Maia Kotrosits

Epic Fury: Donald Trump, Israel's Iran strike is righteous | The Jerusalem Post Donald Trump’s Iran war, Operation Epic Fury, is absolutely and fantastically righteous, as is Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion. Today, both the Persian and Jewish people celebrate a Purim miracle.

Yep, zero need for Religious Studies classes to help our students operate with a deeper understanding of our present world and how religious history and scriptures shape identities and actions
www.jpost.com/opinion/arti...

Good thing some US colleges are closing their Religious Studies departments—definitively not “useful” at all or an area of expertise that might be relevant for understanding our present…

RACING THE CLASSICS

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS (ABD and early-career)

Racing the Classics, a Mellon-funded initiative, invites applications for its second cohort. It involves a two-week in-person Summer Institute, and an academic-year practicum over Zoom (Sept ‘26-May ‘27)

See here: www.racingtheclassics.com

TORNEY GEN THLTEXAS KEN PAXΤΟΝ ATTORNEY GENERAL OF TEXAS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 2, 2026 www.texasattorneygeneral.gov Communications@oag.texas.gov Attorney General Ken Paxton Issues Landmark Legal Opinion Declaring It Illegal for Mental Health Providers to "Transition" Texas Kids AUSTIN - Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued a legal opinion declaring that the prohibitions under S.B. 14 making it illegal for health care providers to "transition" kids does apply to "mental health care providers" licensed by the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council. The opinion notes that the Council's licensees constitute health care providers under the law, which makes clear that they are governed by state law barring funds going to those who facilitate the prohibited "transition" procedures. Licensees are defined as "health care providers" in this sense for good reason, as the path to kids being "transitioned" often starts with unethical indoctrination by activists providing mental "health care" designed to confuse children about their gender. Thus, the Legislature's prohibition on those unlawfully "transitioning" our kids which covers not only any person or entity who "provides" medical interventions, but also an individual or entity who "facilitates" medical interventions certainly applies to licensed mental health care providers. "Any radical facilitating the 'transitioning' of our kids is committing child abuse," said Attorney General Paxton. "The law is clear that these radical procedures are illegal and in no world should Texans' tax dollars be used to permanently harm children. This opinion should send a clear warning there will be consequences for any medical professional, whether a doctor or a therapist, who is illegally 'transitioning' Texas kids." The opinion's summary states: "Any licensee that facilitates the provision of unlawful procedures or treatments that aim to transition a child's sex are thus forbidden from receiving public money in support of those e…

2. AG Paxton of Texas announced a new interpretation of state law that would extend the state's ban on gender-affirming care for minors to mental health providers, declaring that any therapist who affirms a trans youth's identity is "facilitating" illegal treatment and committing child abuse.

Here's the recording for the book launch of our second 4T book. Hear Fabien Muller and Aaron Johnson discuss Porphyry, theology, theurgy, and more!

Inside the Body of Black Feminism: Science, Race, Culture

Everything is the worst rn. Work keeps on keeping on. Support research in feminist and ethnic studies (not necessarily mine). If you are inclined: PREORDER dukeupress.edu/inside-the-b... Discount code E26PINTO @dukepress.bsky.social

journal cover

Journal of Early Christian Studies Vol. 34, No.1 (2026) muse.jhu.edu/issue/56477 @projectmuse.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social @sarahparkhouse.bsky.social

The Trump Administration is Testing Conversion Therapy By Medically Experimenting on Trans People in Prisons The Bureau of Prisons is subjecting trans people to conversion therapy and denying them care with the goal of helping them "recover." It's trying to prove dangerous conversion practices can work.

Under a new policy released Thursday, the Trump Administration will test conversion therapy on trans people in prisons. It explicitly states that it aims to help trans people “recover,” all the while forcibly detransitioning them both medically and socially.

transitics.substack.com/p/the-trump-...

RtC Fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend, travel, and lodging while in residence at the Summer Institute. For questions, please contact racingtheclassics@gmail.com.

RACING THE CLASSICS

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS (ABD and early-career)

Racing the Classics, a Mellon-funded initiative, invites applications for its second cohort. It involves a two-week in-person Summer Institute, and an academic-year practicum over Zoom (Sept ‘26-May ‘27)

See here: www.racingtheclassics.com

This is bad news for everyone in the South, and really bad news for low-income trans folks. The surgeons getting pushed out of university hospitals will move to private practice and while SOME people will still get trans surgeries covered by insurance, those on Medicaid won’t.

[How to document a passing world?]

#smallpoemsunday (late entry) by @maiakotro.bsky.social

🎉 @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

They killed 36 girls today. www.news18.com/world/36-stu...

Tenure decisions have been influenced by institutional finances for years now, unfortunately.

"Every fascism has its subhumans. To technofascists, humans are the subhumans." -- Kelly Hayes

Seized Art, Eavesdropping Guards: Parents Describe a Clampdown at Dilley Detention Center as Kids Shared Their Stories Detainees told ProPublica that art supplies have been removed in room searches, immigrants have lost access to Gmail and staff hover within earshot during video calls.

NEW: Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils & paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to detainees and others. After one inspection, the children just “cried and cried and cried,” a mother said. The facility denies the claims.

By @mckenziefunk.com @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Apply now for the 2026 Tom Regan Visiting Research Fellowship The NC State University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and Culture & Animals Foundation (CAF) are excited to offer the annual Tom Regan Visiting Research Fe

Excellent fellowship opportunity for animal ethics & animal studies scholars.

Beyonce could do the funniest thing and release her album during the state of the union

Did I mention I am hiring? Yes, I’m going to repost this frequently

Thinking about attending the SCS in Boston? Love monks and Late Antiquity? Submit an abstract for this panel!

Both at the Clark Humanities Museum

Soon I'm giving two public lectures at Scripps College in CA as part of the O'Brien Distinguished Visiting Professorship. LA-area friends, would love to see you there!

March 31, 4:30pm: Lyricism as Historiography of the Long Past

April 1, 4:15pm: Feminist Histories and the Problem of the Real

The utterance of "A.I.'s inevitability" is one of the most stark pure performatives I've seen in my time working in higher ed. Every time it is uttered, it is clearly not reporting a fact about the world but instead actively trying to create the reality it narrates. We can and must refuse.

A Fatal ICE Shooting Occurred in Texas Months Before Renee Good’s Killing

This case is insane:

ICE shot and killed a citizen last March then *hid it for a year.*

The young man they killed had no criminal history.

All we know about shooting is from internal ICE docs.

We don't know officers' names.

We don't have footage.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/u...

Being gorgeous was not simply a way of representing imperial power. It was a mode of governance, a means of getting people to do and not do things. These emperors, the reader will discover in the pages that follow, used a highly capa- cious, fluid, flexible male gender performance to exercise sovereignty. This is political history that focuses on the centrality of imperial beauty, in all its sparkle, for ­ establishing Theodosius and his sons as arbiters of elite manliness. It shows how they manifested and deployed male same-sex desire, indeed queerness, at the ­ center of power to declare their unifying force as the most sacred and divine rulers, tasked with guaranteeing the eternity of the realm. That is, this is a history not of gender as such but of gender as integral to the exercise of political power.

i'm only 14 pages into Susanna Elm's IMPORTANCE OF BEING GORGEOUS and it's sooooooo good

www.ucpress.edu/read/books/t...

(read for free!)

The second volume in our series, Texts & Translations of Transcendence & Transformation (4T): Fabien Muller's /Porphyry of Tyre on Theology and Theurgy/

Job: 1-year Lecturer in Religion, Ethics, and Politics and/or Philosophy and Religion at Princeton (we hope for at TT search next year). Preference to candidates who can teach an undergraduate survey course such as "Religion and its Modern Critics."

Deadline: 4/1/26

apply.interfolio.com/181428

Please donate to this if you can. We say “Minneapolis” but ICE is everywhere and the East Side of St. Paul has been hurting just as bad.

I feel like I’m not pulling my posting weight here.

“I Was Just a Body” - Maya Ragsdale - Inquest Temp agencies rely on a constant stream of formerly incarcerated workers to keep jobs unstable and wages low.

"Decarceral and labor organizing are inseparable." —Maya Ragsdale of Beyond the Bars on how the temp labor market exploits formerly incarcerated people, to the detriment of all workers.