Bradley J. Fest
@bradleyfest.bsky.social
associate professor of English at Hartwick College | criticism: C20-21 lit. & culture | poetry: The Rocking Chair (2015), The Shape of Things (2017), & 2013–2017: Sonnets (2024) | https://bradleyjfest.com
Spent all day refining a press release for our upcoming symposium on Creative Writing in the Age of AI and then . . . he just tweeted it out.
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Finally reading the “who needs writing in higher education anyway?” piece, and it is truly one of the most blinkered perspectives on the scale and processes of modern learning I have ever encountered or imagined possible.
here's fall www.annakornbluh.com/portfolio/li...
Literary Knowledge
UIC English PhD Proseminar: Literary Knowledge Professor Kornbluh Fall 2026 This course introduces English PhD students to conversations about literary knowledge and critical knowledge. How does...
annakornbluh.com
In all seriousness I wish every professor on here would post their reading lists each semester
Why has no one been talking about how criminal it is that Twin Peaks: The Return--which clealry should be no. 1--was . . . no. 57!!!?
Once again shocking dinner guests by saying I never use AI
Right, okay everybody, I’ve had a lot of meetings and talks this week and I have to share some top line thoughts. Things are quite a bit worse than i am usually willing to share with people because panic does no good. It’s kinda bad. The baddies have the wind at their back. No denying that.
Don’t believe people who tell you ai can be liberatory or any other misappropriation of movement talk or justice frameworks. Find some people who are preparing to rebuild and cast your lot with them. Then read a bit more. Just keep your wits about you because they are trying to run game.
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
I'll re-up this recent poem too. I really like it. dazedsanta.com/2025.1314
2025.13–14
Bradley J. Fest is associate professor of English and coordinator of creative writing at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. He is the author of three volumes of poetry, The Rocking Chair (Blue Sketch,.....
dazedsanta.com
Re-upping "Teaching Without Computers" from last week for the weekend. (Also: Thanks for all the good feedback I've gotten from so many this past week!) www.boundary2.org/2026/09/brad...
Bradley J. Fest–Teaching Without Computers
Teaching Without Computers Bradley J. Fest In a moment, I am going to talk about despair. But let me be clear: What I have to say in the following is not about frustration, burnout, or stress; it is...
boundary2.org
“For the tech bros to remain dominant, their story has to change. So, Silicon Valley’s best storytellers no longer want our capitulation to their technology’s inevitability. They want us to panic, instead of seriously deliberating at the polls, in community meetings and in Congress.”
Opinion | A.I. Is a Threat, but Not in the Way You Think
The threats from A.I. are real — and they’re ones we know how to deal with.
nytimes.com
Amen
I gave a talk to my Hartwick College colleagues today, "Teaching Without Computers," about my move, like so many of us, to an all-paper pedagogy in the spring 2026. The talk was simultaneously published at the b2o review. www.boundary2.org/2026/09/brad...
Columbia University bans all electronic devices in required courses in its Core Curriculum. This is the way! I’m rarely proud to be a Columbia graduate, but this is great:
Columbia prohibits electronic devices in all Literature Humanities, Contemporary Civilization sections
Columbia has prohibited the use of electronic devices in all Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization sections starting this fall, 12 syllabi for the courses reviewed by Spectator show and ...
columbiaspectator.com
SOCRATES: Picture the following in your mind. Imagine human beings living in an underground cave-like residence. Shadows are cast on the wall by a fire Glaucon: so the shadows are like people! Have we discovered a new intelligence?!? SOCRATES: Glaucon: I, for one, welcome our new Shadow Lords!
my kiddo just started college, and one of their classes ai-policy ended with this lovely sentence: genAI simply reproduces the knowledge that has already failed us.
I gave a talk to my Hartwick College colleagues today, "Teaching Without Computers," about my move, like so many of us, to an all-paper pedagogy in the spring 2026. The talk was simultaneously published at the b2o review. www.boundary2.org/2026/09/brad...
Bradley J. Fest–Teaching Without Computers
Teaching Without Computers Bradley J. Fest In a moment, I am going to talk about despair. But let me be clear: What I have to say in the following is not about frustration, burnout, or stress; it is...
boundary2.org
"What it means to be human, to be poetic, to be a meaningmaking animal: we can imagine our world differently+so can change it. GenAI cannot imagine or originate anything, cannot depart from what it was given, + so cannot change" ever wise @bradleyfest.bsky.social www.boundary2.org/2026/09/brad...
Bradley J. Fest–Teaching Without Computers
Teaching Without Computers Bradley J. Fest In a moment, I am going to talk about despair. But let me be clear: What I have to say in the following is not about frustration, burnout, or stress; it is...
boundary2.org
Get the laptops out of the classroom!! No internet!!! Print readings for the students! Use real books, pens, & paper! We are doing a “low-tech” classroom this semester, and just a week in, I can tell it has made all the difference
I've been doing this for a couple years, so maybe this is the cumulative effect of tech-free policies at secondary schools & across a growing number of disciplines, but my students this term are so attentive it is actually freaking. me. out. a. little.
Get the laptops out of the classroom!! No internet!!! Print readings for the students! Use real books, pens, & paper! We are doing a “low-tech” classroom this semester, and just a week in, I can tell it has made all the difference
"To help humans adjust to the NEW REALITY that is about to be ushered in by the UNQUESTIONING AND UNIVERSAL ADOPTION OF THE SHIT MACHINE, we will also be creating an APP that will allow you to POINT YOUR PHONE at the SHIT from the SHIT MACHINE" www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/we-...
We Must Create the Shit Machine
“For as long as humans have created SHIT with our BODIES AND BUTTS, we have been asking this FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION: What if there were a COMPUTER that could A...
mcsweeneys.net
The Nerd Reich wants to control the universe, but they can't control book readers. My book is #6 on Amazon's bestseller list—a month after publication! Please buy at your LOCAL bookstore or via Bookshop! Use this link to support my work: bookshop.org/a/109206/978...
We’re reconstructing the prison-house of language, but this time we’re leaving humanity on the outside of it.
Talking to new k-12 English teachers in training and it is striking how frustrated they are at how little book reading happens in or for class.
The professors and instructors who turn classrooms back into spaces for reading and discussion, are going to leave the biggest legacies in this world. Everyone one else will disappear into LLM wallpaper proxies and derivatives. 
This book is a romp through our contemporary that blends shoe-leather reporting from “hot zones” with self-consciously non-conspiratorial theorization of the novel political alignments producing fascism now. Fortunately, it also reveals how brittle & already fractious those fascist coalitions are.
Today is the day! A journey that Astra and I started as an essay in The Guardian is now officially out in the world. End Times Fascism – And the Fight for the Living World is in bookstores now. If you are inclined, please buy one from an indie bookseller or borrow it from your local library.
Finishing a first book in literary studies? Don't miss the Helen Tartar First Book Subvention Award. Applications due Nov 15. (You can submit with or without a contract, though in either event there is a brief publisher's application to join your author submission). www.acla.org/prize-awards...
Helen Tartar First Book Subvention Award | American Comparative Literature Association
acla.org