S. M. Carroll

Seconding. Moon’s essays are provocative and compelling. While I don’t agree with all of the connections she makes, she provides an illuminating view of Wedgwood and his period.

I am far, far more interested in reading nonfiction (or indeed stories) where an author is wrestling with something, where they're conflicted but *interested*, committed to working something out while we walk alongside them, than I am with being given gorgeously articulated certainty.

Poster for talk at university of Denver, from 3-5:30 pm on Monday Feb 16 in sturm hall 451.

Looking forward to visiting the University of Denver on Monday the 16th, to talk about Erasmus Darwin, Wedgwood, infrastructure, and the invention of Anthropocene poetry. Thanks to Menglu Gao for the invitation!

PBS will spotlight Sun Ra and his Philly musical collective on 'American Masters' The episode on the experimental jazz musician, who led his namesake Arkestra, will premiere Friday, Feb. 20.

PBS will tell the story of Sun Ra and his Philly-based musical collective in an upcoming episode of 'American Masters'

A flyer for the Vcologies Early Career Paper Prize, announcing a call for papers under 3,500 words on ecological thinking in the Anglophone world 1750–1945 by Ph.D. students or scholars <3 years out from the Ph.D. Papers should be sent to kfrederickson@ucdavis.edu by February 15, 2026.

The deadline for submissions to the Vcologies Early Career Paper Prize has been extended to February 15! Submissions should be emailed to Kathleen Frederickson. See attached flyer for details! #envhist #envhum

Campus FM - stream college radio Live stream college radio stations from universities across North America. Listen to student radio online free.

Unsolicited love for whoever created this fantastic app that lets you listen to most college ration stations in the world

www.campus-fm.com

The Devastating Monologue That Is Leaving Audiences Spellbound

Reminder that if you have a chance to see the absolutely brilliant OEDIPUS play in NYC right now, you should take it.
The Devastating Monologue That Is Leaving Audiences Spellbound www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/t...

If you're reading over coffee this Saturday, this novelette is temporarily available online again for the next month or so. Thanks if you check it out.

undertowpublications.com/uncertain-sons

Frog and Toad sit close together, asleep in the dark. From "A List" In *Frog and Toad Together*

Toad wrote on the ground with a stick: Go to Sleep.

Then he crossed out: Go to Sleep.

“There,” said Toad. “Now my day is all crossed out!”

“I am glad,” said Frog. Then Frog and Toad went right to sleep.

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”

I feel you, Melville

And that horny book should be, of course, Moby-Dick. 🐳

i feel like the viral bus thread resonates because at every step of the way you're like "ok surely this will be resolved shortly, any second now," which seems like what all the passengers are also thinking. then the fact that the situation doesn't resolve and the bus just keeps going is an Allegory

I have a new professional website thanks to the very talented Raquel Arias Labrador, a graduate student from I.U. Please let me know what you think! And if any of you are looking to have your own sites redeveloped, I recommend Raquel. Her help and suggestions were invaluable.

www.scarroll.org

I curate the history series at public media's trade journal Current. We're looking for pieces on the history of NPR, PBS and its affiliates, with some space to imagine public media's future. We accept academic articles repurposed for wide readership. Plus, we pay. Please circulate!

A Founding Father of NPR Worries About Its Fate

Bill Siemering, founding program director of NPR, author of its mission statement, has asked me to inquire if any profs might be interested in a Zoom class visit? No honorarium necessary. Bill founded All Things Considered, Fresh Air, won a MacArthur, etc.

Hey friends! I’m psyched that so many folks want to read Mary Shelley’s prescient climate/pandemic apocalypse novel, THE LAST MAN, in community, in this, its bicentennial year.

#LastMan200

Well *my* obscure academic monograph gathers at least 2 of the 6 “Signs of the Old Ones” to help, so idk what you’re complaining about here.

Too many book reviews are like “this is a well-informed study of the history of citrus-growing up and down the Italian peninsula. Unfortunately, the author fails to explain how this knowledge helps us to break the power of the Dark at its midwinter height.”

Tulip and pomegranate fire screen or cushion cover, May Morris, 1890s, polychrome silks on Manchester cloth

Horn Poppy is a block-printed wallpaper designed by May Morris for Morris & Co. May designed wallpapers and textiles for the Morris & Co. firm and is the younger daughter of designer and craftsman William Morris. This is a monochrome print in three shades of orange-red on a white ground. The stylized flowers and foliage meander back and forth across the width of the design, creating a vibrant pattern. Horn Poppy is shown in eight different colorways in an original Morris & Co. sample book from the late 1880s.

Detail of the famous “Honeysuckle” wallcovering designed by May Morris for Morris & Co. London (1980-73-1), 1883. Block-printed paper. Courtesy of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Bed-Hangings (Two Curtains), 1917, or earlier May Morris learned textile design from her father, William Morris (1834-1896), and embroidery from her mother, Jane Burden Morris (1839-1914). An astute businesswoman, author and lecturer, May was so accomplished as a designer and embroiderer that she became Morris & Co.’s director of textile production at age twenty-three. These panels were exhibited at the 1916 “Arts & Crafts Exhibition” in London and were reproduced in The Studio: Year-Book of Decorative Art in 1917. In November and December of 1920, the panels were shown in the “Exhibition of British Arts & Crafts” held at the Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts. George Booth, who met Morris during her lecture tour in the United States in 1911, purchased the panels out of this exhibition along with the matching valance and embroidered headboard panel. Booth hung these on his own bed in Cranbrook House where they remained until they were donated to Cranbrook Art Museum in 1955.

Greetings, new followers! If you are unsure whether to create timeless art or change the world for the better now that you’ve retired from the internet, I would like to introduce you to the work of May Morris (who chose Both!)

Carol Sturka reading The Left Hand of Darkness in Pluribus—a show that traces several difficult relationships between characters from radically different cultures or perhaps planets, and also explores the delicate balance between singular individual and collective, in a world without war

What makes me lean forward and point at the television like Leo DiCaprio

SFWA is doing a survey on LLM use in the industry. You don't need to be a member to submit. Writers/artists/humans need all the advocates we can get, and I hope we can encourage SFWA to take a strong stance. www.sfwa.org/sfwa-survey-...

I already am!!!

I picked up this collection after reading Thomas Ha’s wonderful “window boy” last year. I’m only partway through reading the collection but can confirm that the first three stories are bangers. Ha has a knack for weird, surreal, and psychologically complex storytelling.

And everything is flawed, if you want to look at it that way. The analogy that has helped me most is this: in Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat-owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of them said, I can’t rescue everyone, therefore it’s futile; therefore my efforts are flawed and worthless, though that’s often what people say about more abstract issues in which, nevertheless, lives, places, cultures, species, rights are at stake. They went out there in fishing boats and rowboats and pirogues and all kinds of small craft, some driving from as far as Texas and eluding the au- thorities to get in, others refugees themselves working within the city. There was bumper-to-bumper boat-trailer traffic—the celebrated Cajun Navy—going toward the city the day after the levees broke. None of those people said, I can’t rescue them all. All of them said, I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it. And they did.

My position on taking action. And on the important space between everything and nothing.

me to grad students: share your work with each other, talk, exchange ideas!

me to me: no one can ever see this draft it's garbage and they'll think i'm garbage and then i'll have to move into a dumpster where i belong

…and why don’t you draw your kid a horse and get them to color it in. Faster, cheaper, involves interacting with your kid rather than a computer, etc.

also always deeply funny that every sci-fi video game from 1999-2014 was trying to be Aliens, and copied everything except the...working class woman protagonist

Philip K Dick movies all have names like CORTICAL IMPASSE and are based on short stories called like "Let's See What's Going On Down at the Brain Factory"

Was reminded of my very favorite tweet of all time today:

Also hiring for another position in our Marketing Department! We're looking for a Marketing Manager to manage campaigns and champion our authors. Join our mission-driven team! careerspub.universityofcalifornia.edu/psp/ucop/EMP...

I saw this recently, and it was terrifically weird. More of a Gothic fairytale about plastic surgery than a straightforward mad scientist tale. It seemed very much up Del Toro’s alley.