Jay Shelat

Happy August! As we get ready for the ASAP/16 conference in Houston, TX, don't forget to register:

asap.press.jhu.edu/membership/c...

Hey!

Hell yeah

Family wedding stuff this weekend and people in their 20s keep calling me Jay Uncle unironically 😮‍💨

Chicago, don’t let the summer slip through your fingers! Come get your pictures taken this August!

Three year anniversary of moving to PA fresh outta grad school. Been a whirlwind and so so fun

Oh my god lollll

I submitted my book Domestic Denial: Terror, Race, and Home in Literature After 9/11 for peer review today! It's under contract with @uminnpress.bsky.social. I'm super stoked that this whole process is chugging along!

JOB: TT Assistant Professor, South Asian History, University of Iowa

www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

Just mind boggling someone let me teach a seminae at 22

I just realized this will be my 10th year teaching

✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾

Three stacks of books: Top stack: Poems from Guantanamo, Curb by Divya Victor, Whereas by Layli Long Soldier, and Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith Bottom left stack: Passing by Nella Larsen, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Angels in America by Tony Kushner Bottom right stack: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and Maus I by Art Spiegelman

Course Description of Methods in Lit: This course will introduce you to literary studies, the art of analyzing literature. Throughout the semester, we will focus on three literary forms: poetry, fiction, and drama. You will learn not only the vocabulary necessary for effective and mature literary analysis, but you will also learn how to apply that vocabulary to interpretations of texts. To close read is to finely examine a work for its compositional elements and, in turn, how those elements work together. Therefore, you will read a wide range of authors to expose you to the variations possible within any given literary form. The skills you learn in this course will aid you throughout your education as English majors and beyond; the analytical and writing skills gained in this class will prove valuable in any field. The rigorous (but manageable) reading load will train you to read for original, exciting, and mature interpretations. You are encouraged to make bold connections and voice your opinion and confusions openly and enthusiastically. Active learning is key to this class.

Course description for Banned Books: Since their invention, books have been burned, banned, and barred. A fear of ideological resistance and political furor sit at the heart of these systematic and systemic attempts to restrict literature. In Escambia County, Florida, alone 1,600 individual books have been banned. On what basis? This class introduces us to the legal, cultural, social, and political ramifications of such book banning. How do they come to be? What do they mean for our understanding of society and ourselves? In which ways do bans shape literary tastes and marketplaces? And, finally, how can we read politically? That is, how can we read with questions of power at the forefront of our inquires? We will read not only some of the most banned books in the nation but also the legal justifications for those bans. Through class-based discussion, informal writing, and a Banned Books Week project that will be presented to the Ursinus College community, student will understand the politics of this incendiary form of restricting truth and experience.

Course description for Political Poetry: Since the advent of the written word, poetry has been political. From the Mahabharat and The Iliad to Walt Whitman and TikTok and Instapoetry, verse has critiqued systems of powers and offered an answer to the way things are. This course considers how contemporary poetry captures the present political moment. Specifically examining poets of color writing in the twenty-first century, we will investigate how form speaks to political ideology and action and critique how poetry threatens infrastructures of power relating to race, gender, and sexuality. In this way, the poetry we study will not only be rigorous in theme and content, but it will also underscore the political make-up of the contemporary age, both in America and around the world. Topics of discussion include police brutality, imperialism, gendered violence, and homophobia.

Finished my Fall syllabi! I'm teaching Literary Methods, Banned Books, and Political Poetry. Despite everything being bad, I'm excited to teach this semester.

Amazon review of Pride and Prejudice, left by carlton p morgan on 30 July 2010: "Just a bunch of people going to each other's houses"

Happy 15th anniversary of the peak achievement of literary criticism, to all who celebrate

Whenever I see a cover like this, I think it screams “You only know half the story.”

It’s ironic that for someone who advocates hard for climate justice, he doesn’t see the link between colonialism and climate change

Omg the icon himself is on BlueSky! @wcaleb.org thanks for your help! Everyone owes you a drink

Another semester, another moment to thank that guy from Rice University who made that syllabus maker thing. I love you

wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmake...

there are over 8 million people in this city and the fact that bananas shit doesn’t happen more often is a testament not to cops or politicians but to the fact that people aren’t as violent or scary as some would like us to think

I love adding a bunch of books to my TBR list--who knows when I'll get to them, but that's part of the fun!

UK university staff: keep signing!

a woman looking at her reflection in a mirror with a bookshelf behind her ALT: a woman looking at her reflection in a mirror with a bookshelf behind her

Just watched Mike Flanagan’s Oculus, which is so scary I’m afraid to go to sleep

GOD WE CANT HAVE ANYTHING NICE WHY ARE PEOPLE SPOILING LAST NIGHT’S GILDED AGE?!?!?!! IT’S BEEN OUT FEWER THAN 24 HOURS FUCK

Oh for sure. I was gonna add “And I am being investigated for shady shit”

Omg but you don’t talk in aphorisms!

Hello, I’m an English professor in a film. I wear chucks & black skinny jeans. I’m obviously the cool guy on campus, because I sit *on* the desk in the front of the room. My office is huge and is charmingly covered in papers & mugs. I throw paperback books to students when I wanna inspire them.

this is so so so cute!

a woman in a black dress is laying on a bed with her mouth open . ALT: a woman in a black dress is laying on a bed with her mouth open .

Writing my syllabi

I love North Woods so far! It’s really compelling, namely bc of the style shifts in each section (a bit like Diaz’s Trust in that way) and bc of the crystalline prose.

I start working on my syllabi tomorrow, so till then I’m reading poolside