Jacob Henry Leveton

Leo’s Ode to Latin American Theology Pope Leo XIV’s first exhortation, on love for the poor, is a tribute to Pope Francis and his predecessor’s namesake.

To treat the poor not just as equal but greater than ourselves:

David Lantigua writing for Commonweal 🕯️

Find a Chapter A list of AAUP chapters, both unionized and nonunionized. (You can also see a list of just union chapters.)

AAUP holds a day of action this Friday Oct 17

nationwide teach in against the loyalty oaths us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

the original 9 persecuted campuses have in-person events

find your chapter www.aaup.org/chapters/fin...

A red monochrome image fills the slide. Centered near the bottom, a blurred figure bends forward in motion, one hand touching the floor and one leg extended, as if caught mid-movement or transformation. The background glows in deep crimson, evoking heat, passion, and creation. Above the image, black and white text reads: “FIRE — A Study in Vision, Form, & Catharsis” and “Theodore Artist Visit.” The lower text identifies the course, FNAR 199: Art & Visual Culture · Loyola University Chicago, and the album artwork credit: “Theodore, FIRE. Album cover (detail). Athens: United We Fly, 2025.”

A cream-colored slide with red and black text. The header reads: “BREATHE INTO ME — Pneuma, Prophecy, and the Invocation of the Muses.” The text recounts musician Theodore’s reflection on his song “Breathe Into Me,” describing it as an invocation of the twelve Muses and a modern reimagining of Hesiod’s poetics. The body of text explores breath as a creative and divine force—human and more-than-human—rising from exhaustion toward illumination, and concludes with the image of waiting for inspiration as the cycle of breath giving life to song, and song to breath.

A nighttime image of a neoclassical building, the Hermoupolis Town Hall on the Greek island of Syros, bathed in bright linear lights and rising smoke. Musicians perform on its steps under beams of white light forming geometric patterns on the façade. The text above reads “Light, Place, & The Sacred Trace,” with reflections on Theodore’s discussion of performance in Greek public spaces. The text below explains how his lighting design honors the sacred lineage of Greek architecture, treating each performance as an act of memory and renewal.

A classroom photo shows a projected Zoom image of musician Theodore speaking from a softly lit studio. The slide background is a muted gold, with black and red text. The title reads: “Reckoner — Influence, Originality, & the Sound of Return.” The text below explains that the class listened to Radiohead’s “Reckoner” from In Rainbows and discussed artistic influence. Theodore reminded students that influence is never repetition, but the discovery of one’s own voice within another’s horizon—translating inspiration into new forms.

Still vibing on Monday's conversation students from Art & Visual Culture had as part of the semester's virtual artist visit with the recording artist Theodore.

Turns out: "Breathe into Me" from his new album FIRE is less about romantic ❤️ than an invocation of the 9 Muses.

#VisualCulture #Pedagogy

What Is To Be Done about the Radical Far-Right? Hegel, Lenin, Bannon, and the Trump Revolution: On the Dialectics of Smashing the State

Brilliant piece by @bernardharcourt.bsky.social this morning on Critique & Praxis.

Throws down a gauntlet for an American progressive left that must reclaim revolutionary radicalism against the far right’s bourgeois counter-revolution.

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Please sign the ally petition here:

act.seiu.org/a/loyola1

New on the Loyola AAUP Blog:

Loyola AAUP stands with SEIU Local 73 as negotiations stall.

Faculty working without contracts deserve solidarity, not silence.

#LoyolaChicago #AAUP #SEIULocal73 #AcademicFreedom #Solidarity

Don't write for Substack while it platforms Neo-Nazis;

Write for the non-standard, instead.

Two months after launch, it is still Instagram's only weekly gazette newspaper 💅

www.instagram.com/the.nonstand...

Bells and Cannons - Announcements - e-flux Bells and Cannons, Contemporary Art in the Face of Militarisation // October 16, 2025–March 1, 2026

Critical exhibition opening Oct. 16 at Contemporary Art Vilnius

www.e-flux.com/announcement...

#ContemporaryArt #Militarization

Orca Whales 🤝 Me

"Coho salmon fishes are a delicious autumn treat"

Doing good thinking & strong work today on how interdisciplinarity was absorbed into exchange value.

Truly readymade for Adorno-driven critique of the language of (research) administration.

The better way—interdisciplinarity as pure use value—is the only path forward for #HigherEd

Jane Goodall's work insisting, with evidence from her brilliant and tenacious fieldwork, that we were not so separate from animals, and they were much more like us than the Eurocentric theorists asserted, was so important.

New on the Loyola AAUP Blog: Suzanne Kaufman reflects on AAUP v. Rubio

www.aaup-luc.org/blog/reflect...

First blog post for Loyola's AAUP chapter just dropped on our new website! 💅

www.aaup-luc.org/blog/luc-aau...

"Communion with one another is a pathway to communion with God. Particularly in a world so often at war, this gesture can be a radical, countercultural act."

Anthony Russo in America Magazine, this morning.

This 👇

Thinking through the Shamanic Forms of Irish Catholicism today as part of the Fall Spiritual Exercise slate. Recognizing a significantly syncretic component of my Jesuit heritage on the Maryland side of my fam.

Ancestry do be with us in key ways; abstract psychopompestry for dark times.

An imaginary view of fantastical architecture around an ancient circus

An interior architectural view if a ruined building with botanical overgrowth

An imaginary prison with multiple, and impossible, staircases and levels

Interior of an ancient tomb with tourists, grave-robbers, and a long caption

The Sublime Dreams of Piranesi, a new gallery + commentary at Romantic Circles, is up at romantic-circles.org/gallery/exhi...

It's not great when faculty ghost conversation threads that are critical of administration to move on to something more
"positive."

The chances of anyone not getting tenure or promoted are so unlikely to be diminished by clear-eyed honesty in direct conversation with peers. Stay with the trouble.

It has to take something to do six hours of live sports commentary.

Even so, they surely can do better.

🤦, US #vueltaespana commentary

Cycling is a historically left sport

Supporters standing visibly with Palestine, especially when Peacock coverage amplifies, has a history

This calls for more clear & direct commentary than this sentence👇

"Ongoing Mideast Crisis rearing its presence being known"

More of this.

I started reading the list of Bucknell English dept faculty. I don't think I know any irl or on here but every single bio lists a current book project or a/many published book/s--expected, presumably, for tenure. Will Bucknell--upon closing Bucknell UP--stop expecting their own fac to publish books?

the non-standard, vol. 1, no. 5 (August 31, 2025) The Non-Standard, Vol. 1, No. 5 (August 31, 2025), continues our experiment in footnoted urgency, foregrounding responsiveness to the critical present. David L. Clark & Orrin N.C. Wang, “Given (Wh...

PDF here: www.academia.edu/143719524/th...

A full-page layout of the non-standard, Vol. 1, No. 5 (August 31, 2025), a weekly paper for experimentation in the materialisms of the present. The masthead displays the paper’s title in bold black and red lowercase letters, with “non-” offset, followed by the tagline: “a weekly paper for experimentation in the materialisms of the present.” Three essays fill the page, set in clean serif type across distinct columns: “Given (What Academics Text)” by David L. Clark and Orrin N.C. Wang: A serialized text exchange interweaving Dead & Co., Kant, Wollstonecraft, and Derrida with reflections on the ethics of teaching in catastrophic times. Includes meditations on grief, protest, silence, and the impossibility—and necessity—of teaching when classrooms are shattered by violence. “Grief’s Asymmetries” by Rebecca Gross: An intervention on Zionism, diaspora, and dispossession in the wake of Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. Engages Franz Fanon, Gabriel Winant, and Lital Levy while insisting on the asymmetry of grief as a political force. “And Just Like That” by Hannah Markley: A cultural critique of television’s endless reboots, from Sex and the City to Game of Thrones spinoffs, read as symptomatic of the recursive logic of AI and streaming media. Argues that deadened repetition and “mid-TV” mirror the self-absorbed artificiality of our technological moment. The layout is minimalist, emphasizing textual density and intellectual urgency. Footnotes appear beneath the final essay, citing Franz Fanon, Gabriel Winant, Lital Levy, and Ahmad Qabaha and Abdel Karim Daraghmeh. Author bios close the issue, noting institutional affiliations and forthcoming works.

the non-standard, issue 5 includes engagements with Palestine, opposing war, and resisting AI-driven audiovisual content.

Pieces by Rebecca Gross, David Clark and Orrin Wang, and Hannah Markley

Catching up on Chris’s analysis of UChicago situation today & trying to wrap my head around this graph.

How St. Ignatius’ Examen has shaped my poetry As a poet, I often use the examen to remind myself to be fully present to what I’m experiencing, and to let those moments ferment and mature.

Terrific reflection by Jasmine Marshall Armstrong on what the Ignatian meditation does for poetry.

#JesuitSky

Exhibition: Performing 19th Century Glasgow: Nation, Celebrity, Empire - Glasgow Life Exhibition on Glasgow Theatres

Glasgow pals, check out my new exhibition at the Mitchell Library on c19 theatre, empire, and celebrity! On display thru October. I'm also giving a talk at the Mitchell on race and c19 theatre on October 4 😊 www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/exhi...