It would be nice if, at a moment when academia is under brutal assault from outside forces that are opposed to the very core of its mission, academics weren't so obsessed with self-flagellation.
Thank you! Speaking out—writing to the Pres and the Provost— helps. They claim to have alumni opinion on their side. Make it harder for them to make that claim?
Pls read this editorial by @kirstenweld.bsky.social
about how our Provost's plan for "viewpoint diversity" hires further erodes faculty governance at my university. (And never mind "veritas"!)
8 hires--but humanities hiring generally has been frozen since 3/25.
www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
A wildlife disaster unfolds alongside the human tragedy in the Strait of Hormuz
@greenpeace.org reports Iranian vessel Shahid Bagheri, stuck by a US warplane in early March, is still leaking oil near the Strait, with nearby wetlands at risk:
www.cnn.com/2026/04/17/s...
🧵 1/5
Tonight will be -2C and that is just too cold. Everyone in Toronto is tired. It snowed twice today!
All too . . .
Thank you! I needed that!
Yes, that senior thesis topic continues to await an author
Would that have been worse or better? At least it's kind of theological!
Oh no! world's worst typo in a letter of rec I have *already* submitted.
I meant to refer to the student's plan to write about Adam and Satan in Paradise Lost.
In the event, I wrote about her plan to write about Adam and Stan.(And that sounds like the title of a kind of buddy movie.)
DEEP SHAME!
🤦♀️
Someone else here--sorry! I seem not to be able to retrace my steps--posted about this 1995 film adaptation earlier today and that made me realize how much I have loved it. I almost don't dare watch it again, lest it disappoint me.
Anne Elliot (Amanda Root) and Captain Wentworth (Ciaran Hinds) standing together in the foc'sle (?) of a 19th century sailing ship, looking in different directions. He is in uniform with a telescope in his hand. Her glance toward the horizon--toward the open sea, one imagines--is absolutely elated.
I will be teaching the 2d vol of Austen's Persuasion on Monday & can't stop thinking about how the ending of this adaptation (31 yrs old now) is unfaithful to the novel & yet brilliant for that very reason. 💕
Roger Michell doesn't give us what Austen wrote, not at all, but maybe what she wanted to?
The fact of the matter is that your racist uncle who hates Woke Studies ever since he heard about it on the drive back from the supermarket and the governing board that oversees your research institution are converging, and the results are exactly as monstrous and as stupid as you would have guessed
The verdict was actually “tastes really good.“ (I am lucky.)
Almost done with v 4. I find it almost as emotionally devastating as vol 1. Eager to hear yr thoughts
and this is relevant how?
Copies of the new book in the On the calculation of volume series (Solvej Balle) and Transcription (the new Ben Lerner )
Two weeks from the end of the term but I’m already indulging.
Behold the 2 new novels I bought myself today.
Do I dare begin ? Which one should I begin ?
Franz Kafka, you should be living at this hour.
Hey, #ceramics enthusiasts of Bluesky! Does anyone know if the archives of Thomas Goode, the London china and glass retailer from 1827 to 2024, ended up in a public collection? The V&A perhaps? I'd like to see if I can track down some purchases in the 1920s
I am on Amtrak right now, likewise NOT READY.
Golden forsythia in the sunshine
Here is Cambridge forsythia yesterday:
Jesus this thread is brutal, Canada is decimating federal funding for their libraries and archives including completely cutting libraries in prisons & entirely removing the register of historic places
Thank you!
Oooh, might you be doing another Jean Paul translation? I got curious about this text, which I'd never heard of before, and found through my library catalogue that excerpts appeared all over the place in 19thc America: the Atlantic; the Child's Friend & Family Magazine (Boston), & more. SO COOL!
You sound like my deans defending their so called civil discourse initiative!
The students and I definitely felt menaced.
Large turkey , its tailfeathers outspread, on the lawn outside the Barker Center on the Harvard campus
Lately even the turkeys around here are showing signs of hostility toward the humanities (or at least toward humanities scholars).
Worth adding, on a lighter note, that I love the autocorrect error that has crept into a response paper on _The Human Condition_ that one of the students in my seminar contributed for tomorrow's class.
Instead of "Arendt," ARDENT! (An anagram!)
I have just downloaded Peter's introduction & am absolutely fascinated by it (in fact, I am now lingering over it instead of preparing tomorrow's classes). Sterne gives Peter such a provocative "starting point to examine the everyday workings of Soviet literary institutions." Read this, #18thc pals!
