Anna Gibson

Teaching with Dickens’s working notes or about his compositional process? Consider submitting materials to the Dickens Notes Project!

This is just the best!

Contribution idea: This lovely reading assignment by @aktange.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/akta...

AGAINST AI

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

Cat on book

Cat asleep on book

Thwarted in my evening reading. @nathankhensley.bsky.social, my cat is a fan 😁😻

I don’t think we really need EEG to tell us that outsourcing thinking to AI decreases learning in writing tasks, but I suppose we can hope that studies like this *might* check the institutional bandwagoning. arxiv.org/pdf/2506.088...

Maybe we just dispense with the paper now and get them turning in an essay prompt with a rubric. Optional: they feed it to ChatGPT and grade it themselves. Who needs instructors 😆😜😭

Diabolus Ex Machina This Is Not An Essay

These kind of ChatGPT performances are like having conversations with a sociopath. It lies so confidently—such a symptom of our current times, except with these odd extended apologies.

Digital Dickens Notes Project The Digital Dickens Notes Project is an exploration of Charles Dickens's Working Notes

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing @annagk.bsky.social talk to our Dickens postgraduates about www.dickensnotes.com - a fantastic open access resource showing Dickens's working notes for his novels. Highly recommended!

It was such a pleasure to talk with you all!

I spent much of last semester applying for an NEH grant. All that work is wasted now. But this is so much bigger than my own disappointment.

Cultural groups across U.S. told that federal humanities grants are terminated Among the thousands of groups affected by the sudden cessation of funds are state arts councils, museums, historic sites, archives, libraries, educators and media outlets in all 50 states.

Devastating

Two NC State students leave U.S. after visas terminated Two NC State graduate students left the U.S. after the State Department revoked their visas. The University was not notified beforehand but offered support.

"Al Gurad did not understand why his visa was terminated and the State Department had not provided a reason for the decision."

Devastating. For those of us waiting for the result of grant applications, and for those who have active or awarded grants, this is just awful. But the impact of this move will be pervasive and long-lasting.

ACH has confirmed reports that DOGE is at the NEH. Chair Shelly C. Lowe has been replaced by Acting Chair Michael McDonald. ACH remains committed to a diverse, inclusive, and supportive DH. To engage in advocacy efforts: secretary@ach.org. Read our statement of support for NEH: buff.ly/bQeRaGw

Scientists and journalists need to figure out right quick how to explain to the average person how a massive change in research indirects will impact the medical care they and their children get (eg at the local children’s hospital), the education their children will get, the price of tuition, etc.

This is a very helpful thread re: the slashing of overhead rates on NIH grants. It is an atrocity and, as OP states, an attempt to decimate higher ed. This guidance goes into effect immediately, affecting not only future but also current grants, which is to say current university budgets.

Everything is bleak. But my Brit Lit survey students are writing about why The History of Mary Prince matters in 2025, and they are giving me hope.

NYT quote

For me the scariest thing about week 1 (and the transition) has been precisely this phenomenon of “anticipatory obedience”; institutions are showing us the thinness of their commitment to values they previously claimed to hold

That one’s length is intimidating even to me! It’s been sitting on my to-read shelf since we moved into this house.

I was hoping for something more recent so we could consider how we reframe “Victorian” now. But I love teaching the JE/WSS pairing!

I love it too! That was my default pick. I just wish I could find something that engaged more meaningfully with race.

From *there* it gets weird? 😆

I just taught A Christmas Carol this week; I hadn’t heard of Mr. Timothy!

Ahh, both of those sound so fun! One day I want to teach a Jane Eyre class filled with retellings. So easy to fill a syllabus!

Possibly! I just have to create some sort of connecting thread to the rest of the syllabus. Part of my goal here is to get students thinking about how we imagine "The Victorians" or Victorian literary forms from a 21st-C perspective.

Oh, also bonus points if it engages in some way with one or more of these: Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Story of an African Farm, Goblin Market, the Brownings, Toro Dutt)!

I haven't read it! And now I'm down a "weird fiction" rabbit hole on the interwebs 😆

My initial plan was to teach Possession, since we're reading EBB and RB poems earlier in the semester, and I have a soft spot for Byatt. But ideally I want something that takes up imperialism. Considered Laura McNeil's The Swan's Nest, too, but... meh.

ENG 560: Re-Forming Victorian Literature ENG 560: Re-Forming Victorian Literature What is “Victorian literature”? What does it mean, in our 21st-century present, to study the period of Queen Victoria’s reign? Our semester will begin with th...

Course description is here!

Best "Neo-Victorian" novels to teach: go!

I'm teaching a grad class ("Re-Forming Victorian Lit") next semester. I want to end with a 21st-C novel that's explicitly taking up/engaging with Victorian forms. Ideally not centered solely on white British characters. Course description in thread.