Rafael Walker
@rafaelwalker.bsky.social
I write on literature and issues in higher ed || Associate Professor at Baruch College, CUNY || Editor of Nella Larsen’s *Passing* for Broadview Press https://tinyurl.com/2s3kt7w9 || Still fun! 🎡 🌈 baruch.academia.edu/RafaelWalker
God, I love us. “As the king made his way across town, New Yorkers were largely unfazed, except for being irritated by the disruption to travel.”
Dinner on a gold plate, then a snub: an uneven US welcome for King Charles III
Zohran Mamdani said he would not meet UK monarch privately, noting Indian diamond claimed by crown in 1849
theguardian.com
Good morning from Boston University. Pride flags EVERYWHERE
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...
Just got my copy of this banger, edited by David Bergman and Guy Davidson and including essays by many hands, including one from yours truly on Walt Whitman! And I promise that the book—dealing though it does with gay men AND autobiography—is not as solipsistic as it sounds.
Hey! Is the dream of the 90s (sustained ambitious attention to the fin de siècle American novel) alive? Yes! In this AzQ special issue @rafaelwalker.bsky.social and I co-edited with intro by us & afterword by Jennifer Fleissner 😎 Open access! @hopkinspress.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/issue/56582
Read this the whole special issue of Arizona Quarterly for free! #S2O #OpenAccess at @projectmuse.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/issue/56582
Project MUSE - Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory-Volume 82, Number 1, Spring 2026
muse.jhu.edu
Rafael Walker@rafaelwalker.bsky.social · 5mo agoOur special issue of Arizona Quarterly on the American novel at the turn of the 20th century is now out! In addition to an intro by @natewolff.bsky.social and me, it includes 6 original essays and a bracing afterword by Jennifer Fleissner (which, among other things, urges us back to Lears).
Not sure how I missed this, but 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Stephen Guy-Bray@stephengb.bsky.social · 7mo agoAs a gay Canadian, I'm getting a lot of questions from Heated Rivalry fans, so here goes. Yes, I played hockey, but not often and not well. On the other hand, I was very good at floor hockey, although my career ended when I was banned for life for "excessive force." Now I'm a poetry specialist.
Our special issue of Arizona Quarterly on the American novel at the turn of the 20th century is now out! In addition to an intro by @natewolff.bsky.social and me, it includes 6 original essays and a bracing afterword by Jennifer Fleissner (which, among other things, urges us back to Lears).
Our special issue for @j19journal.bsky.social honoring Frances E.W. Harper's 200th birthday is now out! It features *8* terrific essays on intriguing facets of Harper's work and concludes with a stirring afterword by @profkori.bsky.social. @dark-stars.bsky.social @c19americanists.bsky.social
One of the things I looked forward to most about writing my first book was giving people something to comment on besides my height, and here I am missing my first MLA post-publication. But Toronto in January? Toront-NO!
As I said on the other app, so again here: Thank you, friend, for this encouraging blurb, and let us hope the book lives up to your high praise! #grateful
Nate Wolff@natewolff.bsky.social · 8mo agoHonored to blurb @rafaelwalker.bsky.social ‘s brilliant and gorgeous new book — alongside the incomparable Jen Fleissner no less!
Application deadline extended to Jan. 5th. This is a great position whose terms are sweeter than HR will permit us to disclose in the ad, but please feel free to get in touch with me with any questions. Thanks to all for helping to spread the word.
Rafael Walker@rafaelwalker.bsky.social · 10mo agoOur Black & Latino Studies Department is hiring a tenured associate professor in black and/or Latino queer studies (open discipline)! I'm so excited about this hire—excited enough to have agreed to serve on the search committee! Please spread the news. Baruch's great, and so is NYC!
My book, Realism after the Individual: Women, Desire, and the Modern American Novel, is now out with @uchicagopress.bsky.social! Use discount code UCPNEW for 30% off. I'm so excited! 🥳 press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Realism after the Individual
A study of the transformation of the realist novel in the hands of early-twentieth-century American writers, who adapted this quintessentially nineteenth-century genre to the conditions of their age. ...
press.uchicago.edu
Proofs for the Cambridge History of American Gay Autobiography, which includes my essay on Whitman! As niche as the volume sounds, I'm sure it'll appeal widely—because who doesn't wanna read generations of gays talking about themselves, or, in Whitman's case, as I argue, artfully refusing to?!
I can't tell you how significant it is that Manhattan went for our boyfriend Mamdani. When, in these streets, I found white, often straight finance bros rooting for ZM, I knew we had something. People are understanding that voting for their economic interests doesn't mean voting for their tax breaks
I am so thrilled—really! But how long do we have to keep saying that it's high time to vote Staten Island *off* the island! We just are not the same.
These two stories in today's WSJ make it clear that we all should be reading the Grapes of Wrath right now and make me all the surer about having cast my (early!) vote for Mamdani this morning. This one: www.wsj.com/business/bil...
How U.S. Billionaires Stack Up With the Rest of the World
There are 3,508 billionaires on the planet. Americans dominate their collective wealth.
wsj.com
Our Black & Latino Studies Department is hiring a tenured associate professor in black and/or Latino queer studies (open discipline)! I'm so excited about this hire—excited enough to have agreed to serve on the search committee! Please spread the news. Baruch's great, and so is NYC!
Jobs | City University of New York
cuny.jobs
A clear-eyed explanation of the dangers to universities posed by the push for "viewpoint diversity," written by one of the clearest-eyed analysts of argumentation, Amanda Anderson. www.chronicle.com/article/when...
Opinion | When Viewpoint Diversity Means Conformity
Trump’s compact isn’t just coercive. It’s incoherent.
chronicle.com
Happy to announce that both my departments—English and Black & Latino Studies (BLS)—are hiring for TT positions this year! In English, we're hiring in Anglophone South Asian. cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/...
Jobs | City University of New York
cuny.jobs
Remember that every IG photo you see taken on a busy Manhattan street was taken at the expense of people trying to get somewhere. DO NOT PRESS THE “LIKE” BUTTON!!!
Surely, this is the worst-aging book of this century. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/302858...
The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker: 9780143122012 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
“If I could give each of you a graduation present, it would be this—the most inspiring book I've ever read." —Bill Gates A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times...
penguinrandomhouse.com
My friend John died this morning. I mention him in HANGING OUT and, in light of his passing, I can’t help but indulge in memories of our annual backcountry dinner parties.
As I watch Cuo-NO’s campaign pivot to free transit for NYers who earn under a certain amount—essentially signing on to a program that exists already (peak desperation!)—I wonder afresh at the audacity of a person who had a big job, fucked up that big job, and thinks he should have another big job.
And all that they could find on Obama is that he wore a tan suit. 😔
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · last yr.Exclusive: The Justice Department told President Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files.
Forgot about this moment in George Schuyler's 1931 novel *Black No More*, but whoa! 🤯 "You can't deport citizens, silly," Buddy remonstrated. "That don't stop you from advocating it. This is politics, Big Boy."
