Courtney Weiss Smith

JOB!! early modern VAP at Wesleyan! I had this exact position out of grad school and I can say firsthand that the Wesleyan English dept is wonderful, supportive and protective/welcoming. And the students are great! If you know anyone who wants a very good one-year gig, please tell them to apply.

Friends! We are looking for a visiting assistant professor with expertise in 17th century literature. Help me spread the word? It’s limited term, but I can promise wonderful students and lovely colleagues for a very nice bit of teaching experience… wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

- Wesleyan University Press $1,000 cash prize and publication by Wesleyan University Press  Submissions will be open February 1–28, 2026. Click here to submit! Guidelines Author

PSA @weslpress.bsky.social is now accepting applications for its Cardinal Poetry Prize, for poets over 40 who have not published a poetry book. www.weslpress.org/the-cardinal...

a piece of red jelly on a white plate on a pink surface ALT: a piece of red jelly on a white plate on a pink surface

I’m sorry for subjecting the world to my gleeful anachronism, but this is an image that floats into my bubble-head, by way of response…

What a set of lines!

Hahaha there’s the whole “post a picture from 2016” happening across the interwebs and my biggest takeaway from considering for a moment participating in that is that I shouldn’t have had bangs in 2016 and I don’t want to share the pictures 😂

The pope one is wild! I didn’t know he had weighed in in favor of Matthew McFadyen, pegged him as a Firth guy myself… 😂

This is great! I feel like it should be on @annakornbluh.bsky.social’s super useful against ai crowd sourced platform!

“I went to the wood to live deliberately NO CAP; to front only the SIGMA facts of life…”

“We all need the tonic of SIX SEVEN…”

7year old this morning: Mama can I look up where brain rot came from?

Me: Oh, sure—I think it’s an internet thing but look it up…

7: It says here it’s from some author, Henry David Thoreau?!

Me: ?!?!?!

Dying laughing—but the OED also cites Walden for the first usage of the word…

You in turn are making think I can power through In the Woods despite my firm rule against dead children in pleasure reading.

Also I’ve read I think five or six of these since mid-December. I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole LOL…

Enjoy! I really liked the searcher / hunter pairing. And do try the witch elm, which I loved: it’s got what I thought was some of the best stuff of the likeness—the incantatory rhythms of a small group in a lovely house—just without the plot holes.

I also really love her way with the supernatural stuff—this was especially fun in the secret place I thought!

Admittedly I can’t / havent read the ones with dead small children—Broken Harbor, eg. But I would rank Witch Elm above The Likeness—I couldn’t get over the improbability of that whole set up…

Ooooh I’ve been on a Tana French spree this month, this is fun!

Why is Witch Elm not on this list?! (Different series I know but still a TF murder mystery!)

Here’s a full table of contents!

@ajab.bsky.social Alexander Jabbari, @helgejojo.bsky.social Helge Jordheim, Alexandra Lianeri, David Lurie, Nancy Partner, and Ronit Ricci.

Come think with us about the relationships between and among languages, histories, and methods!

Philology Now – Volume 64, Number 4 — History and Theory History and Theory, Volume 64, Number 4

It’s here! I’m delighted to share a new theme issue of @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social, “Philology Now.” Valeria López Fadul and I edited this issue, featuring smart contributions by Emily Apter, Peter de Bolla, Alan Durston, Cymone Fourshey, Claire Gilbert, Anthony Grafton…

historyandtheory.org/64-4

Samesies! #notok

Tita are you ok? Bwahahahaha

I’m so excited to learn about this edition!

I think Pamela is totally possible!

That’s actually lovely and notable. Smith can sometimes be a real jerk to Smith. 🤪

“I deeply appreciate Lynch’s generosity,” said Lynch in response.

CFP: “Embodied Knowledge Practices in the Early Modern World”
Conference at the University of Amsterdam
Monday, 15 June 2026

How do material conditions shape how & what we know about the natural world?

#earlymodern #C18L

1/6

I wasn’t criticizing—I found this interesting, the reformatting exercise in particular! I just intuited something implicit in both, thinking about rhyme as something more structural in relation to the line’s meter or rhythm.

He says it dismissively but I’d love to read a defense of the logic and the pleasures of that kind of thing, especially in relation to a history unmetrical rhyming that includes Moore and Brooks…

Oh this is a curious review—quite close really to Hollander’s logic but way more recent.

I’m interested, though, in his suggestion that we can sometimes understand this rhyme as high concept…

Ooooh this is an especially good example in relation to Hollander’s!

I *knew* you’d had something interesting to say about this—thank you!!! Also I haven’t read that Merrill text and I literally must, immediately….