Für die Süddeutsche Zeitung habe ich über Laura McGrath Studie "Middlemen" geschrieben, die sich einer der wichtigsten Figuren des modernen Literaturbetriebs widmet: der Literaturagentin. www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/liter...

❗AT THE FZHG❗ TODAY, #Mittwochskonferenz with Friederike Otto: "Climate Change in an Unequal World: Weather Catastrophes and Their Histories." In cooperation with Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst e.V. 📅Wednesday, 27 May 2026, 6pm c.t. 📍IG 411

❗AT THE FZHG❗ NEXT WEDNESDAY, #Booktalk with Cameron Seglias (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) : "Settling Debt: Antislavery and Colonial Crisis." In conversation with Frank Kelleter (Freie Universität Berlin). 📅Wednesday, 6 May 2026, 6pm c.t. 📍IG 1.314

Exciting line-up of talks this semester at Frankfurt Humanities Center! kicking off with events on library’s visual archives and Erica Weitzman on bluster and bourgeois men: fzhg.org/termine

upcoming talk previewing my book on how German literature finds itself entangled in the long arc of maritime and colonial logistics between Europe and the Caribbean - excited to be in Madison! gns.wisc.edu/event/fugiti...

Kulturtechnik-studies reaches new heights!

I have a big new essay out that argues that Erich Auerbach is the crucial figure for historicist reading in lit studies today + argues that the epistemology of such reading depends on the profoundly humanist criterion "sufficient passion" muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

At some point, theorists of culture industry began to see rhythm as tool of domination, leading to some infamous misprisions about syncopated jazz. I wrote about why they came to link rhythm to the social violence of coercion - and how it began with a footnote on a cardiac episode in the Odyssey.

“I don’t understand why so many people have conceded that the university is a left space. Can someone show me a Marxist university president?”

Defending the Possibility of the University: A Roundtable on “University Keywords” - Public Books

“What would it look like for faculty unions and graduate student unions to collaborate or work together with K-12 teachers’ unions to push back against anti-DEI legislation or book bans?”

publicbooks.org

Some thoughts on literary value, redundancy, and residual effects of German romanticism (with thanks to the fantastic editors!) in a great dossier at b2o - check out the other essays as well! www.boundary2.org/2025/12/nath...

Nathan Taylor–Literature isn’t Invaluable—But It Can be Redundant

This article is part of the b2o: an online journal special issue “The Question of Literary Value”, edited by Alexander Dunst and Pieter Vermeulen. Literature isn’t Invaluable—But It Can be Redundant N...

boundary2.org

❗️AM FZHG❗️ HEUTE, Book-Talk mit Florian Sprenger: "Von hier aus sprechen, zu Ihnen. Florian Sprenger spricht über sein Buch 'Ich-Sagen: Eine Genealogie der Situiertheit' (August Verlag, 2025)." 🗓️&📍26.11., 18 Uhr, Campus Westend, IG 1.314 (Eisenhower-Saal)

❗️AT THE FZHG❗️ TODAY, our first #Mittwochskonferenz of the summer semester with Jonathan Culler (Cornell University): "Sound and Rhythm in Contemporary American Poetry". 🗓️&📍30.04., 6 p.m., Campus Westend, CAS 1.812

I learned immense amounts from Joshua since walking into his capital poetics seminar in 2010. Such a crushing loss. He'd likely console us with di Prima: 'we die/a million times a day... get up, put on your shoes, get/ started, someone will finish'- and then point out the line remains unpunctuated.

Materialist Institute for Research@ucmarxistinstitute.bsky.social · last yr.

We are devastated to say that our comrade, teacher and friend Joshua Clover passed away last night. He is irreplaceable; We will miss him forever.