Anna E. Clark

Interesting how when a tradition gets undermined to the point of meaninglessness its essential weirdness, previously latent, seems inescapable

“Thoughtful responses” ☠️

books, classrooms, teachers, paper

So many delightful things about What We Can Know, but I especially liked the modesty of its long-scale optimism: the humanities still endure, mostly. Social media and AI still exist, but as public utilities. Most people avoid America when they can. A truly British speculative future.

I hope literary scholars are proud of the fresh, grounded stuff coming out lately. Big Fiction, Teaching Archive, now Manshel on high school English, McGrath forthcoming on literary agents ("Middlemen"). All the concrete aspects of literature-as-human-activity we used to ignore. +

Counterpoint: don't underestimate the power of obsession—a Wuthering Heights lesson

I like that the new one is so flagrantly *not* the novel. It's such a mess, delightfully so. Those title quotation marks don't lie! But I also know that it's going to guide a lot of people's experience of the novel and that does bum me out a bit, but then also, this is how pop culture works!

I get this. See also: Frankenstein

I feel like if the book is that good/beloved the adaptation doesn't really matter, you know?

It is! I think only vols 1-3 have come out in English, but it would be possible to teach the first on its own

Will always take an opportunity to recommend On the Calculation of Volume

Close Reading For The 21st Century Symposium (Vandal Live at Emory) Podcast Episode · The American Vandal · S12 E4 · 1 sec

It's here! I hosted a symposium on close reading at Emory in November. Matt Seybold recorded it for his podcast, American Vandal, and the first of three episodes is out today. Catch me, @johannawinant.bsky.social, @becimay.bsky.social, @bakaari.bsky.social + more podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Close Reading Is For Everyone Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant Call for Pitches Based on our previous Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, we are at work on a new version that’s shorter, slimmer, and aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for a new set of contributors who would write excellent, brief, model close readings of texts that high schoolers might know and care about. Think: “The Gettysburg Address,” Macbeth, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but also song lyrics, idioms, or even a visual image. What is your best, most instructive, most exciting, most welcoming example of how a close reading builds a real argument out from a tiny, perhaps overlooked detail? If you’re interested in pitching us, please send us your 250-word close reading of the text you propose. Your close reading should be mappable using our vocabulary of close reading: the five steps of scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation, and global theorizing. (Our close reading of “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the early pages of our introduction is the sort of thing we’re seeking.) If we think we can use yours, we’ll ask you to expand it to a 1,200 word essay in which you explain how your close reading works step by step. We seek close readings both of texts that are canonical and also ones that aren’t. And so we invite contributors both from the discipline of literary studies, and other disciplines across the university, and the public humanities beyond it. Send your pitches—please include your name and contact info—to daniel.sinykin@emory.edu and jwinant@reed.edu by March 15.

CALL FOR PITCHES

@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.

We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.

Details below!

264 days until Halloween, which should be just enough time to finish your dancing grass costume

ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn't built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy r...

Technology that doesn't work is a desired feature to the surveillance state, not a bug. When everyone is a "maybe" match, then probably cause can be manufactured to justify whatever it is one wanted to do in the first place. www.wired.com/story/cbp-ic...

This would be a great piece for info. literacy, research, AI literacy topics in first year writing and beyond. Tracking the timeline of proliferating zombie citations. One challenge I see with undergrads is lack of concept of the ecosystem in which info is created and circulates.

cover of The Washington Post on Wednesday Feb 4, 2026. Headline on bottom, right: Musk wanted to hook users; his chatbot got more sexual

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

I mean, shortsighted, really. Fire all the critics and who will you be able to coerce into writing a fawning paean for Melania II: The Third Inauguration

Thinking about ecosystem collapse as a metaphor for what’s being done to cultural criticism. You wipe out enough individual parts, eventually the whole thing turns into a wasteland

Oh also cats but that one’s accurate and on me

I love how the algorithm acts like my primary concerns are hot flashes and leggings even after I’ve mainlined anti-ice protest content for days

I hope someone good applies for this and gets the offer and then writes a tell-all essay about it in like the @yalereview.bsky.social or @thebeliever.net

Immigration arrests surge by 1,500% in San Diego: 'I feel the temperature rising' Immigration agents escalated their presence in San Diego in the second half of 2025, where they made hundreds of arrests as part of President Trump's crackdown.

To my previous post, see also: calmatters.org/justice/2026...

ICE out San Diego Shut it down fri Jan 30 rally 2 PM Teralta Park

There’s one today at 2 pm, Teralta Park in City Heights

ICE out San Diego Shut it down fri Jan 30 rally 2 PM Teralta Park

There’s one today at 2 pm, Teralta Park in City Heights

I’ve seen more on IG than here, but I should try to share more info….

Yeah the local DSA chapter does regular overpass protests! also one at the otay mesa detention center every Sunday afternoon … lots of little actions that could be bigger! Went to a protest in city heights last Saturday and met a UCSD student who took public transport there. Took him 2.5 hrs lol

ICE is using two facial recognition programs in Minnesota, they said, including one made by the tech company Clearview AI and a newer program, Mobile Fortify. The agency is also using cellphone and social media tools to monitor people’s online activity and potentially hack into phones. And agents are tapping into a database, built by the data analytics company Palantir, that combines government and commercial data to identify real-time locations for individuals they are pursuing, the current and former officials said.

The government is using technology to identify protestors, and then using that information to track and intimidate them. The people using the devices are wearing masks, but we know the companies creating the technology.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/t...

Late 20th, but I‘d bend the line for Dead Man