watch out for this, everybody! an *incredible* account of the coercion secreted away inside liberalism's fictions of consent —and the novel's capacity to mediate it. masochism! cannibalism! (!!) narrative form! congrats to @emmadavenport.bsky.social & @cornellupress.bsky.social 🎉🔥🎉🔥

Emma Davenport@emmadavenport.bsky.social · 7m ago

"Subject to Contract: Liberalism and the Victorian Novel" is now officially subject to a contract for publication with Cornell University Press! 📖 @cornellupress.bsky.social

Excellent thread here on the (superb!) PMLA cluster, tracking the itineraries of “the Victorian” in the Anglo-American academy esp. under permanent-austerity conditions post-c.2008

Sarah Bull@sarahebull.bsky.social · 21h ago

Sometimes people with shared interests speak different languages. Last week I read the new Theory & Methodologies section on Victorian studies in PMLA with huge interest, especially @emilysteinlight.bsky.social and Josephine McDonagh's pieces on on US and UK scholars' ambitions for the field at +

"Dr. Kibret is a highly valued member of the University of Maryland, Baltimore community. He is an effective and beloved teacher, and a highly regarded colleague.”

H.D. Gregg@hdgregg.bsky.social · yesterday

ICE detains University of Maryland "teacher of the year" at Dallas airport www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/ne...

Everything is great! Profits are piling up!

It was super fun to be interviewed by @ksaacomm.bsky.social for ‘What Are You Reading?’ - I got to talk about being on the panel for the @bars.bsky.social First Book Prize as well as shout outs to @zugenia.bsky.social & @nathankhensley.bsky.social PLUS my undying love for Lee Child’s Reacher books

“What Are You Reading?”: Andrew McInnes — K-SAA

The Communications Fellows are excited to continue the K-SAA Blog’s “What Are You Reading?” series! Started by the 2019 Comms Team, this series aims to spotlight the research of our community members ...

k-saa.org

Applications are now open for Round 3 of our Microgrants! We’re funding innovative research in #19thC periodicals by providing seed grants for archival travel, digital access to subscriptions or repositories, or digital tools to support your research. Apply by 1 September here: buff.ly/7r9cM50

Friends, my book—No Place for Home: Terror and Race in Literature After 9/11—has a cover! I’m so pleased with what Rachel Moeller and the design team at @uminnpress.bsky.social came up with! The book will be out in Spring 2027 and that I’ll post a pre-order link once it’s available! 1/2

"Employers today need workers who can move beyond task-oriented reading ... to something more nuanced and adaptive." An incredible bonus is that this good and true essay is written by a former student and Georgetown English alum, Grace Aldridge Foster (M.A. '17) (!) ✨👏

English Majors Can Teach Us How To Be Indispensable In The Age Of AI

To increase their durability in the job market, professionals can borrow a page from the English major handbook and start honing their close reading skills.

forbes.com

I heard this talk last year and it was such a banger 🙌

Emily Steinlight@emilysteinlight.bsky.social · 5d ago

It’s been a hard week and I nearly missed that this was finally out. I wrote “Victorian Studies and the American State” 5 years ago and have been discussing it with some of you for a decade. Surreal to see, and grateful to be in the good company of @jakeromanow.bsky.social and brilliant respondents

This article is revelatory and urgent; run don't walk.

Emily Steinlight@emilysteinlight.bsky.social · 5d ago

It’s been a hard week and I nearly missed that this was finally out. I wrote “Victorian Studies and the American State” 5 years ago and have been discussing it with some of you for a decade. Surreal to see, and grateful to be in the good company of @jakeromanow.bsky.social and brilliant respondents

It’s been a hard week and I nearly missed that this was finally out. I wrote “Victorian Studies and the American State” 5 years ago and have been discussing it with some of you for a decade. Surreal to see, and grateful to be in the good company of @jakeromanow.bsky.social and brilliant respondents

Victorian Studies and the American State | PMLA | Cambridge Core

Victorian Studies and the American State - Volume 141 Issue 2

cambridge.org

The latest, heartbreaking casualty of austerity & reorganization at my home institution: Phillips Brooks House was set up 126 years ago, in the recognition that community service could & should be central to undergraduate education. Now it's being dismantled. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Nearly Half of Phillips Brooks House Staff Positions Impacted by FAS Restructuring | News | The Harvard Crimson

The Phillips Brooks House was the hardest-hit Harvard College unit by share of staff positions in a recent round of layoffs tied to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ sweeping administrative overhaul, ...

thecrimson.com

👀👀👀👀👀

Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 6d ago

“Harvard paid McKinsey & Company at least $250,000 to consult on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ staff restructuring efforts, according to internal documents obtained by The Crimson.” www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

one of the saddest ironies of higher ed's headlong embrace of AI is that the clearest and most thorough reporting on the subject has been done almost exclusively by student journalists

Sarah Osment@smosment.bsky.social · 6d ago

those who work in University writing programs should pay close attention—developing AI-friendly teaching doesn't make you safe from layoff www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

I guess I am comfortable saying that in cases where people you formerly respected, or presumed you did, are now actively choosing to sunset their own minds & surrender them to machines invented by incels and billionaires, then yes there should be a stigma for that. This is what society is for

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 6d ago

“There is also a moral and political judgment that is coming along with AI usage…Especially in creative industries where the stigma is the strongest.”

What an honor it’s been to be in dialogue with @sorourke25.bsky.social about our (very closely aligned!) projects — I’ve learned so much from her and can’t recommend her book highly enough, it really is so good. Hooray! 🌿

Martin Hewitt@vicmanch.bsky.social · 6d ago

We were treated to a fantastic fly-through of the book from @sorourke25.bsky.social , including a generous name check for @nathankhensley.bsky.social, whose own book was one of the runners up for the prize. I like the RSVP Colby Lecture model, but this was a great send off for #BAVS2026.

“proposed cuts of 28 per cent of staff in the department” of history at Exeter.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 6d ago

And not just Exeter. At least 2 History Leicester FBAs have had to leave the University to stay in the profession due to risk of redundancy, and they won't be the only ones. The much broader issue affects thousands of excellent academics across a spectrum of disciplines (including STEM ones). 1/2

The 2026 @bavs-uk.bsky.social-Rosemary Mitchell Prize for a second monograph goes to @sorourke25.bsky.social! 👏 The monograph started as a book about time so—don't worry—you can change topics midway through a project! Also, if the book you wanna cite doesn't exist, maybe 🫵 should ✍️ it! #BAVS2026

Nathan K. Hensley@nathankhensley.bsky.social · last yr.

in other words, everyone should preorder @sorourke25.bsky.social's forthcoming book immediately! it is so smart & the parts I got to read are absolutely brilliant

I can't wait to read this!!

Nathan K. Hensley@nathankhensley.bsky.social · last wk.

I finally have a physical copy of this astonishing book and cried reading the dedication & acknowledgements: what an immense accomplishment. I really do encourage everyone to find a way to read this— it’s unbelievably, inspiringly smart. Thank you, @nicolerizzuto.bsky.social, for writing it.

I finally have a physical copy of this astonishing book and cried reading the dedication & acknowledgements: what an immense accomplishment. I really do encourage everyone to find a way to read this— it’s unbelievably, inspiringly smart. Thank you, @nicolerizzuto.bsky.social, for writing it.

if you are scheduling visitors for your 2026-27 or 2027-28 school year, I would be thrilled to come design such a situation with your students

Éireann@eireannmor.bsky.social · 12mo ago

My job remains designing situations within which it is both desirable and possible to become more human, more capable of thinking and asking questions, more capable of being alive with others, on earth

"Nature Bats Last"

ryan cooper@ryanlcooper.com · last wk.

about half of centrists and the center-left for some reason concluded that climate change was passe hippie bullshit that doesn't matter, and we're about to learn how wrong that was, the hard way prospect.org/2026/07/28/c...

in all seriousness it is absolutely true that a logic of accumulation developed in the context of mineral extraction (predicated on a model of luck, chance, intuition rewarded—akin to the ideology of a lottery) is entirely antithetical a (bourgeois) model whereby sustained effort yields results

Taylor Noakes@taylornoakes.com · last wk.

Words cannot describe how much I despise this person’s contempt for how hard real scientists work It’s the kind of attitude you can only get from inheriting a fortune from an Apartheid era emerald mine finance.yahoo.com/sectors/heal...

Six new books I’m excited about: 1) Tejasvi Nagaraja - Troop Movements - a new labor history of the WWII era 2) Annie McLanahan - Beneath the Wage - teaching this Marxist account of gig work next week. 3) Stuart Schrader - Blue Power: Stuart’s history of the rise of the political power of police

this is gorgeous and haunting

Jason Heppler@jasonheppler.org · last wk.

New little side project: Westward, an endless scroll of 1,000+ public-domain photographs of the American West from the Library of Congress, the Portal to Texas History, and SMU’s DeGolyer Library.

"[T]here is no honour for the humanities in regaining their standing through the attention of AI companies, if they engage only on the technology industry’s terms."

Quinn Slobodian@quinnslobodian.com · last wk.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

“Zieger’s genealogy of logistical nightmare is a way of making the underpinning colonial violence of logistics legible.”

You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Supply Chains! - Public Books

“Logistics,” warns Susan Zieger, “reveals how the illicit economy is the legitimate economy: the nature of free trade prevents the two from ever being separated.”

publicbooks.org

Why are they destroying the books?

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain

AI companies are quietly obtaining rare books, ingesting their contents, and then destroying them -- even if they're exceedingly rare.

futurism.com

proofs! 💖💖💖 @devingarofalo.bsky.social

Devin Garofalo@devingarofalo.bsky.social · 4mo ago

THE BARBARA JOHNSON COLLECTIVE has a cover, a website, and is available for preorder! (Use code NUP2026 for a discount.) See the full contents at the link below — lucky to be part of this extraordinary project and excited to see it in print this fall! ✨🔥 nupress.northwestern.edu/979889948066...

Some of the funniest people are the "failure" chorus. I subscribe to Fanon’s notion of constructive failure, where what doesn’t initially *work* transforms conditions for something new to emerge.

Zack 🦈@laptopsteel.bsky.social · 2w ago

My high school U.S. history teacher told my class Occupy failed because the protesters were mean to the cops lol