I'm planning on having students do more in-class writing in both my freshman and upper-level classes. If you are too, let's share prompts? Here are some of mine that I'm tinkering with:

it's a monday afternoon at the end of july, of course we're writing syllabi against-a-i.com is here for you! and if you're a humanities teacher who's developed materials you'd like to contribute as we glow up for fall, PLEASE SEND! against-a-i.com

One thing AI can't do: experience the world through my sensorium sinykin.substack.com/p/to-make-th...

To Make the Stone Stony

I want to see again

sinykin.substack.com

'Academics fear they are being “set up to fail” after several institutions finished the academic year by announcing fresh job cuts, casting doubt over who will return after the summer break, and what courses they will be teaching.' 1/3

Summer of ‘chaos’ predicted as mass job cuts close academic year

‘Impossible to plan’ for research and teaching, say staff, as threat of redundancy looms large over summer breaks

timeshighereducation.com

As is my wont, whenever Shabana Mahmood does something downright vile, I give £50 to The Hope Projects which houses destitute migrants. Donate link at the very bottom of the page. hope-projects.org.uk/about-hope/

About Hope - The Hope Projects

Why does Hope exist? Imagine fleeing persecution and having to seek protection in another land. You’d hope for welcome, sympathy and for your rights to be respected. Sadly the British asylum system i...

hope-projects.org.uk

DDOwen @llyfrgellbabel.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The theory that the Home Office is inhabited by a Principality of Hell gains further supporting evidence. This shames the Labour party. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

dedication reads: "For Fred" The Future of Totality: Fredric Jameson and the Prospects of Critical Theory now out from @dukepress.bsky.social co-editors Tally Brown Cevasco Durao contributors like Kim Stanley Robinson + Sianne Ngai! intro pdf +code E26TRE 30% www.dukeupress.edu/the-future-o...

In case you didn’t know, Exeter uni, where I work, has announced a plan to make 25% of staff in my English department redundant. Left-over staff will do double the teaching while their research time will be shrunk to 1%. Meanwhile admissions for English at Exeter are HIGH, and on the rise this year

"A brilliant diagnostic of the hypocrisies, ambivalences, and evasions of literary culture." -- Christopher Kempf Coming this fall: CROWD CONTROL, by Claire Grossman, Juliana Spahr, and Stephanie Young. tinyurl.com/36pd5bxh @columbiaup.bsky.social

"Cardiff University has admitted that it doesn’t know how much it is spending overall on external consultants or hold a central record of what work they are doing." Staff expenditure: Count every last penny or you may lose your job. Their expenditure: Meh.

Cardiff University criticised over consultant secrecy

Martin Shipton Cardiff University has admitted that it doesn’t know how much it is spending overall on external consultants or hold a central record of what work they are doing. Academic sources have ...

nation.cymru

I hope Saidya Hartman comes to this person's house and beats their ass herself

Peter Whitewood@pwhitewood.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Rebranding a hallucination as a ‘critical confabulation’ that can fill archival gaps is a big no from me.

“…in my writing, I want to display a self that disintegrates. I can prop that up with theory, but something must compel me in the first place. I suppose that’s when the world can enter. Goodbye, defenses.”

The Paris Review@parisreview.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“I didn’t know I was queer, but I also did know, and I started to realize that I needed to find a bohemian milieu of some kind. There was a promise of safety in the beauty of writing and art.” —Robert Glück

‘The REF has now morphed into a hugely expensive, attention-engrossing status marker. Few things would improve the intellectual culture of universities more quickly than the complete abolition of this flawed and coercive exercise.’ Stefan Collini on universities www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the Universities

The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...

lrb.co.uk

From January to March 2025 I applied for 168 jobs, had 6 interviews and 1 offer. Geoff Dyer has written variously of his time as a ‘dole wallah’, so I wrote about my time as a ‘NEET’ for @newstatesman1913.bsky.social. Read it here: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

One million Neets are a statistic, but every Neet is a tragedy

To be a Neet is to feel a singular shame and self-loathing, a sense of being apart from everybody else

newstatesman.com

Spread the word: Reactionary Worldbuilding is out today!

Reactionary Worldbuilding

Speculative imagination brings to life an array of possible worlds that differ in crucial ways from the one governed by shared assumptions of the “norm...

mitpress.mit.edu

I had to sit through an ed tech product pitch today so for all my #academicsky followers and comrades, here's what Turnitin is currently selling (stick around for what's on their product roadmap) so you can prepare yourselves to strenuously reject it. 🧵

Had a fantastic time last week at the @bacls.bsky.social graduate conference, which I co-organised w/ @aandres.bsky.social and Liam. Really excellent selection of papers & conversations throughout the day!

Hey Bluesky folks. If you’re in education or just follow for my thirst traps, would you please sign this if you can, and share far and wide? c.org/dCKk9vjqxY It’s much appreciated. My university is cancelling all UG humanities degrees. We need support and love right now x

Sign the Petition

Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire

c.org

Wes Streeting would be the final nail in Labour's coffin. More neoliberalism, more privatisation, more austerity, more grovelling to economic power, when we desperately want change.

great news-my Markievicz-award-winning digital narrative Miss-Communication is back online. She's not back making predictions yet but you can read my choose-your-own-adventure critical theory essay on gender/language/computing/Barthes/Enigma/Oedipus/the Dublin Belles & more! miss-communication.ie

‘It is a staggering body of work, with a capacity, sometimes even a necessity to make changes in the way you think about things, and about the words you think you think with.’ Ian Patterson on the poetry of J.H. Prynne, who died on Wednesday, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ap...

Ian Patterson | Gospel Furbelow Dastard

J.H. Prynne was not a name to conjure with when I was a first-year English student at Cambridge in 1966. As far as I...

lrb.co.uk

"A history professor course could not allocate instructional time to the Stonewall riots or the gay rights movement. If a U.S. history textbook includes a chapter on the AIDS crisis, the professor must skip it." www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-tech...

Texas Tech Issues Ban On Students Writing On LGBTQ+ Topics

The ban applies to theses and dissertations, and is expected to begin going into effect on a rolling basis.

erininthemorning.com

'The south-east London university, known for its teaching of the creative arts, has announced plans to cut a further £22 million from its budget, the third major restructure since 2019.' Student numbers have dropped by more than 25% in the past 5 years. Great work external consultants! 1/2

Staff fear ‘death spiral’ as Goldsmiths restructures again

Arts university hopes latest ‘transformation plan’ will help it survive, but staff fear much-lauded institution will be left ‘devastated’

timeshighereducation.com

new in Parapraxis online! Love's Work the romance boom, psychoanalysis, Emily Henry, and creative labor www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/lov...

Love’s Work — Parapraxis

The Generic Pleasures of Romance Anna Kornbluh

parapraxismagazine.com

Woohoo, here's my essay with my fav co-author on 30,000 fellowship wins across the Guggenheim, Stanford CASBS, NAEd, National Humanities Center, RSF visiting scholar, and Harvard Radcliffe. Spoiler: it's the people working at prestigious universities www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...

Who Gets Guggenheims? - Public Books

Unfortunately, 100 years of data show that those whom such fellowships might represent the greatest departure from their everyday experience—that is, those not at elite institutions—are least likely t...

publicbooks.org

The Red May 2026 schedule is up, congratulations for ten years of annual vacation from capitalism. www.redmayseattle.org/2026-schedule

The CfP for this year's Historical Materialism annual conference in London, under the title 'Planetary Warscapes Ablaze: Imperial Mutations in Infernal Times', is now online! Mark it in your calendars, prepare your abstracts, book your travel!

Twenty-third Annual Conference - Historical Materialism

Call for Paper is Online and submission form open! Planetary Warscapes Ablaze: Imperial Mutations in Infernal Times 5-8 November 2026, SOAS, Russell Square, Central London Deadline for abstracts: Fr...

historicalmaterialism.org

Parks cites writer and theorist McKenzie Wark’s 2023 book Raving, which examines this framework through a blend of theory and memoir, as one source of inspiration, particularly on her song “Jetta.” xtramagazine.com/culture/arlo...

Arlo Parks wants to soundtrack your walk home from the club | Xtra Magazine

On her new album, “Ambiguous Desire,” the U.K. star swaps downbeat musings for dance music. But even her disco is deep

xtramagazine.com

Cover drop! Extremely excited to have this incredible sculpture, Marisol’s Love (1962), on the cover of Relatability, out later this year press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Relatability

An engaging account of how the New York School poets used art to imagine their queerness as something that might be shared with other people.How did Frank O’Hara and other New York School poets—a smal...

press.uchicago.edu

“The characters are the main entrance into the work because they’re shaped like humans and they’re lit more brightly than their surroundings.” —Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper, The Art of Fiction No. 213

“I think pornography is a very rich medium, and I’ve studied it closely and learned quite a lot as a writer from it.”

buff.ly

“According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, there were more journalists imprisoned in Israel at the end of last year (29) than in Russia (27) or Belarus (25); only China (50) and Myanmar (30) were worse.” www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Selma Dabbagh | Digging up the Dead

The attack on the small town of Nabi Chit in the eastern Bekaa Valley on 6 March shows the value placed on human lives...

lrb.co.uk