVES BUILT A MOVEMENT AGAINST THE PRESS w/ Perry Bacon Jr. tinyurl.com/mwvcjf27 @ajbauer.bsky.social @perrybaconjr.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social
"The right-wing media is so large it's creating characters and soap operas that legacy media covers as news. I don't think that there's any real way out of that, outside of building a broad and big left media ecosystem to balance that out," says @ajbauer.bsky.social. newrepublic.com/article/2086...
"The anti-woke backlash is a Red Scare, basically. It's the same logic. The goal is to, again, pull leftists and liberals apart, to create a wedge" between them," says @ajbauer.bsky.social. newrepublic.com/article/2086...
In his new book, historian @ajbauer.bsky.social
analyses the role that animosity towards established media outlets has played on the US Right and how the idea of a “liberal media bias” has historically featured in their ideological consolidation. Listen to us @straightwhitejc.bsky.social
Annika Brockschmidt talks w/ AJ Bauer to dismantle the long-standing about the "liberal media" and his new book, MAKING THE LIBERAL MEDIA: HOW CONSERVATIVES BUILT A MOVEMENT AGAINST THE PRESS. tinyurl.com/ycxtjatn @ajbauer.bsky.social @ardenthistorian.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social
Listen to an excellent interview with Ainehi Edoro as she discusses her new book FOREST IMAGINARIES: HOW AFRICAN NOVELS THINK w/ @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social. bit.ly/4td8q8O @brittlepaper.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social
Nnedi (right) and Ainehi (left)
Then in the evening, I headed to the Madison Central Public Library where I was in conversation with the brilliant Ainehi Edoro, scholar and author of Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think
“Faculty members & students continue to speak up & organize to oppose the radical reconfiguration of American institutions launched by the Trump administration & its private-sector allies. Frequently, this has included organizing outside the gates.”
— Reinhold Martin & Robert Newton, Columbia AAUP
On 4/14 at 5:30 (ET), join Anita Varma as she discusses SOLIDARITY IN JOURNALISM: HOW ETHICAL REPORTING FIGHTS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE in a virtual discussion w/ Lewis Raven Wallace. bit.ly/3OrWgJX @anitawrites.bsky.social @interruptcrim.bsky.social @lewispants.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social
"We are, [Joseph] Boone shows, in the midst of a new Melville revival, and THE MELVILLE EFFECT is an essential guide to its myriad cultural expressions." --Jennifer Greiman
Now available! Use the coupon code CUP20 and save 20%. bit.ly/4tvxYNS @columbiaup.bsky.social
An excellent review of Edward Mendelson's THE INNER LIFE OF MRS. DALLOWAY and Namwali Serpell's ON MORRISON by Tomas Unger. bit.ly/4ssdmWb @columbiaup.bsky.social
Tucked into this article about Jennifer Crewe retiring from @columbiaup.bsky.social is this jaw-droppingly sensational news. This is huge and wonderful ! magazine.columbia.edu/article/jenn...
"Technical and buoyant in equal measure, LYRIC LOGIC ... is a pleasure to think with."-- Oren Izenberg
Now available: LYRIC LOGIC: HOW MODERN AMERICAN POETRY REASONS, by Johanna Winant. Use the coupon code CUP20 and save 20%! bit.ly/4duLXyW @johannawinant.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social
