Deidre Lynch

So interesting! but I’m feeling a little disillusioned now…

Love it ! This is one it might be fun to teach . Thank you !

Thank you! And, oh my, Asta Nielsen is a gorgeous hero(ine) here.

I like this idea lots and nominate The Disintegrated Convict (1907, Director unknown)

Oh this is just marvellous! Thank you!

I'm taking the plunge and trying this.
Here, Bluesky, is your weird silent film Advent surprise for December 4th:
Georges Méliès' Long Distance Wireless Photography (worth it for the title alone):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1_y...

Unwanted Reading: A Review of Tom Comitta’s ‘People’s Choice Literature’ The Sunday before I taught Beloved last spring, I sat on my couch wondering how I was going to convince a room full of second semester seniors that, before they left high school that June, they sho…

Had a lot of fun writing this review of @tomcomitta.bsky.social’s strange, moving, and hilarious book. Gets us to think, as I argue here, about the value of an aesthetic education—something we all should aim for as we teach our kids.

mid-theory.com/2025/12/04/u...

This is so great! Thank you for writing and sharing!

That would be astounding!

Bluesky pals, let's do an Advent Calendar (starting the process a few days late, but hey . .. ) of favorite weird films from the silent era.
@jeremydauber.bsky.social has got us off to an excellent start.
Shall we try?

That would be so fun: what a lovely thought!

Toy Stories - Vanessa Smith Toy Stories: Analyzing the Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature explores the stakes of recurrent depictions of children’s violent, damaging, and tenuously restorative play with objects within a long...

This is an amazing film: thank you! Wish I'd put it on my "monsters" syllabus instead of some of the Meliès I assigned instead.
Paging @vnessajsmith.bsky.social, as well, because I think this exemplifies wonderfully the arguments of her wonderful & new-ish book:
fordhampress.com/toy-stories-...

This is Mr. Paworotti. His favorite Christmas song is Howl-lelujah. If you'll excuse him, his solo is coming up. 13/10 (TT: therealpaworotti)

‘ICE was here’: Dedham church sparks outrage over nativity scene with political message A Dedham church is causing controversy over another political statement in their Nativity scene this holiday season.

Dedham Priest pissing off all the right people by removing Jesus from the church's nativity scene and putting up an ICE WAS HERE sign in His place.

www.boston25news.com/news/local/i...

I’m not a partaker myself, but I shouldn’t think so

The Moral Authority of Nature For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated deba...

I don't know the word for that tautology, though I'd like to.
But maybe worth mentioning this book and especially Daston and Vidal's powerful introduction:
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

I think so!

Yellow snuffbox with image of a woman sitting on a chair with a dove flying away from her (very odd).

A #tinyjoy to bring some cheer on what is a grey, wintery day in the Boston area:

A late #18thc snuffbox with the motto "The Eyes have pow'r/ To kill or cure."

Be careful, all, of basilisk women with doves.

Pincher Martin to conclude !?🤯

In class we all noticed how Lumon Industries H.R. department exploits the work force's susceptibility to flattery about its "vast intellectual prowess." (Hmmm--bet Lumon could run academia too!)
We were also struck by the fact that the page has a typo, a clever note of verisimilitude.

Page in a colorful, turquoise training manual. A personified tube/brain implant instructs the workers to "Take pride in knowing that you have been selected for your vast intellectual prowess. We know you may be curious about the what the [sic] numbers mean. However, knowing the true meaning behind the numbers would inhibit your natural intuition."

Here's a page in the training manual that is presented to Hellie in episode 2, season 1, of the tv show Severance, the last "text" that we study in my undergrad Monsters course--doing so to think about bullshit jobs as part of capitalist monstrosity.

A Negroni might be a good idea if you had a second slice? (Also, yum! )

Taught Get Out last week !
Great minds …

Thankful for my union that provides training to us and assistance to immigrants. Thankful to my student who created a list for those we help. Please consider giving a book to a child.

And they said poetry makes nothing happen

I sometimes teach here for "the Mindich program in engaged scholarship"--a course titled Literacy Stories, which incorporates work w/ the Prison Book Program as well as w/ a local high school. If you're interested, I would happily share a recent syllabus: dm me?
engagedscholarship.fas.harvard.edu

Wonderful!

OOOH! Thank you!

Twice for me! Once on the train tracks, on a train from northern BC to Vancouver (the poor thing was trapped for ages between the piles of ploughed snow, but the train slowed down until it was out & we passengers saw it scramble away). Once on a road in Newfoundland: our car suddenly seemed v small!

If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.

From Frederick Douglass's 1867 "Composite Nation" speech, a defense of Chinese migration to the United States at a time when anti-Chinese sentiment was intensifying.
teachingamericanhistory.org/document/our...