Grateful to have edited this special issue with Alyssa Quintanilla for "Afterimage." A free access link for the full issue is available in the comments.

University of California Press@ucpress.bsky.social · 6d ago

The guest editors of a new special issue of "Afterimage" discuss how artists expose, challenge, and reimagine the political and material realities of the U.S.–Mexico border. www.ucpress.edu/blog-posts/a...

“Wilson’s Whale Oil stylizes the stages of multiple, overlapping crises, it is a moment to reflect on blockages and breakages that might seem impossible to imagine.” Read our newest review, by @bkwilliams21.bsky.social, of Devin Wilson’s *Whale Oil*—out now! Link: asapjournal.com/review/infra...

Infrastructures at a Crisis Point in Devin Wilson’s Whale Oil - ASAP/Review

Oil circulates crisis. Paying forty bucks at the gas pump bankrolls war crimes; occupations abroad top off gas tanks at home. Speculation made in crude oil stocks monetizes occupation, and plunder finances endless consumption. Infrastructure’s deadly…

asapjournal.com

In "Threadbare Politics: Feminist T-Shirts as Queer Media," Catherine A. Evans argues that T-shirts are, indeed, media, centering activist Kipp Dawson’s collection of over 250 political shirts. @caevans.bsky.social Read for free now! doi.org/10.1525/fmh....

Please share my post, share my outrage and sign, and share this petition: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

Open Letter Concerning the Tenure Denial of Dr. Iván Chaar López

The denial of tenure to Dr. Chaar López has become a national concern because it raises questions that extend far beyond one faculty member or one institution. Scholars across disciplines depend upon ...

actionnetwork.org

Sarah T Roberts, PhD@ubiquity75.xyz · 2w ago

UT President interfering with faculty tenure. Just the latest egregious example of administrator overreach and political capitulation. Non-paywall follows.

🚨Lauren Gutterman, former chair of the American Studies department and AAUP UT Austin Chapter VP: “Iván’s case is a warning for all faculty across the university, because it suggests that achieving excellence in your field is no longer enough to secure tenure and promotion.” ⬇️

UT border surveillance scholar was a shoo-in for tenure. UT denied him.

American Studies scholar Iván Chaar López fears UT’s unexplained tenure denial violated his academic freedom amid scrutiny of controversial fields.

statesman.com

I co-edited a special issue of Afterimage with @ucpress.bsky.social titled "Processing Forms: Political Aesthetics and the Materiality of the US-Mexico Border” with Alyssa Quintanilla. Read the introduction for free here: online.ucpress.edu/afterimage/a...

A widespread rebranding of DH scholars to AI 'experts' is particularly bleak. The DH to techo-extractivist pipeline is real.

Josh Shepperd@joshshepperd.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I feel like digital humanities was this great 15 year moment of techno-optimism that created solid resources and showed how old media connected to new media. Whereas AI is going to introduce a period of techno-cannibalism designed to devour digital humanities labor and anyone else in its proximity.

I sat down with Iván Chaar López, one of the most intellectually generous academics I know, to discuss his 2024 book, The Cybernetic Border (Duke UP) for the latest episode of @reverb-podcast.bsky.social You can listen here: www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...

E109: The Cybernetic Border (w/ Dr. Iván Chaar López) — re:verb

Episode 109: The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion (w/ Dr. Iván Chaar López) On today’s show, Ben sits down with Dr. Iván Chaar López, Assistant Professor with the Department of A...

reverbcast.com

I have a new piece out Reflecting on 20 years of migrant struggles, it goes into what abolish ICE does - and doesn't - mean; merging of immigration enforcement with policing & military power; and how fascism is made through bordering. Despite resisting it for so long, I also now define the border.

How Not to Abolish ICE

What have we learned from the past two decades of struggle?

bostonreview.net

My piece "Custodial Media: Carceral Handbooks as Infrastructures of Incarceration" is out (open source) now with @jcmsjournal.bsky.social. Read it here: quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/i...

"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

My piece "Custodial Media: Carceral Handbooks as Infrastructures of Incarceration" is out (open source) now with @jcmsjournal.bsky.social. Read it here: quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/i...

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports

Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

motherjones.com

Neighbors who live below the massive warehouses in Soccoro, Texas that DHS wants to convert into ICE detention facilities are concerned. Their quiet neighborhood in unincorporated El Paso County will now become the center of the Trump's inhumane immigration policy. My story:

'Everyone is pretty upset about it': Socorro speaks out against ICE center

Residents who live below three warehouses in Socorro, Texas purchased by DHS for an ICE immigration detention center raise concerns.

elpasotimes.com

After detaining children and parents for weeks, or months, inside Dilley detention center, ICE is dumping them at a shelter in Laredo, TX. They are often thousands of miles away from where they were arrested, with no money to get back home. THREAD (1/) www.themarshallproject.org/2026/03/02/i...

After Detention, Families Stranded in Border Town Face Harrowing Journey Home

Parents and children from a detention center in Texas found themselves dropped at a border town shelter with few means to leave.

themarshallproject.org

The utterance of "A.I.'s inevitability" is one of the most stark pure performatives I've seen in my time working in higher ed. Every time it is uttered, it is clearly not reporting a fact about the world but instead actively trying to create the reality it narrates. We can and must refuse.

As some of you may know, I’m writing a book on the history of high school English in the United States, and I’m excited to share a new article from that project—“High School English and the Making of American Readers”—out today in American Literary History! 🧵 academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

High School English and the Making of American Readers

Abstract. The high school English classroom is the most influential literary institution in the United States, and the most overlooked by literary scholars

academic.oup.com

Last summer, a sheriff put it plainly: the federal government “depends on sheriffs and county jails to have bed space,” and his ICE contract helps “pay the bills.” Marie Gottschalk on books by @briannanofil.bsky.social @jesspish.bsky.social @michellesphelps.bsky.social @equalityalec.bsky.social:

The Making of the Deportation Machine

The pillars aren’t new. They were built over decades, with bipartisan consensus.

bostonreview.net

Recent LCS PhD alum here who landed a tenure-track job at an R2. Warren's statement exemplifies the classism I experienced regularly at CMU. But guess what? Jokes on them. I am proud to be teaching at Marshall University and I hope to never be this miserable or condescending.

Lisa Diedrich@lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"Warren stated that job outcomes were a 'key factor' in the decision-making process—within the previous decade, only a 'tiny percentage' of PhD students who graduated from the LCS program went on to receive tenure track at an R1 institution." An absurd metric & sign of the conservatism of higher ed.

Abolition now.

Inquest@inquest.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"An emphasis on professionalization portrays high-profile incidents of police violence not as moral failures but as proceduralist failures. The problem is located not in the violence itself but in the procedures that were (or weren’t) followed surrounding the violence."

“Abolish ICE” isn’t radical, it doesn’t go far enough. Latest in @theguardian.com written with my friend @victorerikray.bsky.social. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity | Heba Gowayed and Victor Ray

It’s far from radical to reject a system predicated on violence – despite what thinktanks might claim

theguardian.com

"Strangest of all is the liberal pipe dream that local police will stand up against ICE and CBP, when police have collaborated with ICE and been deployed to protect agents from protesters, even in so-called sanctuary cities." An interview with Robin D.G. Kelley www.bostonreview.net/articles/ren...

Renee Good's Murder and Other Acts of Terror

An interview with Robin D. G. Kelley on how to think about ICE—and the broader history of police violence.

bostonreview.net

New: We built an interactive map of every ICE contractor working with the Trump administration. readsludge.com/2026/01/16/t...

The Companies Behind ICE

Sludge built an interactive map of every ICE contractor working with the Trump administration.

readsludge.com

www.thenation.com/article/acti... Hit them where it hurts them - boycotts can work

Want to Stop ICE? Go After Its Corporate Collaborators.

ICE can’t function without help from the private sector. So we should force the private sector to stop helping.

thenation.com

Abolish ICE is the conservative position abolishing DHS is moderate solution open borders is the liberal solution Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

“The longer Americans indulge this preference for the language of the law over morality, the weaker their moral voice becomes. They lose the ability to say, forthrightly, that what the Trump administration has done is cold-blooded murder for which they and their partisans should be ashamed.”

The Moral Stupefaction of the American Public

Trump’s actions are illegal, yes. Worse than that, they are wrong—precisely what the legality debate is meant to obscure.

bostonreview.net

ICE Drives Unmarked Cars. This Public Database to Tracks Their License Plates. by @noahhurowitz.bsky.social theintercept.com/2026/01/02/i...

ICE Drives Unmarked Cars. This Public Database to Tracks Their License Plates.

ICE is terrorizing communities in unmarked cars. These Pacific Northwest activists built a public database that tracks their license plates.

theintercept.com

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books

We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.

publicbooks.org

Humanities programs shouldn't be pawns to gamble away with "big bets." This programmatic shift is contributing to the evisceration of critical fields. Read the non-PR account in the Chronicle here by @seeshespeak.bsky.social & @caevans.bsky.social share.google/ohGmlDXpsxM2...

Opinion | A Coup at Carnegie Mellon?

The university is replacing the humanities with more computers.

share.google

Carnegie Mellon University Department of English@cmuenglish.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Making a big bet on “computational humanities,” CMU will introduce new academic programs and resources for students and researchers to blend traditional humanistic inquiry — literary interpretation, historical research and cultural critique — with computational methods. www.cmu.edu/news/stories...