Lauren Surovi

Letter to the Editor: Paused majors bear burden of unsolved systemic issues Zachary Braiterman, a professor in SU's Department of Religion, emphasizes the harmful effects of the ongoing admissions pause on majors and minors at Syracuse University. Impacted programs are bearin...

dailyorange.com/2025/10/lett...

Laszlo Krasznahorkai Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

Laszlo Krasznahorkai Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/b...

Banned Books List 2025 What books are banned in 2025? Thousands of titles have been removed from public schools across the country.

What was the most #bannedbook in U.S. schools in the 2024-25 school year?

Topping the list, after being banned in 23 school districts, is a 1962 novel that Time magazine named one of 100 best books of all time in 2010.

These are the 15 most-banned books in America: pen.org/banned-books...

Quote by PEN America Interim Co-CEO Summer Lopez in the Los Angeles Times reads: "This is how authoritarianism works: You don't have to imprison every dissident; you don't have to sue every newspaper or publishing house. You just do enough of it so that everyone else censors themselves without having to be asked."

"We are at risk of losing one of our most precious freedoms: the freedom to write."

In a new op-ed in The Los Angeles Times, PEN America's Summer Lopez warns the assault on free speech in the United States has "entered an alarming new phase." Read more: www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Ur-Fascism | Umberto Eco I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contra...

Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism” (1995)
“Freedom and liberation are an unending task.”

Wrote this in The Sirens Call about mass shootings as the darkest, most violent form of extreme trolling and think it likely applies here as well.

George Saunders, holding a book and smiling gently, against a rustic wooden background.

Congrats to George Saunders '88, #SyracuseU professor in @suartsciences.bsky.social, on receiving the National Book Award for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters!

Learn more: https://bit.ly/485Q0if

Jim Jarmusch's 'Father Mother Sister Brother' wins top prize at Venice Film Festival Jim Jarmusch's quietly humorous relationship triptych won the top prize on Saturday. The film about the relationships between siblings, and with their parents, stars Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett.

Jim Jarmusch's quietly humorous relationship triptych won the top prize on Saturday. The film about the relationships between siblings, and with their parents, stars Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett.

TELL THEM NO! - FY26 House Appropriations Bill Will Eliminate Language Education Programs The House Appropriations Committee is poised to approve massive cuts to critical language education programs in its Fiscal Year 2026 Labor HHS Education spending bill. It proposes to cut $12 billion f...

TELL THEM NO! Click the link to contact your Congressperson and ask them to support language education in the US—

Cover of Italica, Volume 101, Number 4, Winter 2024 Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian Blue background with lighter blue silhouette of the country of Italy.

📕"expansive and groundbreaking"

In Italica Vol. 101, No. 4, @laurensurovi.bsky.social @suartsciences.bsky.social reviews "Standing at the Crossroads: Stories of Doubt in Renaissance Italy" by Marco Faini. scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/ital/art...

Researchers say the true cost of prisons and jails is higher than many realize A new report tries to capture the true cost of incarceration to families of people behind bars. It found it costs them around $350 billion every year – almost four times the government's estimate for the cost of incarceration.

A new report tries to capture the true cost of incarceration to families of people behind bars. It found it costs them around $350 billion every year – almost four times the government's estimate for the cost of incarceration.

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

‘The Only Person in the World Claiming to Be the Pope Right Now’

brilliant! I would’ve loved a pope LARP in college 🥹
@adapalmer.bsky.social

Inigo Thomas · Diary: Rome, Closed City Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, released at the end of 1945. The movie begins with a version of the disclaimer...

‘“Rome, Open City” was shot eighty years ago, before the war in northern Italy was even over, but it feels no less real now than it did in 1945.’

Inigo Thomas on wartime Rome: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The La Sfera Project - Donate On April 2, 2025, the Sfera Project PIs received notice that the federal government was terminating the $118,000 grant the Project was awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in August 20...

Many of you know I've been working on the La sfera project with scores of friends for about 5 years. We were thrilled to receive support to bring it to a larger public, and crushed when we lost it when it was nearly 70% complete. We are now seeking donations to finish it
www.sferaproject.org/donate

every teacher you know, have learned from, & love will lie in bed tonight & imagine how they would protect their students from a shooter. this is not the first time we’ve done this.

this shouldn’t be part of our job description. this is a nightmare.

What’s the opposite of doom scrolling?

Susan Crawford Wins Wisconsin Supreme Court Election, Despite Elon Musk’s Millions Susan Crawford defeated Brad Schimel for a State Supreme Court seat in a race that shattered spending records and maintained a liberal majority on the court.

Breaking News: Susan Crawford, a liberal judge, won a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court seat despite $25 million in spending by Elon Musk on her opponent.

Everyone should read this.

The people who said “wokeness” was totalitarian are applauding as dhs sends agents to college campus to apprehend students for thoughtcrime

This campaign needs you now Protect the Italian and Italian American Studies Program at UIC

chng.it/W5wvT5XXQX

A reminder that the U.S. has "always been multilingual":

Usa, la corsa dei repubblicani ad abbandonare l’Ucraina
https://ilmanifesto.it/usa-la-corsa-dei-repubblicani-ad-abbandonare-lucraina

MLN

We've updated our submission guidelines-- and deadlines:
French: January 30
Comparative Literature: March 1
Italian: March 15
Hispanic: May 1
German: September 1
See the guidelines linked below. Contact MLNJournal@jh.edu with any questions @hopkinspress.bsky.social
www.press.jhu.edu/journals/mln

Presenting the #InternationalBooker2025 longlist.

Find out more about all the books, authors and translators: thebookerprizes.com/ibp2025

Federal prisons prep to move trans inmates as early as next week The Bureau of Prisons is moving forward with plans to move transgender inmates out of prisons that align with their gender identity and into facilities that align with their assigned sex at birth.

The Bureau of Prisons is moving forward with plans to move transgender inmates out of prisons that align with their gender identity and into facilities that align with their assigned sex at birth.

it’s what the civic humanists of 15th-century Florence would want us to do!

A professor was lecturing to his English class: “In English, a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, a double negative is still a negative. However, there's no language where in a double positive can form a negative.”

A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

Pretty big deal. @bookshop-org.bsky.social is selling ebooks now. You can now support indies while purchasing digital books.

bookshop.org/ebooks

A photograph of fog over the Dolomites in the Italian Alpa

Beauty underpins resistance.
When they tell you not to breathe, to hold on to Beauty, in the pure sense, is your surest act of political definition […]
No one can take from you the sunrise. — Elena Gallina

#momentofzen