Jess Masters

The nested narratives in this

An image of a Tarot card empress with a crown of stars on a mustard yellow background. The text says: Weird Modernism, BAMS/ MSA 26, 1-4 July 2026. Loughborough University, UK

Believe it or not, it's already time to think about MSA 2026 in Loughborough, UK. The conference will meet July 1-4, and proposals for panels, papers, roundtables, workshops, and seminars is December 1. Please note this MUCH earlier deadline. The CFP is here: www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M...

The first rule of NYC is obviously mind your business, but the second one appears to be that now it's legal to jaywalk, it's stupid not to

Now that the amazing and insanely full MSA Boston conference is over, I'm just making sure the place in NYC where EE Cummings would bellow YOU ALRIGHT DJUNA to Barnes across the way is still there (it's there)
@moderniststudies.bsky.social

Wish you were here too!

MSA friends! Come watch me read a (too hastily-written) paper on ekphrastic accumulation at 10.15 on Friday and perhaps, if you're lucky, you may even see me butcher @glavey.bsky.social 's amazing work! The potential for fun is endless @moderniststudies.bsky.social

Through her creative platform, Saint Heron, Solange has launched The Saint Heron Library, a digital archive dedicated to making rare and out-of-print works by Black authors, poets, and artists accessible to all.

🔗 library.saintheron.com

Oddballs unite for a Euro summer!

The CFP for next year's joint MSA/BAMS conference in Loughborough, UK is out! As a longtime oddball, am thrilled for a Euro summer, 'Weird Modernisms'-style

@moderniststudies.bsky.social @modernistudies.bsky.social

This graduate mentoring program designed by @jessmasters.bsky.social is a new MSA initiative, and I wish existed when I was a grad student. Pass it along to any graduate students working in modernism or modernist-adjacent fields, like the Harlem Renaissance, 20th-century studies, etc.

Finally, the MSA Board is excited to announce a new graduate mentoring program! Graduate student MSA members have the opportunity to be paired with a senior faculty member for one-on-one mentoring sessions. More info can be found when you register for the conference. @jessmasters.bsky.social

Reading Scenario Experiments. This series of prompts is designed to get you thinking about how the setting for reading affects concentration, comprehension, and even the existential experience of reading. Every week, one of the following prompts will appear on the syllabus. I encourage you to try all of them that you are able. How does a different reading setting affect your mood? Your receptiveness to the prose? Your pleasure or difficulty reading? What are the particular impacts of changing your lighting or surroundings? What do you notice about yourself and about the work you are reading during this experiment? 1. read by candlelight (use a small lamp in dorms where no candles are allowed!) 2. read for one hour without checking any devices, answering texts, etc. 3. walk out into nature (climb a tree, sit on a rock, grab a spot in a hammock) and read 4. host a reading night with friends & food (sit in companionable silence, reading without chatting) 5. read aloud a chapter to someone else 6. climb into bed at night and read by flashlight under the covers for at least 30 minutes, as if you’ve already been told “lights out” as a kid 7. reread a chapter and see what new things you notice the second time through 8. change your ambient-noise level: add music if you normally read in the quiet; or read without music if you are normally a music-listener 9. read with a sketchpad at hand and sketch scenes, characters, or other elements from the story 10. practice focused listening: have someone read to you 11. make yourself a special, fancy snack on a real plate to nibble while eating: pay attention to the cooking or arranging or choosing of ingredients to make it especially appetizing first 12. make tea (even if you’re not usually a tea drinker), and read and sip 13. invent a new reading scenario for yourself, or repeat the one you liked the best from this term [writing assignment using these prompts follows; text character limit prevents inclusion of it in full]

Here you go! I'll write some new ones for this semester too. They loved them. The "read without your phone or screens in the room" was a revelation, and many of them decided to keep doing it. They had NO IDEA (& were horrified) how often they interrupt themselves to look at a phone for no reason.

Marked decline in semicolons in English books, study suggests Usage of punctuation down almost half in two decades as further research finds 67% of British students rarely use it

Further signs of crisis;

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

EVERYTHING HERE IS EXPIRED

Edited headline about 100 men vs a gorilla that now reads: “Cetology smackdown: could 100 men beat a specific white whale in a fight? Here’s what sub-sub-librarians say”

We’ve run the numbers and seen all the data models. It’s not looking good.

This is why I went back to grad school (though also not thyroid)

Happy democracy sausage day to all who celebrate (Australian Federal election, everyone celebrates, it's mandatory)

Voting is open for several positions on the MSA Exec Board! Have your say here---

This looks so good! Wishing I could follow along

"That computer, and that software, relied on the skilled, technical, embodied expertise and labor of thousands of women, including women of color."

The deadline for the 2025 MSA Conference in Boston has been extended to April 15! If you've been thinking of submitting a panel, paper, or roundtable proposal, you now have more time to do so.

It will feel good to gather to talk about modernism, the 20th century, and higher education. Join us!

Australasian modernists, the abstract deadline for the AMSN guaranteed panel at MSA 2025 is one week away. Join us in Boston! amsn.org.au/events/

I cannot wait to read this!!

Nothing has made me feel more connected to my field, and more proactive in helping to preserve the things I value in it, than serving on the MSA Board. If you’re interested, I cannot recommend it enough.

MSA Members! Are you interested in serving on the MSA Board, which runs our organization? We need you! There are four positions open: 2nd VP, Treasurer, Vice Program Chair, and Contingent Faculty Rep. Nominations are open until April 21. More info here: www.moderniststudies.org/about/board-...

If there is such as thing as monograph manchester merch, consider me your first buyer

The Wallflower Avant-Garde by @glavey.bsky.social is one of those texts I return to, again and again, when thinking about all things shapely excess, multiplicity in motion, living paintings, and how queer ekphrasis bends our notions of word and image. If I could use it as a pillow, I would.

I needed this reminder today. “Attacks on academia show the continued importance of critical intellectual work as a collective endeavor.”

Are you affiliated with the Australian Modernist Studies Network? Want to hang with some Australians/New Zealanders/Pacific scholars in Boston? Submit your ideas on "Southern (Infra)Structures" for AMSN's guaranteed panel at MSA 2025!

@moderniststudies.bsky.social @modernism-asia.bsky.social

Last few hours to submit for 'Generous Modernisms' -- have thoughts on the impossibility (or necessity) of generosity in academia? Read a generous modernist text? Thinking about generous scholarship? Resisting or examining scarcity? Consider submitting a paper to us!

@moderniststudies.bsky.social