Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

𝑇𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 unfurls a nightmarish vision of lovers dissolving into a single body. When it opened in China on 19 September, the film was reshaped: not only were its sex scenes excised, but an AI face-swapping sleight turned a same-sex wedding into a heterosexual union.

www.facebook.com/AsianCha.Jou...

Gotta love it, always, when it's leaked to the press that the authorities are super mad about leaks to the press

Excerpt from the linked article: So far, the effort to intimidate leakers is not going well. Inside the government, staffers and leakers have responded to the crackdown with defiance, three Defense Department staffers and two other sources familiar with the situation tell Zeteo. Put another way, those staffers and sources were immediately compelled to leak their thoughts and other details to a media outlet.

One of my favorite comedic forms, as seen in @zeteo.com

zeteo.com/p/trump-hegs...

It’s a revealing thing because it *is* what many want in terms of the relationship to immigrants

It’s important to flood social media and news channels with news about how ICE lies, so that potential jurors see it.

Pete Hegseth may have spilled the beans on the upcoming National Defense Strategy Did the Secretary of War just reveal his strategic priorities between the homeland, China, and Russia in a Fox News interview at a football field?

"peace through strength"
- the current US of defense or war or whatever it is now, Oct 5th, 2025, apparently.

I can hardly tell whether some of these people really read literature and identify with the villains or they've merely absorbed context-free catchphrases through cultural osmosis.

Academic Staff Need Academic Freedom, Too (opinion) Colleges cannot continue to operate as if all staff work is identical, Aaron Stoller writes.

Quite a thoughtful piece by Aaron Stoller commenting on the erosion of academic freedom (guess where) and how protections are especially lacking for staff with academic roles, such as uni librarians.

Purple background, white text, which says ... the imperial system is propped up by ideological frames that rationalise and valorise the wants of the core while dehumanizing those living on the periphery. Such rationales are recorded by and embodied in Tzajos in the novella One Message Remains... "Lives Under Empire: Imperial Subjugation and resistance as depicted in One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed" -- Eric de Roulet

@ericderoulet.bsky.social discusses the nature of totalitarianism as depicted in @premeemohamed.com's One Message Remains collection in this new (free!) essay... kinda feels timely...

www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text, which says ... the imperial system is propped up by ideological frames that rationalise and valorise the wants of the core while dehumanizing those living on the periphery. Such rationales are recorded by and embodied in Tzajos in the novella One Message Remains... "Lives Under Empire: Imperial Subjugation and resistance as depicted in One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed" -- Eric de Roulet

@ericderoulet.bsky.social discusses the nature of totalitarianism as depicted in @premeemohamed.com's One Message Remains collection in this new (free!) essay... kinda feels timely...

www.speculativeinsight.com

The regime is acting this way because there are no consequences so it is clear that consequences—the development of them, the advocacy for them, the imposition on bad behavior—are the answer to our crisis.

🔥 ICYMI (including a thread of recent Ming-Qing literature-related blog posts)

“Laurie Eckman, 84, said she and her husband Richard Eckman, also 84 and a Vietnam war veteran, were rushed by federal officers “for no apparent reason.” She said her husband was leaning on his walker and wearing his Vietnam veterans cap as he was pushed to the ground.”

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported About four-in-ten immigrants (43%) say they worry a lot or some, up from 33% in March.

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported, according to a June @pewresearch.org survey.

A wonderful companion resource site created by our research librarians Matthew Hayes and Adhitya Dhanapal, on the Immigration Act of 1965 and its legacies
sites.duke.edu/aadssymposium/

IL Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh: "I think Kristi Noem should have consequences. I think she should be tried at The Hague."

⧉ 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗛𝗔𝗜. We'd love to publish reviews of these books in @asiancha.bsky.social in 2025/26. Together they summon Shanghai in print & plate: women’s gaze in newsprint, lantern posters, montage intoxication, camera-shadow, capitalist type.From presses to neon bloom, a city flowering in ink.

The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate bac It should never be forgotten that colonization […] had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West […] A whole series of colonial models was brought back to the West. Michel...

Apropos of this:

I must say, I don't think the "but the economy" types are gonna enjoy the return of the Imperial Boomerang as much as they think they will.

Purple background, white text. One Message Remains is a meaningful addition to the body of literary and scholarly works on imperialism and dictatorship, not least because the collection lends clarity to some of the questions that trouble us most... "Lives under Empire: Imperial subjugation and resistance as depicted in One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed" -- Eric de Roulet

@ericderoulet.bsky.social discusses @premeemohamed.com's One Message Remains collection in this new (free!) essay: www.speculativeinsight.com

I had a professor of Jewish Studies at UChicago who made the administration very angry because every year he made a proposal for the university to create an on-campus memorial to the worldwide victims of the UChicago economics department.

@xuetingni.bsky.social My apologies if you find the tag annoying, but: I've followed your work on Chinese SFFH fiction for a while, and I wonder whether anybody in your circles would be interested in a PhD or post-doc for this Sinofantasy research project in Germany.

A PhD candidate posting for the same research project (see previous post): PhD Candidate (m/f/d) <2 Wochen Teilzeit Ausbildung The Department of Chinese Studies is looking for a PhD Candidate (m/f/d) Bewerbungsfrist: 21. Oktober 2025 Veröffentlichungsdatum: 5. September 2025 Eintrittstermin: 1. Januar 2026 Arbeitsumfang: Part-time position (60 %) Kennziffer: 00004514 Beschreibung Subproject: “SINOFANTASY – Escapism in contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction” The ERC-funded project SINOFANTASY (Starting Grant #101220119, PI Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jessica Imbach) investigates the rise and impact of contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction,

Oh, and they're seeking a PhD student for the Sinofantasy project as well.

Screencap of a post-doc job ad (for a German university, but they're taking applications in English): Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d) The Department of Chinese Studies is looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d) Bewerbungsfrist: 21 October 2025 Eintrittstermin: 01. Januar 2026 Arbeitsumfang: Part-time position (70 %) Subproject: “SINOFANTASY – Fantasy fiction across the Chinese mediasphere (platforms, creative labor, fandom, participatory culture, transmediality)”

This is easily the coolest postdoc posting I've seen in a while, but it's a bit outside my wheelhouse and my dissertation timeline. The University ot Freiburg (universität-freiburg) is seeking a researcher on contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction and then some.

uni-freiburg.de/stellenangeb...

The Public Scholar A Practical Handbook

COVER REVEAL AND PREORDER: The Public Scholar - A Practical Handbook.

"Perry focuses on the practical details of how to approach public scholarship. How do you pitch a piece to an editor? When should you follow or ignore the rules of the genre? And what happens once your piece is out in the world?"

Protip: The other way to get jstor without limits on articles is a Wikipedia Library membership. You need extended confirmed status as a Wikipedia editor to access tho.

Great news!
JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month

www.jstor.org/action/showL...

In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it?

If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say?

Authoritarianism — let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.

What Happened to the University’s Commitment to Free Expression? Charley Kirk, uAlberta, and Me | Centre for Free Expression I was shocked when the University of Alberta administration informed me, one of its law professors, that I was being placed on non-disciplinary leave for my social media comments in the wake of Charli...

"Why would it bow to antidemocratic pressures by placing a professor on leave without their request, consent, or involvement? That any university would do this is beyond comprehension and is cause for alarm about the future of academic freedom in Canada."

He don’t miss (he does miss)

A lot of people think that every international student admitted means one fewer spot for domestic students, when the opposite is more likely true - the tuition revenue international students bring allows public universities to provide substantial discounts to domestic students, improving access.