Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)
@travisclau.bsky.social
(he/him/his) Associate Professor, Crip Queer Poet: c18/c19 British Literature and Culture / Disability Studies / Health Humanities / History of Medicine (immunity and vaccination) travisclau.com
For this year's #SealeyChallenge, we curated a list of 31 #poetry books and 3 poetry anthologies on Split This Rock's Bookshop storefront: bit.ly/4ySbavz We're a #Bookshop affiliate, so when you buy books via our list, we earn a commission (but doesn’t cost you extra!).
2026 Sealey Challenge Reading List
Check out this list on Bookshop
bit.ly
Grateful to be included on @splitthisrock.bsky.social's Sealey Challenge reading list! What great company to be in: bookshop.org/lists/2026-s...
The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.
Noticing some folks seem to think writers just say clever things without understanding how the world works, as if we're all naifs who just happen to be good with words instead of people with formal educations and a professional interest verging on requirement in the ability to conduct research
Years before 2022, Lynn Hunt wrote a terrific piece about the essentiality of writing for the process of thinking. By relinquishing our writing to a machine, we are simultaneously relinquishing our ability to think. That can only be bad news for democracy.How do we help our students understand this?
Opinion | I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I. (Gift Article)
It’s bad for your brain and worse for democracy.
nytimes.com
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 +
cambridge.org
"Doctors took Mei for a full-body CT scan and then rushed her to the intensive care unit. Her brave face had begun to crack. 'Mom, I want to go home,' she told her mother, before vanishing into the ward." Brendan Borrell for @science.org and @retractionwatch.com: www.science.org/content/arti...
Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public
Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals
science.org
Here’s my review of Gregg Araki’s latest, I Want Your Sex. Sometimes good enough is good enough! And with Araki, it’s rare to have a film that doesn’t end with a gut-punch. I’m glad he’s back, and I hope this means he has a few more in him.
Quick Takes: I Want Your Sex
Sometimes good enough is good enough!
open.substack.com
What a list 😍
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha@thellpsx.bsky.social · yesterdayafter a mostly offline summer, I made a big old post exploring what I think of when I think of disabled/ Deaf poetry in a big anti-canon, for the Sealey challenge (kind of) here: llps.substack.com/p/sealey-cha... what would you add?
I cited my friend @travisclau.bsky.social on Adventuring Academy as someone who influenced my decision to choose tenderness over kindness (in Austen-tattoo form), and it’s fitting that it’s now the anniversary of his full-length book of poetry, What’s Left is Tender.
Travis Chi Wing Lau (劉志頴)@travisclau.bsky.social · yesterdayMy book of poems, What's Left Is Tender, is just over a year old now. Over this year, I've really come to believe in this work and the project of tenderness it attempts to pursue. This pantoum, after many failed drafts, finally arrived, and I realized it was the soul of the collection:
It’s not just that this is absurdly awful, which it absolutely is, it’s that these people have nothing better to with their time and their role as public servants than come up with ways to make everyone’s lives worse on all levels.
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
The latest HLQ is here, with articles in art history, literature, disability studies, and the blue humanities. There are pastors, captives, painters, healers, actors, sailors, poets, liars, polar bears, and parrots. It's big-tent #earlymodern studies, and it's #nuntastic. muse.jhu.edu/issue/57325
My book of poems, What's Left Is Tender, is just over a year old now. Over this year, I've really come to believe in this work and the project of tenderness it attempts to pursue. This pantoum, after many failed drafts, finally arrived, and I realized it was the soul of the collection:
The Trump admin is back with version 2.0 of its higher ed compact. The reason is simple: The first one failed. Compact 2.0 lacks egregious elements of its predecessor. That’s a victory & affirms that the answer to authoritarianism is organized resistance—not compliance. www.aaup.org/news/new-com...
New Compact Shows Resistance Works, but Fight for Higher Ed Isn’t Over
The Trump administration is back with a second version of its higher education compact. As with its predecessor, the best path forward is for higher education workers to organize and demand that their...
aaup.org
"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week." -Willa Cather (from The Professor's House, 1925)
As we recall the trauma caused by COVID in 2020, we should not forget COVID continues to harm. Many still suffer from Long COVID, people who mask are often harassed, and we haven’t scaled clean air infrastructure. If we truly acknowledge past harms, we should be working to create a better future.
I like this notetaking example. it is a good case of how gender works. Notetaking has never been about producing a transcript. It is a bureaucratic skill in the 20th c. organixarion because it is SENSEMAKING. Those women socialized to take notes? They have been doing men’s metacognition for them
Jennifer Romig @jennifermromig.bsky.social · 4d agoNotetaking in meetings is tiny case in point - used to be some predictable social assumptions who would do it; now anyone can offer to do ”notetaking” by turning on the AI listener. Further interesting scenario is human recollection / notes (taken by habit by a person) conflict with AI summary
As a consultant & freelancer I try to be careful with public posts. But there has been a noticeable trend towards bigger companies backtracking on their efforts to repair, mitigate & prevent harms around racism, sexism & ableism in their lore, mechanics & games generally. It sucks.
Endometriosis takes nine years to diagnose. That’s about to change. NICE has approved two tests: a saliva test reading microRNA markers, and a gut-sensor test returning results in 45 minutes, sparing women the keyhole surgery currently needed. buff.ly/QX3jHk8 #ShareGoodNewsToo
Rapid endometriosis tests to be made available on NHS in England and Wales
Saliva and gut sensor-based tests hailed as ‘gamechanger’ for millions of women who can wait years for diagnosis
buff.ly
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard put her body on the line to protect students fighting for Gaza & police assaulted her. Instead of protecting her, UC Irvine has stripped her faculty role & her health benefits. Please sign petition, write a letter, signal boost robindgkelley.substack.com/p/in-support...
In Support of Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard
Most academics in the U.S., as well as activists resisting the genocide in Gaza, are familiar with the case of Professor Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, a renowned Global Studies scholar at the University ...
robindgkelley.substack.com
What a great article not only on faculty workloads, but how little our salaries actually factor in to most university budgets. A few highlights. First, our salaries are falling:
A part of the "hidden curriculum" of academia that was entirely unknown to me until fairly late in my career is the thing where people cold-email each other about meeting up at conferences. So here's general advice to junior scholars, and an offer: (1/n)
“If faculty are constantly looking for the exit door, that’s going to have devastating effects on the quality of teaching and research that takes place at that institution.” #DefendHigherEd @isaackamola.bsky.social @aaup.org
Professors Notch Court Wins Over States Banning ‘Woke’ Teaching
Courtroom victories for public university professors over state teaching restrictions on race, gender, and unconscious bias are beginning to define the bounds of unlawful political oversight of higher...
news.bgov.com
I spent the past day sitting with the work of @mistykrueger.bsky.social who we lost yesterday. I have taught her memoir about breast cancer nearly every semester, and it was a constant reminder of the crip kinship that we shared.
if you are looking for newish poetry books, check out my little poetry raffle ending August 10th: tally.so/r/LZOPB1 #SealeyChallenge
Summer Poetry Raffle for Hamza
Made with Tally, the simplest way to create forms.
tally.so
I am unbelievably touched that @dropout.tv titled my @dimension20.dropout.tv Adventuring Academy episode “A Duty of Care” I’m overwhelmed today, but I want to circle back in a while to share the links to everyone & everything I cited. More soon.
A Duty of Care (with Dr. Emily Friedman) - Season 7 - Dropout
Dr. Emily Friedman joins Brennan to discuss the history of actual play and the best gaming system. Content Warning: Misophonia (Crunching) - [throughout 54:37-1:01:03]
watch.dropout.tv
"The Duck quaketh... The Wolf howleth" — from what many consider to be the first picture book for children, Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658). More in our essay here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/in-the-image-of-god-john-comenius-and-the-first-children-s-picture-book
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.”
