Caleb Smith

Sarah Mesle’s Reasons and Feelings: Writing for the Humanities Now

This book was incredible!!! Riveting, brilliant, funny, moving, relatable, all of it. I have rarely read a non-fiction book so fast and happily. Cannot recommend it enough to my humanist friends

“This represents saving higher education, saving public research and the standing up of faculty and staff and students”—AAUP, one of the parties that brought the case against the Trump administration

World Building - The Massachusetts Review A Review of Reasons and Feelings by Sarah Mesle (University of Chicago Press) Sarah Mesle’s Reasons and Feelings: Writing for the Humanities Now is a new contribution to the University of Chicago Pres...

"This section defines REASONS AND FEELINGS itself quite brilliantly: it’s a book working to avail itself of a different style of the “guide to writing” genre to attempt to know the world differently."

Jon Hoel on Sarah Mesle, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/10/28/w...

red book cover with pink lettering and a black arrow that says "REASONS & FEELINGS: Writing for the Humanities Now by Sarah Mesle"

This book is officially out today. I feel pretty confident that everyone in my feed (academic and not) could use it — I certainly got a lot from reading it in process, and, also, hearing Sarah say these things to me live and in person over a period of many years. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.

🚨🚨🚨

And THREE stood up!

Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact.

When we join together and fight back, WE WIN!

No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent.

LET’S GO!

#DefendHigherEd
@aaup-penn.bsky.social

Adding in some other LK pieces into the thread. A recent short interview with TYR bsky.app/profile/yale...

Good morning! If you'd like to read smart things instead of all the stupid things, the new ELH is out, with essays from The English Institute. New work by Quashie, Post, Orlemanski, Yousef, CW Smith, Tongson, and yours truly, introduced by Fleissner and Enelow.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

"Models of Ideological Analysis" by Fredric Jameson Listen now | Opening Lecture of 1977 Institute On Culture & Society

"Models of Ideological Analysis" by Fredric
Jameson, Opening Lecture of 1977 Institute on Culture & Society (audio)
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/models-of-...

Home | The Tidewater Initiative We are a multidisciplinary research group devoted to study, stewardship, and stories of working waterfronts, coastal infrastructures, and oceans under conditions of globalization and environmental ins...

We're launching a new Tidewater Initiative at JHU. Our research group on working waterfronts and coastal infrastructures includes a new student research lab, courses, programming partnerships with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and more in the works. sites.krieger.jhu.edu/tidewater/

The Jameson Tapes, Side B with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson

So happy with how this came out.

AND NOW the 2nd part! theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...

🙌

🙌

The Jameson Tapes, Side A with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson

NEW!
1st of 2 installments contextualizing Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society, discusses "Marxism & Historicism," historicizing the lectures, recovering them, the commodity as its own ideology, long arc of Jameson's influence

theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...

The Jameson Tapes, Side A with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson

Honored to be among the folks talking about Jameson on the new American Vandal podcast episode! theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...

Good to join The American Vandal for this conversation about Jameson, ideology, and methods of literary analysis!

PhilosophyPodcasts.Org: Caleb Smith. Distraction and discipline. Caleb Smith Thoreau's axe: Distraction and discipline in American culture   Today, we’re driven to distraction, our attention overwhelmed by the many demands upon it—most of which emanate from ou...

A good, searching conversation with the hospitable August Baker of Philosophy Podcasts

philosophypodcasts.org/thoreau2

With the rise of AI, I've begun to wonder if future graders of expository essays will even be able to grasp the sheer brilliance of Mandy Berry's famous Student Essay Unplugged? We many never see this kind of essay again, folks.

Temporary cure for the oozing polycrisis blues: spend a couple hours chatting with @annakornbluh.bsky.social & @c-also.bsky.social about Fred Jameson.

Don’t forget to press record.

Really good to think and talk with y’all!

May 5th is Marx's birthday The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways – the point however is to change it. Karl Marx's contributions to the study of economics, politics, and philosophy are beyond measure. ...

Today is Karl Marx's birthday.

All books by and on Marx are on sale for up to 50% off as part of our Red May Sale.

Yale faculty urge administrators to defend academic freedom Around 900 faculty signed a letter to President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel calling for “courageous leadership” in the face of attacks on higher education.

yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/04...

I am so honored and FIRED UP to introduce the legendary Angela Davis on Yale’s campus tomorrow, for a two-day lecture series on Abolition. Let’s go!

Adam Shatz | Submission There’s nothing surprising about Trump’s attack on the universities, or on the liberal law firms that he also...

A clarifying account of what is happening at Columbia and beyond.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on.

Here’s a smart essay about media, distraction, and who decides what’s worth paying attention to:

What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Mutual Aid LA Network Mutual Aid LA Network is a connector and information hub for mutual aid efforts across Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, I love you! Some ways to help, via Mutual Aid LA:

mutualaidla.org

174: Beyond Ethical Reading: How Fiction Thinks about Motive, Will, and Desire. With Emily Ogden and Jennifer Fleissner. Thursday, 7pm, Camp.

13: Genres of Criticism, Genres in Criticism. With Stephen Best, Jane Hu, Lauren Michelle Jackson, Jeremy Rosen, and Ross Wilson. Thursday, noon, Canal.

Bound for New Orleans and the MLA. Catch me at the bar, or at one of these two killer sessions: