Patrick Kindig

Touching and Being Touched The music was turned up too loud for talking

!!!

poets.org/poem/touchin...

Currently rereading Lord of the Flies to teach it, & it is honestly way too much right now. Beautifully written, but it's very hard to make myself pick it up.

We hear you, students! The deadline for the 2026 Summer Mentorship Program has been EXTENDED to March 10. Apply at the link in our bio!

An email from IU about Indiana Relocation Incentives

LOL. Apparently Indiana has become so unlivable that it is literally trying to pay people who have fled to come back.

I once had to ILL The Joy of Gay Sex (in rural Texas) & the day I picked it up, a new person was being trained at the desk, so EVERYONE in the library was there.

I know I'm late to the party, but: I'm teaching Lord of the Flies right now, so we started watching Yellowjackets, & goddamn--what a show!!

5 authors x 5 books:

Anne Carson
Ross Gay
Glenway Wescott
Henry James
Ernest Hemingway (😬)

Hey! Scholars! If you're using someone's work in your class, sometimes it's nice to email them and tell them, because then they might feel good about their research instead of entirely crushed by the academic humanities' ongoing descent into the grave

(Thinking a lot lately about how, in focusing obsessively on "transferable skills" (e.g., close reading), core-level English courses often disincentivizes further study.)

A poll for literary critics: as an undergraduate, you were drawn to the field by:

a.) a love of interpreting language

b.) a love of thinking through complex ideas/problems

Selfishly reskeeting this for the late-night crowd 👀:

If you'd like to give the piece a read but don't have access, just let me know--I'd be more than happy to send you a PDF! 6/6

I suggest that an attention to the optical mechanics of cruising might not only help to cultivate a clearer understanding of the phenomenon itself but also push back against the prescriptivist tendencies of much cruising scholarship. 5/6

such as its connection to the erotics of the gaze, its association with compulsivity, and its potential to foster selfish forms of sexual experience. 4/6

In it, I argue that cruising involves a haptic mode of looking, one that facilitates a kind of erotic contact at a distance. This understanding of cruising helps to explain certain aspects of the phenomenon that are often overlooked in scholarly work on cruising, 3/6

Drawing on a range of theoretical, sociological, and creative texts—including two books by John Rechy and a film by Frank Ripploh—the essay theorizes the perceptual phenomenology of cruising, or the practice of seeking out and engaging in semipublic sex with strangers. 2/6

The cover of the latest issue of PMLA

A screenshot of the first page of my PMLA article "Cruising as Contact (at a Distance)"

Truly over the moon to have an article--"Cruising as Contact (at a Distance)"--in the latest issue of PMLA (!!!), which offers a gentle corrective to the queer-theoretical tendency to celebrate gay cruising as a radically utopian, egalitarian, prosocial practice. 1/6

tinyurl.com/5ej85pcj

(Happy Married Valentine's Day.)

My husband ogling the goods at Sam's Club

My husband posing in Sam's club

Documenting my husband's first trip to Sam's Club (he was a Costco kid):

Truly love to see bands of teens roving the mall on a Sunday afternoon. Real life is not dead!

I teach future naval officers, so it seemed like an appropriate choice!

(If there is an institutional award for Most Unhinged Teaching, I think I am a lock.)

A printout of Jonathan Bailey's face attached to a bobblehead

Preparing for the in-class trial of one William Budd (played, ofc, by our current reigning Sexiest Man Alive):

Briefly talked about this poem with students last semester &, to my surprise & delight, they seemed to love it.

Ween in his snow fort

Ween in his snow fort

Asmall snow fort

Fort Ween:

One of my most cherished classes is my 18th century novels course where the primary learning objective is "learn how read long novels." We did a "couch to 5k" approach to attention span and note-taking.

Never mind the jobs you had, five classes you took in college:

The Sentimental Novel
Writing Poetry (Intro + Advanced)
Brain and Behavior
Gegenbilder von Hitler
Theory and Practice of Feminist Literary Criticism

Very, very grateful to 𝘊𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘺 for giving me space to sing the praises of Chase Gregory's 𝘈𝘴 𝘐𝘧!, a much-needed book about the limits of identity-based scholarship:

On my campus, a falling slab of ice shattered someone's back windshield the other day!