Pinned
Farah Bakaari
@bakaari.bsky.social
· Nov 18
yes, i’m a class A curmudgeon, but a basic tenant of my professional life is to act as though the pie is always larger than we are told it is. i’m always happy to choose fellowship over ambition. i’ve no anxiety about influence. may this always be the case.
when you come home in a furious mood and there are too many contenders for a culprit, what do you do? make lentils and listen to florence is one answer.
January 27, 2026 at 2:56 AM
when you come home in a furious mood and there are too many contenders for a culprit, what do you do? make lentils and listen to florence is one answer.
i am writing an essay for a more general audience and i looked at the draft and worried it was perhaps too academic. i the removed “always already,” and was like okay it’s good for public consumption now
January 26, 2026 at 9:01 PM
i am writing an essay for a more general audience and i looked at the draft and worried it was perhaps too academic. i the removed “always already,” and was like okay it’s good for public consumption now
sometimes i am a slow writer because i don’t know what i am doing or where i am going. other times i am a slow writer because i know exactly what i need to do and therefore extremely bored of carrying it out. either way, it sucks.
January 26, 2026 at 12:12 AM
sometimes i am a slow writer because i don’t know what i am doing or where i am going. other times i am a slow writer because i know exactly what i need to do and therefore extremely bored of carrying it out. either way, it sucks.
i’m jealous of your snow please report it with lots of photos.
January 25, 2026 at 3:52 PM
i’m jealous of your snow please report it with lots of photos.
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
So grateful for this engaged and thoughtful review of my book!
Maggie Boyd reviews Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s 'Reading Together' and reflects on the democratic, indulgent good of the book club! "Reading Together testifies to the contemplative mode that both books and book clubs can spark," Boyd writes.
Reading With the Room: A Review of Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s ‘Reading Together’
Reading Together testifies to the contemplative mode that both books and book clubs can spark. Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s Reading Together is a book about book clubs and, quite fittingly, reads like…
mid-theory.com
January 22, 2026 at 10:31 PM
So grateful for this engaged and thoughtful review of my book!
as part of “easing into” the seminar on criticism we read auerbach’s essay on odysseus’ scar alongside first 10 pages of sinykin & winant’s close reading book. it’s not an easy essay but the students were up for the challenge and for exploring the worlds opened up by an attention to a single detail!
January 23, 2026 at 12:56 AM
as part of “easing into” the seminar on criticism we read auerbach’s essay on odysseus’ scar alongside first 10 pages of sinykin & winant’s close reading book. it’s not an easy essay but the students were up for the challenge and for exploring the worlds opened up by an attention to a single detail!
we have been here before, both in this and in other lands. we know how it ends if we stand for it.
Tomorrow’s front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 23, 2026
January 23, 2026 at 12:34 AM
we have been here before, both in this and in other lands. we know how it ends if we stand for it.
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
Maggie Boyd reviews Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s 'Reading Together' and reflects on the democratic, indulgent good of the book club! "Reading Together testifies to the contemplative mode that both books and book clubs can spark," Boyd writes.
Reading With the Room: A Review of Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s ‘Reading Together’
Reading Together testifies to the contemplative mode that both books and book clubs can spark. Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s Reading Together is a book about book clubs and, quite fittingly, reads like…
mid-theory.com
January 22, 2026 at 4:15 PM
Maggie Boyd reviews Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s 'Reading Together' and reflects on the democratic, indulgent good of the book club! "Reading Together testifies to the contemplative mode that both books and book clubs can spark," Boyd writes.
My review of Aboulela’s River Spirit is now out in Africa Journal. The line of argument I follow here differs from what I had focused on in my trade review of the book for LARB over two years ago. The book I’m supposedly writing also opens with this novel and the question of generations. Link below.
January 20, 2026 at 2:54 PM
My review of Aboulela’s River Spirit is now out in Africa Journal. The line of argument I follow here differs from what I had focused on in my trade review of the book for LARB over two years ago. The book I’m supposedly writing also opens with this novel and the question of generations. Link below.
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
Pretty much every article I read about "integrating" AI into the writing classroom brings me back to the conclusion I work through here: We should teach writing, not document production. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
Writing Classes Are About Writing, Not AI-Aided Production
If we want students to learn to write, AI tools shouldn’t have much of a role. If we don’t think students need to learn to write anymore, I’m not sure what we’re doing here.
www.insidehighered.com
January 19, 2026 at 2:14 PM
Pretty much every article I read about "integrating" AI into the writing classroom brings me back to the conclusion I work through here: We should teach writing, not document production. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
and on the seventh day, god spent it on email.
January 18, 2026 at 6:06 PM
and on the seventh day, god spent it on email.
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
"The main reason college football will not be abolished is the fact that people love it deeply and dearly, and they simply do not want to hear of its dark side."
What’s Love Got To Do With It?: A Review of ‘The End of College Football’
It is the love that is troubling: the love of violence (which fans prefer to call “physicality”), the love of an institution that invariably, though to variable degrees, maims its participants in p…
mid-theory.com
January 18, 2026 at 1:24 AM
"The main reason college football will not be abolished is the fact that people love it deeply and dearly, and they simply do not want to hear of its dark side."
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
If a Minnesotan says to you, "I don't plan to let you do that," run.
January 17, 2026 at 11:47 PM
If a Minnesotan says to you, "I don't plan to let you do that," run.
i know we are at the moment fighting fascism but i would still like to register my supreme and abiding irritation with liberals.
January 17, 2026 at 12:40 AM
i know we are at the moment fighting fascism but i would still like to register my supreme and abiding irritation with liberals.
A$AP Rocky’s new “don’t be dumb” album is great company for syllabus prep.
January 17, 2026 at 12:00 AM
A$AP Rocky’s new “don’t be dumb” album is great company for syllabus prep.
i did some high school, all of college, and grad school in the US and i have never experienced any institutional acknowledgement of ramadan before let alone a plan for accommodation. there’s so much to despair about in higher ed these days but this made me smile.
January 16, 2026 at 6:52 PM
i did some high school, all of college, and grad school in the US and i have never experienced any institutional acknowledgement of ramadan before let alone a plan for accommodation. there’s so much to despair about in higher ed these days but this made me smile.
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
Dylan Davidson reflects on the legacy of Bob Dylan's songbook, which captured a generation's collective revolt against racial segregation and U.S. imperial aggression and which now belong to corporations hostile to those very politics.
"Folk music is about giving credit, not claiming ownership."
"Folk music is about giving credit, not claiming ownership."
People’s Dylan
Folk music’s authorlessness—or rather, the fact that its authorship is collective, resistant to the logic of individual ownership or intellectual property—facilitated the process of its transformat…
mid-theory.com
January 15, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Dylan Davidson reflects on the legacy of Bob Dylan's songbook, which captured a generation's collective revolt against racial segregation and U.S. imperial aggression and which now belong to corporations hostile to those very politics.
"Folk music is about giving credit, not claiming ownership."
"Folk music is about giving credit, not claiming ownership."
I’m so depressed and demoralized which is partly what they’re after, which makes me extra depressed and demoralized, and so on and do forth.
January 14, 2026 at 7:30 PM
I’m so depressed and demoralized which is partly what they’re after, which makes me extra depressed and demoralized, and so on and do forth.
what’s the point of an e-book without pagination, i ask ya!!!
January 14, 2026 at 6:38 PM
what’s the point of an e-book without pagination, i ask ya!!!
if they lie this much about atrocities for which there exists incontrovertible photographic and video evidence, imagine how much of history is a lie.
January 13, 2026 at 9:54 PM
if they lie this much about atrocities for which there exists incontrovertible photographic and video evidence, imagine how much of history is a lie.
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
somali know very well what it means for men in masks to come to your house in broad daylight and take you away or take your father away or take your brother away and to never see them again. it’s how they’ve ended up in minnesota.
January 12, 2026 at 9:12 PM
somali know very well what it means for men in masks to come to your house in broad daylight and take you away or take your father away or take your brother away and to never see them again. it’s how they’ve ended up in minnesota.
somali know very well what it means for men in masks to come to your house in broad daylight and take you away or take your father away or take your brother away and to never see them again. it’s how they’ve ended up in minnesota.
January 12, 2026 at 9:12 PM
somali know very well what it means for men in masks to come to your house in broad daylight and take you away or take your father away or take your brother away and to never see them again. it’s how they’ve ended up in minnesota.
“i want to be able to separate in myself what is old and cyclic, the recurring history, the myth, from what is new, what i feel or think that might be new…” — doris lessing
January 12, 2026 at 4:22 PM
“i want to be able to separate in myself what is old and cyclic, the recurring history, the myth, from what is new, what i feel or think that might be new…” — doris lessing
Reposted by Farah Bakaari
Everyone should be starting their morning with this podcast episode featuring @nathankhensley.bsky.social talking about his new book “Action Without Hope.” open.spotify.com/episode/7wW4...
Action Without Hope
High Theory · Episode
open.spotify.com
March 17, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Everyone should be starting their morning with this podcast episode featuring @nathankhensley.bsky.social talking about his new book “Action Without Hope.” open.spotify.com/episode/7wW4...