One of my students brings his service dog to class with him every week. Teaching with Nala sitting beside me has been such a joy. Honestly, all writing workshops should have service dogs.

There was a brand new allegation that the president raped a woman in the 1990s yesterday and it appears to not be on the NYT homepage at all right now

Dave Levitan@davelevitan.bsky.social · 4d ago

It is short and so I assume they are looking into things but it is... interesting... that the NYT piece on the new House Dems report on Trump ties to Epstein simply does not mention the brand new rape allegation and says whatever this is instead www.nytimes.com/2026/10/26/u...

The real AI apocalypse is not about robots messing with the power grid it is AI destroying the minds of kids, who, with educators pushing these tools, are at real risk of loosing the ability to write independently.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 4d ago

"AI can draft an essay for you, especially if you give it a high quality prompt." Really? This is what MIT thinks high schoolers should learn? MIT's "Day of AI" dayofai.org provides materials for K-12 teachers and claims to have reached over 5,000,000 students to date. 1/2

@namwalien.bsky.social's On Morrison is one such gift and offering! I just gave copies to a student AND to a colleague!

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 4d ago

I love that we are getting so many different biographies of Toni Morrison and her body of work ♥️ In a way, each of these biographers is writing an intellectual memoir of how Morrison spoke to them as Black women thinkers

But this isn't about loving the magic of writing for itself. This is about understanding what wresting the capacity to do it for one's self achieves today, and what that achieves is gross inequity.

This thread is all SO TRUE.

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 4d ago

Michael Clanchy told people over 50 years ago not to fetishize writing, but he would not diminish the significance of writing today because he knew well that it now equates to power and to eschew it is to disempower one's self. I mention this bc we are seeing the emergence of an arch stance on GenAI

Finally getting a bit back into drafting for the 2nd book - man, that pregnancy & having a newborn/now a 10-month-old slowed it down for some reason! - by sitting with Micah Bateman's great 2024 Book History article about "distributed blackishness" and 2020 Democratic primary candidates...

Who's taught Sutton Griggs's Imperium in Imperio? I've read it many times but am teaching (400-/500-level course) for the first time and wonder what tips you might have? (I love that my job allows/forces me sometimes to teach outside my direct specialty but always want to do that material justice!)

Protest works. Organization is decisive. Draw your own conclusions. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić ousted by student movement in seismic election

Vučić’s 12-year reign looks to have been ended by record turnout of voters in election provoked by student-led protests

theguardian.com

This whole thread.

Joseph Rezek@rezekjoe.bsky.social · 5d ago

I think this is what depresses me the most about AI. This person could not even think about her own child for five minutes without help

Something I wish more people would realize.

Basically I guess I’m saying bring back the personal pan pizza reading challenge but for kids and adults.

On an existential level I worry that people won't accept that neoliberalism can’t provide that kind of certainty again. Or it can’t manufacture it. It never really *provided* it. That doesn't bode well because the other side is selling certainty in spades.

The systems of state, market, and social control are powerful enough to never be legible to regular people again. If you can’t draw meaningful inferences or parse distinctions you are lost right now.

I seriously look at people sometime and sense their constant, unexamined panic. The world demands ever more literacy, at faster processing speed. If you can’t do that, the world right now must feel like the sixth circle of hell.

I will be eternally grateful to have been born in a literate culture where literacy was valued and expected and I still had the time, attention, and freedom to develop a literacy practice. Understanding context, inference, vocabulary, perspective, affect — all powerful, useful skills and values.

"I want to know that my prof is actually sitting with the essays I write. I want them to engage with it...I want to know they read my email and cared enough to dignify me with a response... These small acts are what breed connection between teacher and student."

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · last wk.

This piece by student journalist Naishu Vempali made me pump my fist in solidarity. I hope when I’m back teaching at UMass next year they take a class with me, where they can expect nothing but top quality human-grade feedback, interaction, and attention. dailycollegian.com/2026/10/chat...

I was sexually abused as a child. I'm not the only person I know who can say that. If I'd been forced to let ANYONE perform that sort of examination in order to play sports, a thing children need for health--both physical and mental? I am not unique. Vote no on unnecessarily traumatizing our kids.

Washington State Democrats@wadems.org · last wk.

Doctors and nurses are voicing their objections. I-638 would require EVERY girl who wants to participate in sports to go through biological sex verification. That means expensive, invasive, and utterly gross examinations. Protect our kids and let them play. Vote NO on I-638

If you can’t be bothered to write and analyze your own research, step aside for folks who actually want to do your damned job.

Chronicle of Higher Education@chronicle.com · 2w ago

Opinion: If AI is now part of academic writing, what should institutions actually evaluate? This essay argues that analytical writing should be judged by evidence, structure, argument, and accountability not by guesses about how each sentence was produced. https://chroni.cl/4eDRdjg

This piece by student journalist Naishu Vempali made me pump my fist in solidarity. I hope when I’m back teaching at UMass next year they take a class with me, where they can expect nothing but top quality human-grade feedback, interaction, and attention. dailycollegian.com/2026/10/chat...

ChatGPT is my new TA, and I’m scared

“It feels as though everyone in charge of our education has already accepted that, at the pace we’re moving, we’re all going to have to use AI at some point in our careers. By tasking us with AI assig...

dailycollegian.com

In case you, like I, missed this new book on the terrible wizard lady and the anti-trans panic from @ohiostatepress.bsky.social and need to order it pronto, like, yesterday ohiostatepress.org/books/titles...

J. K. Rowling and the Anti-Trans Panic

Weaves the author’s lived experience as a trans woman with pop culture and media analysis to dissect J. K. Rowling’s emergence as an anti-trans activist within the context of the UK’s anti-trans moral...

ohiostatepress.org

Read this absolutely beautifully crafted gem of a poem by the always brilliant @bardsbesidebars.bsky.social - heartstopping, gut-wrenching, apt for the moment, striking.

Cortney Lamar Charleston@bardsbesidebars.bsky.social · 2w ago

We're two weeks out from another American election and, potentially, another American catastrophe. This poem, generously published online by @agnimagazine.bsky.social, feels very appropriate for this moment.

It's International Open Access week, so what better time to mention that my book Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary (OSU, 2024) is available open access through JSTOR's Path to Open, if you're interested! ohiostatepress.org/books/titles...

Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary Recognition

Surveys how developments in American literary institutions since 1980 have shaped—and been shaped by—Black women poets, showing how seeming gestures of inclusion can co-opt or constrain the work.

ohiostatepress.org

Sometimes I wonder why I feel SO exhausted all the time and then remember that (on top of the whole working full time and having a baby thing!), I also have not had a single drop of caffeine since the day I found out I was pregnant in early April 2026...

I've been slowly savoring On Morrison by @namwalien.bsky.social, because every chapter is a revelatory joy, showing me fresh elements of novels I have read & reread and am always telling students that I constantly find new facets of - I so appreciate Serpell's guidance in continuing that process!

The idea that something is now a nonnegotiable because it is widely used is absurd. I am 45. Do you have any idea how much and how often the consumer landscape has changed over the course of my life? Demand, rules, infrastructure—all of these things change.

YES. JESUS CHRIST YES. ITS ONLY BEEN AROUND 3 YEARS. WE DON'T NEED IT. www.techspot.com/news/114234-...