Anna Muenchrath, PhD (she/her)

The Marvel Universe is expanding.

Yay! So exciting, Jay!

I just reread an essay I wrote at the start of this year (currently under review) on Labor, Education, and AI in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, and I am (somewhat unusually) still so hyped about it and can't wait to share it!

Making a CLEAN, SHAREABLE dataset is fucking hard! I'm super proud, then, to publish this one, on a team led by @sdileonardi.bsky.social and @beccacohen.bsky.social, with @post45data.bsky.social. It has more than a decade of 21C int'l bestseller data, revealing how popular world lit circulates....

Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History | Stanford University Press Digital spaces are saturated with metaphor: we have pages, sites, mice, and windows. Yet, in the world of digital textuality, these metaphors no longer function as we might expect.

On to Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History by @eve.gd (this years @sharpweb.org book prize winner!)

www.sup.org/books/media-...

I know this is totally out there, but how about instead of adding automatic AI summaries to its ebooks, proquest just improves its actually useful functionality (like allowing me to copy relevant passages from a book, which is currently glitching so that I have to type everything out manually).

A Prehistory of the Cloud We may imagine the digital cloud as placeless, mute, ethereal, and unmediated. Yet the reality of the cloud is embodied in thousands of massive data centers,...

After skimming some other things, I've now settled into A Prehistory of the Cloud by Tung-Hui Hu.

mitpress.mit.edu/978026252996...

For better part of this year, I've been working on this report as part of AAUP's committee on AI and Academic Professions. We surveyed over 500 members across ranks, job types, and institutions about AI deployment in higher ed.

You can read more about our work here: academeblog.org/2025/07/22/f...

The Costs of Connection | Stanford University Press Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through sh...

First up, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias.

www.sup.org/books/sociol...

🤓 Starting the new project research in earnest now and thought I would keep a running thread of what I'm reading and rereading. 📚

HathiTrust Research Cenger Extracted Features 2.5 info card

HathiTrust Research Cenger Extracted Features 2.5 info card

The HathiTrust Research Center is pleased to announce a new release of our open-access Extracted Features dataset, a statistical snapshot of:
18,725,868 volumes
6,867,699,164 pages
3,255,304,293,468 tokens
450+ languages

go.illinois.edu/EF25 for details & download
cc:@hathitrust.bsky.social #DH2025

wait, you're telling me the prevailing democratic wisdom was *wrong*? you don't say!

Indiana. West Virginia. Same thing. How ya gonna keep 'em down on the (metaphorical) farm? Limit their opportunities to learn other languages and cultures, learn to think critically, learn to ask why.

Mid selfie of me on UVA Lawn with Rotunda over my shoulder.

Wanted to share here that I have accepted an endowed chair offer from my Alma mater, the University of Virginia, where (after 25 wonderful years at UMD) I will be starting in January as Commonwealth Professor of Artificial Intelligence and English.

If you want to read deeply researched accounts of what happened to novels in the last fifty or so years, may I recommend Novel Competition: American Fiction and the Cultural Economy, 1965–1999 by Evan Brier uipress.uiowa.edu/books/novel-...

Friends, please share!

Proofs are ready for @skeuomorphpress.org's edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "A Rant About Technology." I am so pleased with this book—in many ways our 1st real book project

Details about how to get one through our fundraiser at skeuomorph.ischool.illinois.edu/le-guin-book...

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC NEW SERIES Book History for the Future SERIES EDITORS: Lisa Gitelman, New York University, USA Tom Mole, Durham University, UK Sarah Werner, Independent Researcher, USA Book History for the Future aims to define the cutting edge for a new generation of book historians, as book history enters a new chapter of its evolution. Books sit at a densely trafficked intersection of social relations, status negotiations, emotional investments, material possibilities, desires, aspirations, and dreams. They require an intellectual approach grounded in attention to physical artefacts and material conditions while also engaged in theoretical reflection, attentive to historical contexts while attuned to contemporary resonances. This series publishes books that eschew academic parochialism in favour of adventurous engagements with new theoretical developments, innovative methodologies, digital tools, and global contexts.

Exciting news, Bluesky! I’m editing a new book series for Bloomsbury with Tom Mole and Lisa Gitelman: Book History for the Future! Do you focus on material textual artifacts and innovative methodologies? We’re actively soliciting proposals, so give us a shout! www.bloomsbury.com/media/cecjzl...

Not a film person so maybe this is a terrible answer, but Jordan Peele?

My current project is about the consequences of using algorithmically processed data to *select* what should be translated. This is another level of abdication of responsibility for cultural production. Is there such a thing as machine culture and are we living in it?

In the airport, headed to #SHARP2025. Can't wait to hang with my fellow SHARPists in Rochester! My talk on untranslatability and Amazon Crossing will be on Tuesday at 1:30.

This is such a generous post. I can commiserate with a lot of the conflicted feelings here, particularly the sense of loss and despair as the institutions around us stop serving almost everyone they are supposed to serve.

How now, how now, what say the citizens?

Donald Trump’s approval rating Follow our presidential approval rating poll tracker to see how favourably Americans view Mr Trump

omg wut "Karl Marx said that men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please. The same is true for presidents."

www.economist.com/interactive/...

Funding libraries supports strong communities: Kate Ozment Budgets are moral documents, and these cuts to libraries show that Ohio lawmakers do not believe we should invest in strong communities. I urge every Ohioan to contact the governor and their elected r...

Alas paywalled, but here is my op-ed advocating for IMLS funding and Ohio state funding for public libraries. The state current budget cuts library funding and gives the Cleveland Browns 600 mil for a new stadium 🙄

www.cleveland.com/opinion/2025...

The Sociology of Literature and Institutional Trust Impressions from the conference “Dis/Trusting the Institution(s) of Literature”

A glowing report from Jeff Lawrence on our conference last week ("every panel I heard addressed an urgent and fundamental question about the academic study of literature"):
open.substack.com/pub/jefflawc...

Opinion: Florida earns unfortunate distinction as censorship leader in schools Opinion: Under the guise of “parental rights,” Florida public schools have been eroding students’ access to books.

I wrote to my fellow Floridians about the rhetoric of book banning in schools. (My original title was something like "A Radical Minority Has Infiltrated Our School Libraries").

www.floridatoday.com/story/opinio...

do people feel disgust at people who clap when planes land? misanthropic ennui punctuated with homicidal rage, yes, but disgust?

Tonight on most PBS stations at 10PM, you can watch UNION, one of the best films of last year. A doc chronicling the effort to unionize an Amazon packing facility, it’s both filled with hope and very honest about the tough work of organizing. It’s also beautifully shot. Check it out if you haven’t!

Selected British Literary Prizes (1990-2022) – Post45 Data Collective The Selected British Literary Prizes (SBLP) dataset contains information on nine major literary prizes in the U.K. from 1990 to 2022 and demographic information on 682 prize winners and shortlisted au...

More than 30 years worth of data on UK literary prizes (and their winners) goes live today @post45data.bsky.social! Bravo to researchers Katherine Binhammer, Kanika Batra, Theo Gray, and Maryse Jayasuriya for compiling and publishing this incredible resource! data.post45.org/posts/britis...

Since we are apparently re-sharing our starter packs... Check out the one I put together on Comparative and World/Global Literature! go.bsky.app/DHK7Cwk