J. Michelle Coghlan

The Jameson Tapes, Side A with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson

NEW!
1st of 2 installments contextualizing Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society, discusses "Marxism & Historicism," historicizing the lectures, recovering them, the commodity as its own ideology, long arc of Jameson's influence

theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...

theory nerds! propose fall events! we host mini seminars, field trips, book talks, works-in-progress sessions, and reading groups. guest suite for out-of-towners! booktour bringing you to chicago? add us to your list! wedding weekend? fill it out with research!

to propose: interccect at gmail

Think about what the GOP is revealing with their attempt to suddenly change the Congressional maps: they know their agenda is so unpopular that they're going to lose unless something changes.

Of course, what they should be changing is their policies, not the maps.

‘Vicious cycle’ of language degree cuts and declining enrolments Universities encouraged to offer language degrees to students with no prior experience as low uptake in schools creates pipeline problems

Cutting modern language degrees at universities is creating a “vicious cycle” and risks contributing to the continued decline of foreign language learning among children in the UK, it has been warned. @patrickjack.bsky.social reports
#academicsky #languages

Screenshot of text: [Highlighting begins] But the shooting may put concerns over gun violence back on voters’ minds, and may lead some to further scrutinize Mr. Mamdani, [Highlighting ends] who has relatively limited experience in government and has not handled a high-profile crisis while in office.

One fascinating thing about the most self-serious newspaper in America with its staff of the winning journalistic meritocrats is that it routinely, institutionally publishes completely made-up bullshit speculation about pure abstractions, based on zero reporting, written as if it were plain facts

ICE Agents Invade a Manhattan Little League Field Youman Wilder has coached local kids for twenty-one years—including four who have gone pro. When masked agents tried to interrogate his players, he told them, “You don’t have more rights than they do....

When ICE agents questioned a group of 11- to 14-year-olds who’d just finished batting practice, their coach, Youman Wilder, stepped in. “I’m willing to die to make sure these kids can get home,” he recounted afterward.

Glad to be partnering with the ACLU in my attempt to hold whoever was in charge of firing me responsible. It’s important, especially during these particular times, that we fight for our rights (and not just to party)

the one thing i genuinely did not anticipate from this administration was its vicious, know nothing hostility to any and everything that might even be adjacent to science and scientific research. they genuinely one to destroy the entirety of the nation’s research capacity. and for what, exactly?

World Court Says Polluter States Must Compensate Victims for Harms They Cause The ICJ’s landmark ruling says there is an international human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.

The ICJ’s landmark ruling says there is an international human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.

Workshop: How to Edit Your Own Book Turn your current work-in-progress into a manuscript that scholarly publishers will actually want. Join Laura Portwood-Stacer to learn a time-tested method for developing publishable scholarly books, ...

If you are like the many academic book writers I know who were never taught a systematic way to revise a manuscript (and can therefore feel the writing process dragging on longer than you want it to), my next free workshop on August 6th is for you

courses.manuscriptworks.com/courses/edit...

Describe something you learned from lecture this week that you didn’t know just from doing the readings. Connect something you learned in 209 this week to something you are learning in another of your classes this semester. If Monday and Wednesday assigned readings were from two different texts, make connections between the two. Do they share themes? Forms? Tone? Historical context? Do you find them equally interesting? Look at the very first paragraph of one of our texts and discuss how the opening lays the groundwork for the rest of the work. Quote specific lines, phrases, or images. Using quotes from a text, persuade someone (friend or foe, your grandma or your senator) to change their mind about something important. Compose a 5 song playlist to accompany an assigned reading from this week, and write a few sentences for each song, explaining your choices. Describe an idea you had in response to the readings/lecture/discussions for our class this week- any idea, about literature, or the world, or yourself. How might you pursue this idea, in your studies or elsewhere? Choose a passage (no more than 10 lines) from the readings this week and rewrite it, changing at least one of the literary aspects such as: person (change from first to third-person or vice versa), tense (change from past to present etc), focalizing character (i.e. write it from a different character's perspective), style (adjectives, diction, description, tone). Then write 2-3 sentences about the effect of your changes. Compose a yelp review to strangers, or a letter to a specific person, or a booktok style video, recommending a novel/poem/play from this week’s reading. Write a letter to someone who has questioned your choice of majoring or minoring in English, explaining why you value what you’re learning. Include quotes / ideas from this week’s readings.

syllabus time, teaming up for the herculean efforts of reinventing writing assignments. here, some prompts for required weekly low stakes 250-500 word reflections/ process pieces that have proven relatively conducive to real writing in lit class. please share any similar suggestions in thread.

A Common Craziness — Parapraxis Diagnosing Youth Revolt at the Columbia 1968 Uprisings hannah proctor

I wrote this essay on psychoanalytic interpretations of the 1968 student uprisings at Columbia university @parapraxismag.bsky.social - students who opposed the university's complicity in the US war in Vietnam insisted society was 'crazy' rather than them

www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/a-c...

Teaching American Studies Network: Call for Expressions of Interest for Lead and Steering Group Members - British Association for American Studies The Teaching American Studies Network (TASN) was founded in 2020 and is the only UK-based scholarly network focused on HE pedagogical practice in American Studies. Now that TASN is firmly…

The BAAS Teaching American Studies Network is seeking new lead/co-leads. The role entails attending subcommittee meetings, liaising with members, & the organisation of networking events.

Expressions of interest should be sent before 15th September 2025.

More info: baas.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Basically the only protected characteristic in UK employment law is 'bigot'

I'm on this podcast! In fact I'm especially hard to avoid, because I spoke to Izzy about Labour and empire across the entire twentieth century, so I could pop up in ANY EPISODE

A charity working w/ local asylum seekers in my neighbourhood told me the families couldn’t accept donations of art supplies because the hotels housing them wouldn’t permit the kids to use markers or crayons in their rooms for fear of messes. The cruelty of these places knows no bounds.

The newham charity @magpieprojectuk.bsky.social have been campaigning for ages to stop families being housed without access to kitchens. Families are being forced to live in places with nowhere to cook suitable food for children, nowhere to make an iftar meal, nowhere to make baby formula.

Do 600,000 graduates claim Universal Credit and would it matter if they did? Welcome to silly season.

'So, there probably aren’t more than 600,000 graduates on Universal Credit. If there were, this would be a low proportion of the total number of graduates...It doesn’t really tell us anything about the value of a degree, but it does tell us that the UK has a problem with low pay more generally.'

Gaza: BBC's Jeremy Bowen goes onboard a plane dropping aid The BBC's international editor was on a Jordanian flight as it dropped supplies into Gaza.

"The Israelis don't want us to film out of the window at the devastation inside Gaza. But I've spent 10 mins looking at it with my own eyes and I can tell you communities in the north of Gaza, that I knew well, are flat. There's nothing left of them."

Jeremy Bowen

www.bbc.com/news/videos/...

Appeals Court Delivers Another Blow to Voting Rights Act Read more here.

🚨BREAKING: The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals holds that voters and private organizations can no longer sue under Section 208 – the VRA provision that protects the right of voters with disabilities or language barriers to receive assistance at the polls. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Van with picture of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein spotted in Aberdeen

A van displaying a picture of Donald Trump and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been spotted in Aberdeen

Two Israeli human rights groups say their country is committing genocide in Gaza It is the first time that Jewish-led organizations in Israel have made such accusations against the country during nearly 22 months of war.

It is the first time that Jewish-led organizations in Israel have made such accusations against the country during nearly 22 months of war.

Dropped cases against LA protesters reveal false claims from federal agents Revealed: records show border patrol gave inaccurate testimony about people it jailed. Prosecutors now face ‘embarrassing’ dismissals

This proves five things:

1. The protests in LA were peaceful
2. The National Guard and Marines were unnecessary
3. ICE officers lie
4. DHS stats on ICE agent assaults are overblown
5. You can not, in fact, indict a ham sandwich if you have no case

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The Bartender and the Lost Literary Masterpiece How a Manchester native rescued “Caliban Shrieks,” Jack Hilton’s working-class opus.

I missed this story when it came out in the @newyorker.com last November, but what a remarkable find came from a stop at the Working Class Movement Library. Exciting to think what other treasures might await! @wcmlibrary.bsky.social

As I reported earlier this year at @motherjones.com, Russell Vought's daughter has benefited immensely from NIH research, and her condition (cystic fibrosis) has received more research funding than most rare diseases. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

the encampment students were right and we should have listened to them

One of the dumbest times I went viral on Twitter was for a thread about this and there were creepy people in my mentions for days. So: fun fact, the average age of a bride on her first marriage in 18th-century England was 26.

My current research would literally not be possible without the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, housed and supported by the University of Florida Libraries, with foundational funding from NEH and IMLS, both of which have now been destroyed. newspapers.uflib.ufl.edu/overview

The defunding of USAID was the American Wannsee, the moment the ruling party’s psychosis and disregard for human life led them to choose to kill millions of innocents for its own sake. There is no normal politics possible after that, and no one has understood that yet (not even me, at a gut level).

Handwritten notecard. Prompt at the top asks: What object was most devastating for you to lose, and how have you been coping? Answer below: Dentures. Were thrown away and coping isn't somthing I can do. It’s made me feel ugly, unworthy, can’t go get a job with no teeth. So how can get off the streets until another pair can be made?

ProPublica spoke to about 150 people who had lived in homeless encampments when cities cleared them out in “sweeps.”

We distributed notecards so people could tell us about the toll in their own words.

➡️ This is what they wrote: projects.propublica.org/impact-of-ho...