Jacob Henry Leveton

News alert: Every day being a Sunday in August now stacked with letter of rec szn beginning earlier and earlier.

Why isn’t there a fan-fic genre for exactly this?

@amishtrivedi.bsky.social doing a grand discourse on what Marx would have been like as an associate proffie

Sometimes, I like to play a little game where I imagine what Karl Marx would have been like as an associate professor.

And so it was, that it came to be.

This is key, as critical a data point as it is unsurprising.

🐺 🐺 🐺 anarchistes!

BEAST 🦈 😍

FEATURED JOB: Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies [Tenure-Track] Bowdoin College - Maine

networks.h-net.org/jobs/68934/b...

#edusky #academicsky #environment

Screen shot of the series title in orange, and below the series image, a flag from a Palestine solidarity encampment in Copenhagen, Denmark: a white flag, with three fists in black, white and green emerging from a red tent.

Don't miss our Theorizing the Contemporary series from July:
"Settler Colonialism: Unsettling Exceptionalisms with & through Israel-Palestine" edited by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui & Ather Zia.
The collection illuminates the common structural dimensions of settler colonial projects across the globe.

Settler Colonialism: Unsettling Exceptionalisms with and through Israel-Palestine This forum focuses on the urgent necessity of understanding settler colonialism as an analytic, especially given the recent political assaults on...

"This forum focuses on the urgent necessity of understanding settler colonialism as an analytic, especially given the recent political assaults on the concept that have been concurrent with the Israel and U.S. genocide of the Palestinian people."
Check out all 14 contributions here:

New book will be announced soon. And, yes, you should be excited. My brain is on fire with all the ideas for it.

Final text-only slide. The author writes: “I averted my eyes, anyway.” 
This is followed by a poetic closing paragraph about logistics, Romanticism, and the phrase, attributable to a bird of hope in the spirit of romanticism’s political history: “enjoy your terror, in all appropriate measure.” Below is a bio for Kate Singer, including her position at Mount Holyoke and book title.
Footnotes cite Maggie Kearnan’s play and Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology. 
At the bottom is a correction note clarifying that the stylized title How *Not* to Save the World with Mr. Bezos should underline the word Not, to emphasize its ironic structure and focus on Bezos.

Text-only slide continuing the essay. A performance mode is described: a Fact Checker honks at dialogue errors, makes cultural commentary, and leads singalongs. 
A stylized block quote from Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology reads: They know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they don’t know. 
This is attributed to Žižek. The author’s dog, Norman, is invoked humorously as adding:
and are enjoying it, anyway. 
The final paragraph describes the author’s discomfort watching Bezos—played by Noah Tuleja—humiliated and “trussed and bled like a pig.”

Paragraphs describe Kearnan’s world as a “Marxist fever dream,” with a central statute: No one may possess more than $999 million—not a penny more. 
This quote is bolded and centered in sans-serif. The essay goes on to describe how excess wealth is criminalized and mocked, and how Bezos is subjected to theatrical justice by vigilante performers.

Text on slide—During a recent run of How *Not* to Save the World with Mr. Bezos, the audience—divided in the black box like products on a warehouse shelf—was asked: Center: Photograph of the stage performance. One performer sits at a table under a glowing ring light, another stands before a screen that says “MR. BEZOS.” The set evokes trial by a dystopian tribunal. 
Caption: How Not to Save the World with Mr. Bezos, by Maggie Kearnan, dir. Clay Hopper, 2025. Great Barrington Public Theatre.
 Bottom: In orange italics, the quote from the play—“who here subscribes to Amazon Prime?”

A slide with a stylized grayscale portrait of Kate Singer, looking directly at the viewer, framed by a window and hanging lamp. Title text reads: “Kate Singer, “Bezos on Trial.” A vertical sidebar says: from the non-standard, vol. 1 no. 1 • August 3, 2025. At the bottom: “Carousel with Article in Full” and a right-facing arrow.

Kate Singer, “Bezos on Trial”

From the Non-Standard’s first issue on Sunday

#thenonstandard #logisticscapitalism #abolishbillionaires #jeffbezos #criticaltheory #publicwriting #marxistfeminism #katesinger #theatre #zizek #romanticism #literature #artandpolitics #materialism #printculture

⤵️

ACLS Digital Justice Grants The ACLS Digital Justice Grant program is designed to address the inequities in the access to support for digital work across various fields.

For any BlueSky friends engaged in Digital Humanities projects, here's a place to apply for seed money

www.acls.org/programs/acl...

JOB: TT Assistant Professor, 19th century African American History, Bates College
www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

syllabus season! if you're teaching Immediacy, Marxist Film Theory, Climate Realism or anything else on finance, aesthetics, media, lit and want to schedule a class visit give a shout! www.annakornbluh.com/publications/

At the top of the week’s paper, the Non-Standard’s logo with red circle and hyphen, alt-mondialisation first right triangle in place of an “A” and then earth-toned left triangle in place of second “A.”

Beneath is the paper’s tagline: a weekly experiment in the materialism’s of the present, and then issue dated:

August 3, 2025 · vol. 1, no. 1 

Editor’s Note by Jacob Henry Leveton (left column):
A manifesto explaining that the paper is not a platform or launch but a site for non-aligned political thought. The note references Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Sergei Tretyakov, and Joan Didion, calling for a turn to “non-journalism” that resists platform logic and embraces pluralism and resistance. A footnote references Marx and François Laruelle. “Bezos on Trial” by Kate Singer (center column):
A satire of Amazon logistics and billionaire accumulation, set during a performance of Maggie Kearnan’s play titled How Not to Save the World with Mr. Bezos. The audience is likened to products on warehouse shelves. In the playwright’s imagined reality, no billionaire may own more than $999 million. The piece explores Kearnan’s world as a “Marxist fever dream” and burlesque trial. Žižek is quoted. Singer’s dog Norman adds to the enjoyment and commentary against extreme wealth inequality. “Neither Amazement Nor Normalcy” by Samuel Weber (right column):
A philosophical meditation on post-Benjaminian theory, anti-fascism, and political aesthetics. The piece begins with a Benjamin quote that opposes “amazement” as dominant political ideology that underpinned fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, and is ascendant, today. Weber critiques state power, late-fascist governance, and the friend–enemy logic to Carl Schmitt.

Aligned to the left column is a detail of Zachary Cahill’s 2019 artwork: The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, from the artist’s USSA Postal Service. The banner features a woman standing before a post office featuring a multiplicity of doric columns

the non-standard

vol. 1, no. 1 • Aug. 3, 2025

🎭 Kate Singer on Late-Captialism and Jeff Bezos in Maggie Kearnan’s play in the Berkshires

⚠️ Sam Weber on Benjamin, Adorno, and resisting murderous states and algorithmic repression

⬛️ Myself on François Laruelle and non-journalism

Yeah duude. U warned me quite a lot of time before I joined faculty life. It real real

A month of Sundays @annakornbluh.bsky.social

So proud of my Mason peers.

JOB: TT Assistant Professor, American Politics, Wake Forest University

Media & Politics
www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

Review of Joseph Viscomi, William Blake's Printed Paintings In my review of Joseph Viscomi’s William Blake’s Printed Paintings (Yale University Press, 2021), I situate the book within long-standing debates in Blake studies, particularly regarding the artist-po...

Circling back to the Wordsworth Circle piece where I critique Joseph Viscomi’s William Blake’s Printed Paintings (@yalepress.bsky.social, 2021).

While the book is beautifully produced, I ask:

What’s at stake when we sideline labor, class, and serious art history in favor of studio reenactment?

The Open Access journal Environmental Humanities publishes outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship that draws on humanities disciplines to engage in conversation with one another, and with the natural and social sciences, around significant environmental issues. Read issue 17:2 buff.ly/8kwhEtk

Reduction in Northwestern’s Workforce: Leadership Notes - Northwestern University In response to challenges we have been articulating since November, Northwestern has taken several measures to protect the University’s long-term financial stability.

Deeply disappointed in Northwestern.

After the successful “We Will” campaign—launched post-2008 to safeguard the university’s future—the institution was uniquely positioned to spend down its endowment.

Laying off staff now is a betrayal—of labor, love, and the future $6.1B was meant to secure.

Re: the idea that empathy or compassion is bad or even "toxic," a belief held even by some Christians today.

There is problem with that belief, and that problem comes from Jesus himself....