Erin Yanota

Beaker, from the Muppets, pictured against a yellow background.

I recently began using the "easter-egg-in-the-syllabus" strategy, and one of my favorite student emails to date has been a very professionally worded, "Dr. Yanota: per your request," accompanied by this photo.

Somehow, Muppets have become a staple of my teaching – from a wrinkled Kermit poster in my first TA "office" (a windowless basement) to a recent student-authored zine juxtaposing Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" with news of Jim Henson Studios' closure (featuring photos of 12ft Kermit doffing his cap).

“It’s a delightful thing to see a room full of people, from news reporters to A-list celebrities, get in line to be karate-chopped by a pig.” – Eric Jacobson, voice of the iconic Miss Piggy (qtd. in NYT)

Dreary morning, college closed, but the collective love for Miss Piggy brings so much joy

this thread should be shown to every center for teaching and learning that incentivizes "innovation" without ever thinking past the immediate linking of that word and screen-based tech. novelty alone does not guarantee goodness or depth

november (though it could surely be extended!) and alas they do not seem to be on bsky

Katy Peplin and Kate Henry already do AcWriMo!

Image of 'The Empress' tarot card by Pamela Coleman Smith, depicting a figure with long hair, crown, and sceptre. Text: Weird Modernisms, BAMS/MSA 26, 1-4 July 2026, Loughborough University, UK.

We're delighted to share that the CFP for the joint @modernistudies.bsky.social and @moderniststudies.bsky.social 2026 conference, Weird Modernisms, is now live!

1-4 July, Loughborough University @lborouniversity.bsky.social

More info here: moderniststudies.org/conference/MSA2026/CFP/

I'll be talking about weird stuff, queer stuff, and befriending spirits (the usual); and my fellow roundtablers have all sorts of brilliant things to say about the collective experience of history and religiosity, focusing on writers ranging from Du Bois to Brand to Didion and Fitzgerald. 🖤

@moderniststudies.bsky.social friends, come hang on Saturday morning (10:15 in Jefferson) with the Hidden Histories of Faith and Grief roundtable!

Today's #ModWrite is about summoning the dead.

Yep. I think the wording is vague & will be seeking clarification, but the status quo for Canvas's in-house AI features was that they had to be turned on/off by systems administrator, not instructors. So, depending on your institution, this may be a vector for faculty organizing, like, now.

Conservative Org. Requests Materials for 70 Chapel Hill Courses The Oversight Project, founded by the Heritage Foundation, is using an open records request to search for terms like “DEI” and “gender identity.” Faculty say it encroaches on academic freedom.

IMPORTANT: “‘At many public universities, syllabi are considered intellectual property. As such, professors are not required to share their syllabi in response to public records requests. Check your university policy prior to complying advance.’"

www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

#AHRSyllabus - AHA About #AHRSyllabus The #AHRSyllabus is a collaborative project designed to help teachers and students look "under the hood" at how historians in the early 21st century do the work of history. Each con...

History educators, are you looking for a new way to get students involved in the classroom this coming academic year? Check out #AHRSyllabus — freely available teaching modules designed to look “under the hood” at how current historians do the work of history 🗃️:

Wuthering Heights is an AIDS novel btw

Annual of Sexual Intermediaries Volume IX Part 2 of 2 (1908) Annual of Sexual Intermediaries Volume IX Part 2 of 2 (1908) [Hirschfeld, Magnus, Lombardi-Nash, Michael] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Annual of Sexual Intermediaries Volume IX Part 2 of 2 (1908)

Before Stonewall, before Pride, before the word “queer” was reclaimed—there were voices that refused to be silenced. Edited by Magnus Hirschfeld. Writings that dared to speak truth about homosexuality. Annual of Sexual Intermediaries #MagnusHirschfeld #lgbtqHistory
www.amazon.com/dp/B0FHHVPXTG

I just went to a new eye doctor last week who, upon seeing my (multiple) prescriptions, commented "oh, those are fun ones!"

I have been screaming from the top of this hill for years! Shit gets weird and things would be so much more fun if we just acknowledged it.

One of the first things I do with freshman undergrads is to compile a sense of how much reading they do in a day (texts, websites, memes etc) to make clear that not liking reading three volume novels is *not* the same thing as not reading.

Kind of wish academic papers could come with 1980s style sword and sorcery cover images.

writing is whack-a-mole against incorrect autocorrect, insidious unsolicited summaries, unwanted artificial unintelligence, , ,

Public transit keeps love alive.

Imagine thinking mushrooms aren’t beautiful, how stupid

of course, I am geographically located deep in the Bible Belt, but nothing else about my internet use would suggest that I'd be interested in this content. I turned off personalized ads and have since been getting ads for buying toothpaste wholesale–which, honestly, I can live with

yup – I managed to stave off Hallow prayer app ads on YouTube for a few months, but they've just recently come back and the avenues for supposedly customizing ads on Google Services have become much more opaque

Screenshot from the 1969 film, The Color of Pomegranates: two frames of a boy lying on a rooftop with a series of open books. Text reads: "Books must be well kept and read, for books are Soul and Life."

from The Color of Pomegranates (1969)

Don't forget the new Abridged Submission Call is now open! See www.abridged.zone/abridged-0-1... for info! #poetry #art

Indigenous Studies Response to York’s Suspension of their Program Dear Dean McMurtry, Provost Peters, and President Lenton, As two Indigenous studies administrators (Dr. Chris Andersen is the Dean of the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta and Dr....

Supportive academics & community members! Please sign this Google Docs letter b4 March 10.

Written by Chris Andersen, Dean Faculty of Native Studies UAlberta & Rob Innes, Chair, Indigenous Studies, McMaster U. in support of #Indigenous Studies at #York U, which administrators propose cutting.

My partner justifying listening to Teenage Dirtbag: ‘like T S Eliot says, it has an awareness of its own form’

Bison, not prison: Activists buy a prison site to rewild the land A coal mine was the first to wreck the land. Now activists want to keep another extractive industry from taking root there: prisons.

Bison, not prison: Activists buy a prison site to rewild the land.

A coal mine was the first to wreck the land. Now activists want to keep another extractive industry from taking root there: prisons.

grist.org/justice/biso...

#Prison #Incarceration #Jails #Climate #Tribes