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Berthold Schoene

@profberty.bsky.social

Lit Prof Manchester Met UK | interested in trees doing the human (or indeed just themselves at their own sweet pace) | the ruderal imagination | degrowth aesthetics | the Anthropocene novel | pursuits involving Marnie & Grace and their sighthound pals …

496 Followers  |  483 Following  |  60 Posts  |  Joined: 16.11.2024  |  2.1832

Latest posts by profberty.bsky.social on Bluesky

Blown over (!) by HELM. (Porter’s is next.) I love this Prize which rediscovers the novel afresh every year.

03.10.2025 05:24 — 👍 6    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

I “migrated” to this slightly offshore country 35 years ago today — one day before German Reunification, which I watched on TV in a bedsit on Glasgow’s Great Western Road. I remember my mouth being sore from speaking English all day 😂

02.10.2025 05:16 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

With anonymised marking, any meaningful pedagogical engagement or intervention went out of the window. Frustrating for tutors who can no longer delight in a student’s learning as they mark their work & a sad loss for students who are deprived of the personal touch they so clearly continue to crave.

01.10.2025 15:39 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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The Death of the Student Essay—and the Future of Cognition One professor's reflections on the end of an era, as AI tools such as ChatGPT have murdered the student essay (RIP). Here's why that threatens the future of human cognition—and how to save ourselves.

With classes underway, I’ve switched from essays to exams. But with the death of the student essay (RIP, slain by ChatGPT), there’s a larger human tragedy: an erosion of critical cognition and the creation of two sharply divided classes of people: those who learn how to think and those who don’t:

30.09.2025 09:48 — 👍 300    🔁 97    💬 15    📌 20
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Marnie, optimising summer’s long goodbye

27.09.2025 12:10 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Laureate's block I'm appalled to see newspapers use my name as 'widely-tipped' for a job I'd never seek. Swans come in Domestic, Mute, and Tame and no swan-upper's going to nick my beak

'A poet's death fills other poets with dread.' Harrison was on roaring form here.
www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/feb/...

27.09.2025 11:57 — 👍 12    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0
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Cookie politics

26.09.2025 08:00 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Never read anything by Pym before: is this what’s meant by “middle brow”?!

25.09.2025 08:15 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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We’ve renamed the house in honour of these two blue wonders 🤩🥰❤️

25.09.2025 08:12 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

How kind of you to say so — much appreciated, thank you! 🤩

25.09.2025 08:06 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thank you for engaging with my work at all! It’s refreshing to hear it’s been of some use. ANITA AND ME is a cracker!

25.09.2025 07:21 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Androdecentrism in the Anthropocene: Weirding Masculinities in the Work of Max Porter, Martin Macinnes, and Matt Hill In an era marked by ecological collapse and accelerated technological transformation, the human subject, and especially the masculine subject, can no longer be imagined as sovereign, stable, or aut...

See also Androdecentrism in the Anthropocene: Weirding Masculinities in the Work of Max Porter, Martin Macinnes, and Matt Hill: Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... by @angelariviz.bsky.social

25.09.2025 07:18 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Wrote about this over 25 years ago & it continues to be one of my absolute favourite Bildungsroman novels journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

25.09.2025 07:14 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 2    📌 0
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Mount Fuji, on arrival

09.09.2025 10:29 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Author Nicola Barker: Podcast Episode · The New Statesman: politics and culture · 30/08/2025 · 38m

'If you're experimenting with things, you're always writing against the culture'

Goldsmiths Prize 2017 winner Nicola Barker talks to @tanjilrashid.bsky.social about piecing the novel back together again after H(A)PPY, and much else . . .

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...

02.09.2025 10:53 — 👍 6    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
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Whixall (May 2020)

17.08.2025 15:10 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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"Can I read you some of my poetry?"

17.08.2025 12:28 — 👍 209    🔁 31    💬 6    📌 4
A screenshot of the ANTI-EXTINCTION syllabus cover page with a dodo representing extinct beings. The text reads: "Though extinction is a natural phenomenon, human activity has hastened species loss in recent centuries. What factors led to the loss of the dodo, the passenger pigeon, and thylacine? What brought the American bison and California condor back from the brink of extinction? What are the promises and perils of de-extinction projects that aim to recreate dire wolves and woolly mammoths? These case studies (among others!) offer critical context for understanding ongoing biodiversity and social justice crises. Organized around questions of multispecies justice, with an emphasis on the significance of stories, this course invites students to consider what kind of existence they want for themselves and for other beings amidst the Sixth Mass Extinction."

A screenshot of the ANTI-EXTINCTION syllabus cover page with a dodo representing extinct beings. The text reads: "Though extinction is a natural phenomenon, human activity has hastened species loss in recent centuries. What factors led to the loss of the dodo, the passenger pigeon, and thylacine? What brought the American bison and California condor back from the brink of extinction? What are the promises and perils of de-extinction projects that aim to recreate dire wolves and woolly mammoths? These case studies (among others!) offer critical context for understanding ongoing biodiversity and social justice crises. Organized around questions of multispecies justice, with an emphasis on the significance of stories, this course invites students to consider what kind of existence they want for themselves and for other beings amidst the Sixth Mass Extinction."

In the spirit of syllabus season, here’s a link to an extinction studies course of the #envhist #envhum variety. From the dodo to dire wolves...Please borrow, adapt, share!

drive.google.com/file/d/1SzKp...

cc: @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social!

14.08.2025 13:04 — 👍 57    🔁 24    💬 2    📌 1
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Vetch — what an odd and ugly name for a very beautiful flower!

13.08.2025 05:12 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker review – satire that sees right through you This brilliantly over-the-top comedy about an unworldly heckler explores art and authenticity – being tripped up by it is part of the fun

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a... “A rollercoaster kind of excess” — hugely looking forward to this when it comes out next week. About time too: it’s been a while since the last Nicola Barker novel!

05.08.2025 12:57 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Androdecentrism in the Anthropocene: Weirding Masculinities in the Work of Max Porter, Martin Macinnes, and Matt Hill In an era marked by ecological collapse and accelerated technological transformation, the human subject, and especially the masculine subject, can no longer be imagined as sovereign, stable, or aut...

A radical new take by @angelariviz.bsky.social on “the green man” and British men’s writing in the Anthropocene, envisioning futures “in which masculinities may rot, sprout, and become otherwise” doi.org/10.1080/0011...

31.07.2025 11:26 — 👍 3    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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Bid to secure spot for glacier in Icelandic presidential race heats up Idea Angela Rawlings had a decade ago for Snæfellsjökull has snowballed into a full-blown campaign with a team of 50 people

a decade ago poet Angela Rawlings had an idea: Snæfellsjökull glacier for president of Iceland. now that idea has snowballed into a full-blown campaign with a team of 50 people www.theguardian.com/world/2024/a...

20.04.2024 06:21 — 👍 4    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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Aberffraw Beach at dawn

13.07.2025 11:03 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Interesting — like you, I’ve started to appeal to the uniqueness of their personal learning experience, which I’m asking them to spell out: what was it like for them reading a particular text? How did it impact them? What did they learn from class discussions? Etc.

09.07.2025 14:35 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Ted Hughes in a letter to his son: “Behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim.”

07.07.2025 23:11 — 👍 17    🔁 2    💬 2    📌 0

These bullet points sound wholly AI-generated to me: smarmy, condescending, “always helpful”, and blissfully contradictory. German has a word for this unmistakable tone; it’s “scheißfreundlich”.

04.07.2025 05:17 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Death of the Student Essay—and the Future of Cognition One professor's reflections on the end of an era, as AI tools such as ChatGPT have murdered the student essay (RIP). Here's why that threatens the future of human cognition—and how to save ourselves.

After the latest round of grading papers, I wrote about AI, ChatGPT, the death of the student essay, and what it means for the future of human cognition.

19.06.2025 10:44 — 👍 907    🔁 362    💬 72    📌 142

University gen AI training is presented as addressing a deficit in us. Staff and students need to be taught how to use it ethically and responsibly. But the problem is with the technology itself. It’s inherently unethical and irresponsible: extractive, imperialistic, delusional, and unsustainable.

26.06.2025 14:07 — 👍 62    🔁 24    💬 2    📌 0
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𝐄𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐀𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝. New resource! We have just launched out new #EnvHist map as a contribution to connecting scholar across the globe. It is a work in progress and will be expanded. www.iceho.org/eh-around-th... We hope you will find it useful!

14.05.2025 15:29 — 👍 20    🔁 8    💬 0    📌 1

@profberty is following 20 prominent accounts