Mid Theory Collective
@mid-theory.bsky.social
the contemporary and its curiosities https://mid-theory.com
We get it, it is (a) drag.
The Drag of Being Bond
It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. One of popular media’s perennial questions, whether the role is currently filled or not, is “who will be the next James Bond?” It…
mid-theory.com
The Independent@the-independent.com · 12h agoJames Bond producer shares update on 007 casting: ‘It’s got to be really different’
Our second academic job market materials workshop starts this Friday with @mitchrmurray.bsky.social. Sign up here: tinyurl.com/36fvvctv More info on our website: mid-theory.com/mtc-writing-...
I'll be giving advice on developing academic job materials on Friday at 1:00 ET with @mid-theory.bsky.social. Register here: tinyurl.com/kc5jcf8y
MTC August Newsletter
Summer is not over yet and MTC has got your Fridays covered!
tinyurl.com
Laura Heffernan and I are proposing an in-person seminar on "Aesthetics for Amateurs" for ACLA 2027. It's about recentering creativity and making--especially amateur making--in our theories of the aesthetic. If this is your jam, please consider submitting! www.acla.org/seminar/d6b4...
View Seminar | American Comparative Literature Association
acla.org
Mid Theory Collective congratulates our editor Jay Shelat @jshelat1.bsky.social 🎉
Jay Shelat@jshelat1.bsky.social · 5d agoFriends, 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
Emily Coccia pens an anti-eulogy for 'Hacks,' and an ode to the queer fun of making thing, hard and hacky things with others even when, especially when, nothing is guaranteed.
An Anti-Eulogy for ‘Hacks’
Because they’re not just writing jokes; they’re writing a years-long love letter to each other. As a rule, Deborah Vance doesn’t do funerals. Neither, it turns out, does Hacks (2021-26), whic…
mid-theory.com
Emily Coccia pens an anti-eulogy for 'Hacks,' and an ode to the queer fun of making thing, hard and hacky things with others even when, especially when, nothing is guaranteed.
An Anti-Eulogy for ‘Hacks’
Because they’re not just writing jokes; they’re writing a years-long love letter to each other. As a rule, Deborah Vance doesn’t do funerals. Neither, it turns out, does Hacks (2021-26), whic…
mid-theory.com
I had so much fun doing this event with McKenzie. @eflux.bsky.social were spectacular hosts. The audience was lively and smart as hell. And I'm pleased to say it all comes across on the recording, which'll be in your feed tomorrow morning.
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 2mo agoAmerican Vandal in Brooklyn with @mckenziewark.bsky.social
For our latest installment of Adaptation Anxiety series, Nathan Likert reviews The Odyssey and what it says about the director's futile guilt & generational angst! "Homer’s text thus becomes a Trojan horse through which the contemporary can be litigated."
What Can A Homer, Or A Nolan, Offer the Future?
Adaptation is everywhere! In 2026, MTC is running a new series called Adaptation Anxiety, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. We ask not whet…
mid-theory.com
For our latest installment of Adaptation Anxiety series, Nathan Likert reviews The Odyssey and what it says about the director's futile guilt & generational angst! "Homer’s text thus becomes a Trojan horse through which the contemporary can be litigated."
What Can A Homer, Or A Nolan, Offer the Future?
Adaptation is everywhere! In 2026, MTC is running a new series called Adaptation Anxiety, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. We ask not whet…
mid-theory.com
"I recognize and even admire that date’s characters’ failure of action is the play’s subject itself rather than a failure of the play." Hanu Shahdadpuri reviews Jake Flume’s 'date.'
The Flat Theatricality of the Scroll: Review of Jake Flume’s ‘date’
date feels, then, like an anti-drama trying to become a drama. Another name for the play might be Two Characters in Search of a Desire. On the trip uptown from Chicago’s Hyde Park to Humboldt Park’…
mid-theory.com
Excited to talk, I'm sure, about Luddites with the @mid-theory.bsky.social CAPITAL reading group tomorrow!
MTC July newsletter is full of all the things you might have missed and might want to know! Including information about our August job market workshop. Read the full newsletter here and subscribe: tinyurl.com/56n6n9hb
Our next meeting of Capital vol. 1 reading group will be this Friday, July 10 from 3-5pm ET. We will be discussing Part 3: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value & Part 4: The Production of Relative Surplus-Value. Sign up here for the zoom link. All welcome even if you didn't come to the first.
MTC Reading Groups
Read With Us: Below you will find our upcoming and ongoing reading series. If you’d like to lead a reading group for MTC, please get in touch with us at editorial@mid-theory.com MTc 2026 Big Book S…
mid-theory.com
“Transcription principally concerns, then, the difficulty of remembering and commemorating an old mentor in an era of advanced technological circulation … it stages mildly odd moments where inheritance and influence operate in distorted, warped ways…” brilliant review by @omidb.bsky.social
Under the Influence: A Review of Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’
In Lerner’s works, this sense of an extraordinary but intangible connection is what wonder and paranoia have in common. It’s no secret that Ben Lerner admires John Ashbery. Not only is the title of…
mid-theory.com
Our next meeting of Capital vol. 1 reading group will be this Friday, July 10 from 3-5pm ET. We will be discussing Part 3: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value & Part 4: The Production of Relative Surplus-Value. Sign up here for the zoom link. All welcome even if you didn't come to the first.
MTC Reading Groups
Read With Us: Below you will find our upcoming and ongoing reading series. If you’d like to lead a reading group for MTC, please get in touch with us at editorial@mid-theory.com MTc 2026 Big Book S…
mid-theory.com
“Obama quite deliberately was reaching for the center when he talked of Founders, not ordinary people that made the Revolution happen in the streets: the Committees of correspondence, the Boston Tea Party. That leaves out just how active and participatory the Revolution was.” —David Waldstreicher
America at 250
A roundtable on the arc of U.S. history at the nation’s semiquincentennial with Adom Getachew, Aziz Rana, David Waldstreicher, and Nikhil Pal Singh.
bostonreview.net
It's Thursday, which means a new MTC essay! Today, MTC contributing writer, Omid Bagherli reviews Ben Lerner TRANSCRIPTION, a novel about what goes (un)recorded between men. "In Lerner’s works, this sense of an extraordinary but intangible connection is what wonder and paranoia have in common."
Under the Influence: A Review of Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’
In Lerner’s works, this sense of an extraordinary but intangible connection is what wonder and paranoia have in common. It’s no secret that Ben Lerner admires John Ashbery. Not only is the title of…
mid-theory.com
It's Thursday, which means a new MTC essay! Today, MTC contributing writer, Omid Bagherli reviews Ben Lerner TRANSCRIPTION, a novel about what goes (un)recorded between men. "In Lerner’s works, this sense of an extraordinary but intangible connection is what wonder and paranoia have in common."
Under the Influence: A Review of Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’
In Lerner’s works, this sense of an extraordinary but intangible connection is what wonder and paranoia have in common. It’s no secret that Ben Lerner admires John Ashbery. Not only is the title of…
mid-theory.com
Hi everyone. The introduction to my book Arresting Ecologies is available here without a paywall until July 22. Book is out now in UK, ships in the US this month. Hope you check it: academic.oup.com/book/62701/c...
+ So here it is, my 281st #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ + blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...
#ScholarSunday Thread 281 (6/21/26) – Black and White and Read All Over
Father’s Day is my most important holiday of the year, for a pair of interconnected reasons that I’ll get into at the end of this thread. So I’m really excited to share my latest #ScholarSunday thread...
blackwhiteandread.com
For MTC, Rahul Sen reviews Richie Hofmann's new book of poems and what he calls "the dampness" of Hofmann's poetics.
Sweat, Salt, Sex: Richie Hofmann’s ‘The Bronze Arms’
Even though the first-person speaker dies midway, the poem continues after his death. It is as if the speaker returns from the dead to complete the poem. Richie Hofmann’s third collection of poems,…
mid-theory.com
For MTC, Rahul Sen reviews Richie Hofmann's new book of poems and what he calls "the dampness" of Hofmann's poetics.
Sweat, Salt, Sex: Richie Hofmann’s ‘The Bronze Arms’
Even though the first-person speaker dies midway, the poem continues after his death. It is as if the speaker returns from the dead to complete the poem. Richie Hofmann’s third collection of poems,…
mid-theory.com
Reading Capital Vol. 1 for the @mid-theory.bsky.social Big Book Summer & I’m so struck by the lang of magic and horror Marx uses. Lots of descriptions of transformations and mythical creatures. Werewolves, vampires, & “monstrous outrages” abound! Not a particularly clever observation but still…
"If there’s any illicit desire at work in Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” it’s the way the movie lusts after other movies." Read our latest installment in our Adaptation Anxiety series!
Emerald Fennell’s Love Affair with 1939
Adaptation is everywhere! In 2026, MTC is running a new series called Adaptation Anxiety, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. We ask not whet…
mid-theory.com
"If there’s any illicit desire at work in Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” it’s the way the movie lusts after other movies." Read our latest installment in our Adaptation Anxiety series!
Emerald Fennell’s Love Affair with 1939
Adaptation is everywhere! In 2026, MTC is running a new series called Adaptation Anxiety, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. We ask not whet…
mid-theory.com
Our Adaptation Anxiety series continues. In this latest installation, Maddy Trépanier traces a different source text for Emerald Fennell's adaption of the classic gothic novel. "If there’s any illicit desire at work in Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” it’s the way the movie lusts after other movies."
Emerald Fennell’s Love Affair with 1939
Adaptation is everywhere! In 2026, MTC is running a new series called Adaptation Anxiety, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. We ask not whet…
mid-theory.com
Our Adaptation Anxiety series continues. In this latest installation, Maddy Trépanier traces a different source text for Emerald Fennell's adaption of the classic gothic novel. "If there’s any illicit desire at work in Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” it’s the way the movie lusts after other movies."
Emerald Fennell’s Love Affair with 1939
Adaptation is everywhere! In 2026, MTC is running a new series called Adaptation Anxiety, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. We ask not whet…
mid-theory.com
