Hester Blum

@hesterblum.bsky.social

3.6K followers 1.7K following 760 posts

A patched professor in Queen Nature’s granite-founded College. Polar humanities, C19, oceanic studies. Ask me about Moby-Dick. I teach environmental and nineteenth-century American literature at WashU. Protect trans kids. She/her. hesterblum.com .. more

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Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · May 16

Some personal news: I will be leaving Penn State and joining Washington University in St. Louis as the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Chair of English. My husband Jonathan Eburne will be J. H. Hexter Chair in Humanities at WashU. We are thrilled and energized by this new chapter in our lives. 1/3

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 1h

New Jersey:

Cooper River Indivisible @crindivisible.bsky.social · 21h

Yesterday morning kids were sent running from their bus stop in panic because ICE showed up. This guy at today’s ICE Out of Lindenwold protest is a must watch 😭. @maddow.bsky.social

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 2h

🐧 ❤️

Two gentoo penguins I saw in Antarctica, seemingly holding flippers, with a guano-splashed foreground and a background of ice and snow

Reposted by Cas Mudde, Anna O. Law, Lisa W. Fazio , and 38 more Cas Mudde, Anna O. Law, Lisa W. Fazio, Ben H. Ansell, Nancy Kanwisher, Brendan Nyhan, Andrew Scott, Mary Feeney, American Library Association, Eric Goldman, Erica Chenoweth, Christian E. Weller, Hester Blum, David S. Cohen, Daniel Stone, Michelle Everson, Michael Kevane, Smith, Alan J. Singer, Alan Richardson, Michael W. Kraus, Aaron Sojourner, McKenzie Wark, Julia Lynch, Federico Ortino, Jason Lyall, Ann Bartow, Nils Zurawski, Nelson Flores, Raúl Pacheco-Vega, Brooke Harrington, David Gamage, Prokla Redaktion, Manisha Sinha, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Aviel Roshwald, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Dan Immergluck, Jeannette Sutton, Kristina McElheran

Cooper River Indivisible @crindivisible.bsky.social · 21h

Yesterday morning kids were sent running from their bus stop in panic because ICE showed up. This guy at today’s ICE Out of Lindenwold protest is a must watch 😭. @maddow.bsky.social

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 8d

Mountainish:

Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 9d

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 9d

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 10d

Recently @taffyakner.bsky.social tried to make sense of her outsized obsession with Operation Mincemeat. Here, in the marvelous thud of her kicker, is the explanatory key for my obsession with Heated Rivalry (maybe yours too?)--yrs in resistance to mellowing with age www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/m...

From NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/magazine/operation-mincemeat-obsession-broadway.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JFA.02ZQ.WwS19a5DWevo&smid=url-share

On Halloween, I sat with my notebook open and tried to be a professional one more time. “B,” I said, “what is it? Why do we love this? Why are we still here?”

And B said again, with some annoyance at my badgering, “Because the songs are really good and exciting.” I asked for still more, and B said: “It makes me so happy. I love the quick changes. I just love the songs.”

I wrote it down again, but this time I wondered if maybe it really was that simple. Maybe the answer is that B is 8 and I am 50, and what B doesn’t know is that as they get older, there will be fewer things to love like this. That it will come along when it does, if it does, but it will feel more and more muted every time, so that by the time you find yourself feeling it again, by the time you realize that it is great to mellow with age but that before the process is complete you will panic, because you can feel what you’re missing and know that one day missing it won’t even bother you anymore. And right now I am in the gloaming of all that — in the perimenopause of all my passions, a time when I still remember what it is to want, but from the shoreline. This might never happen again to me, I want to tell B. It’s a surprise it happened at all. Hasn’t anyone told you yet, B? It becomes rarer and rarer to be struck in the heart by something that consumes you, and one day you forget that it used to happen at all.

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 13d

I taught it last week and my students immediately connected him to Luigi

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 17d

"Stay free"

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 17d

I was skeptical but here I am, lightly shaking. Thank you for the names, Bruce.

Bruce Springsteen @brucespringsteen.net · 17d

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

youtu.be

Reposted by Dunlap, Caterina Froio, Jesse M. Shapiro , and 181 more Dunlap, Caterina Froio, Jesse M. Shapiro, Patrick Walsh, Kevin Carey, Jaap Kooijman, Eric J. Sundquist, John R. Hutchinson, Alison Phipps, Inderjeet Parmar, Alexander Woywodt, Andreas Ortmann, Ian M. Kinchin, Almut Schulze, Leigh Sparks, Raúl Pacheco-Vega, Jürgen Maier, Anne Norton, Fabio Giglietto, Lorna Hughes, Mary McAuliffe, Fabian Holt, Patrick A. Jansen, Ryan K. Brook, Melissa Johnson, Dan Immergluck, Hester Blum, Feargal Cochrane, Jo Barraket, Aidan O’Sullivan, James Connelly, Andrew Leyshon, Matthew Bunn, Richard Betts, Pepper D. Culpepper, Mariana Mazzucato, Smith, Marta Mìrazón Lahr, David M. Schultz, Christian Fisch, Mattias Hallquist, Sharon Erickson Nepstad, Tom Shakespeare, Antoine Bernard de Raymond, Steve Peers, Susan Strasser, Stephen M. Walt, Joseph Schafer, Juan Moreno‐Cruz, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Rupert Read, Melanie O’Brien, Pam Jarvis, Vaughan S. Roberts, Graeme Warren, Martin Gaynor, Andrew Rudalevige, Claire L. Adida, Ramón López Facal, Jessica Silbey, Joni Lovenduski, Uwe M. Martens, Jesús Rodríguez Pomeda, Anne Applebaum, Shelly Lundberg, Nancy Kanwisher, Christian E. Weller, Olivier Jourdan, Aviel Roshwald, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Talia Schaffer, Stephan Lewandowsky, Enrique Fatás, Émilien Ruiz, Jeannette Sutton, Steven High, Joanna Bryson, Mary Jane Curry, Stephen Ryan, David Rothschild, Fiona Armstrong, Lisa Diedrich, Gerard H. Kuper, Jason A. Heppler, Rebecca Solnit, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Valerie P. Hans, Yadvinder Malhi, Marina Jirotka, Richard J. Butler, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Elizabeth Saunders, Jonathan A. Foley, Kate Jackson, Beth Tellman, Duncan Bell, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Peter Thorne, David M. Farrell, Ashish Arora, Christina C. Hicks, Jill Marshall, David Darmofal, Caroline Krafft, Stephen D. Murphy, Florian Keusch, John T. Jost, Sean P. Corcoran, Mark D. White, Anna O. Law, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Josef Früchtl, Eric J. Segall, Alan Stewart, Marc Lynch, Thomas D. Carroll, Andrew Watt, Hisham Zerriffi, Elizabeth Stokoe, Will Jennings, Todd Pugatch, Graham Dutfield, Marco Haan, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Dominik Wiedenhofer, David S. Cohen, Stuart White, Michelle Williams, Anders Nilsson, Janet Murray, Beatriz Gallardo Paúls, Martin J. Attrill, Michael Wagner, Ernesto Castañeda, Vincent Tiberj, Paul Fisher, Dawn J. Wright, Kim L. Scheppele, Manuel Puppis, Mieke Van Houtte, Cullen S. Hendrix, Peter Schöttler, Elizabeth Stevenson, Nandita Sharma, Patrick Meier, David S. Tanenhaus, Patrick Stokes, Robbert Sanderman, David Spurrett, Göran Bolin, Gerald Friedman, Tim Bale, Howard Stevenson, Stuart Shapiro, Victor Asal, Michael T. Meyer, Libby Robin, Marco Festa‐Bianchet, Sanford F. Schram, Markus Jäntti, Marko Lindroos, Michael E. Mann, Robert Wolfe, Rosemary A. Joyce, Michael J. Allen, Ryan Calo, Guillaume Allègre, Philipp Sarasin, David R. Miller, Wilson McLeod, Archon Fung, John McLaren, Michael D. McDonald, Jussi T. Eronen, Patrick Svensson, Jon Dean, Steven S. Smith, Karen O’Leary, Melanie C. Green, Nicola Carr, Simon Burgess, Lars Gamfeldt, Raffaella Ravinetto, Joshua S. Weitz

Bruce Springsteen @brucespringsteen.net · 17d

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

youtu.be

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 22d

Print this and paper your communities

Adam Rothman aced his cognitive test @adamrothman.bsky.social · 22d

Here's one of the panels that Trump just removed from the President's House site in Philadelphia. (I took this picture of it last March. A couple of weeks later I led a walking tour that included the site.) Does this information "disparage" the United States?

MOUNT VERNON TO PHILADELPHIA:
A Path to Freedom-For Some

The nine enslaved men and women of the President's House were chosen by Washington to accompany him to Philadelphia. They were separated from their families back in Mount Vernon and rotated out of state regularly to prevent them from gaining freedom under Pennsylvania law.

CHARACTERS

Christopher Sheels, enslaved attendant to Washington

Hercules. enslaved cook

Richmond, Hercules' enslaved son

Giles, enslaved stable hand

Oney Judge, enslaved maid and seamstress to Martha

Austin, Ona's enslaved half brother, house servant

Paris. enslaved stable hand

Moll, enslaved maid to Martha

Joe Richardson, enslaved postillion for the presidential coach

[Floor plan]
SERVANTS' EATING HALL

Reposted by David Rothschild, Hester Blum, Patrick Walsh , and 4 more David Rothschild, Hester Blum, Patrick Walsh, Nelson Flores, Magda Teter, Manisha Sinha, Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Adam Rothman aced his cognitive test @adamrothman.bsky.social · 22d

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 25d

Is it even a writing day if you haven’t lightly wept over Melville’s letters to Hawthorne even though that’s not actually what you’re writing about

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Brian Doucet, Tom Stoppard , and 2 more Rosemary A. Joyce, Brian Doucet, Tom Stoppard, Kate Lowe, Aviel Roshwald

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 28d

Yes in thunder. My syllabus statement:

Generative A.I.
This class helps you to be a better writer and thinker. Generative AI (ChatGPT, Copilot, and other platforms) is neither writing nor thinking. Any use of Al in this class (whether to write, brainstorm, outline, or summarize) will be considered a violation of academic integrity. It undermines your intellectual development, for one: AI content is often inaccurate or hallucinatory and is always boring, banal, and average. This is by design, as generative Al works by predicting the most obvious or basic sequencing of words. Good writingwriting that is persuasive, powerful, lively, funny, surprising, rousing, insightful, transformative, provocative-requires human work. Human creativity is weird and variable and uneven, but it holds the capacity for growth, revelation, empathy, and brilliance. We urge you not to abandon the glorious experiential potential of human messiness and transformation for the tedium of robot sentences.
One further reason to abjure generative Al, especially in a class on environmental literature: in addition to its counterproductivity to your work as a writer and thinker, Al is enormously environmentally destructive.

Reposted by Hester Blum, Catherine J. Frieman

Feathers McGraw @feathersmcgraw.bsky.social · 28d

🐋

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 28d

Week two of letterpress class: wood type, ink mixing: Greenland is for the Greenlandic people/ Kalaallit Nunaat, Kalaallit pigaat 🇬🇱

Wood type letter press proof print that reads Kalaallit Nunaat, Kalaallit pigaat 🇬🇱

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jan 9

St Louis standing up, in thunder

A crowd in the rain in the Grove neighborhood of St. Louis, protesting 🧊

A crowd on the march in torrential rain in the Grove neighborhood of St. Louis, protesting 🧊

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jan 4

Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Dec 29

I've probably pressed a copy of Lonesome Dove on you at some point if we've met IRL--and now I am beyond excited to work with @philipleventhal.bsky.social in writing LONESOME DOVE REREAD for @columbiaup.bsky.social's Rereadings series.

A publishing agreement between Columbia UP and Hester Blum for a book entitled LONESOME DOVE REREAD for Columbia's Rereadings series

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Dec 27

I loved some books this year (The Wayfinder, Gliff, What We Can Know). But the highlight of my year was returning to the Aubrey-Maturin series--this time on audio, superbly read by Patrick Tull, whose reading elevates them splendidly. Give yourself a gift this year and listen to the whole series.

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Dec 21

This story is nuts and clearly murder?? or murder by man-must-summit?? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/w...

A Woman Froze to Death on an Alpine Trek. Is Her Boyfriend to Blame?

www.nytimes.com

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Dec 21

I am a fanatic about Craig in those movies and you nailed exactly why he is so angry all the time

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Dec 21

This is so so smart about Daniel Craig's Bond:

Lauren Eriks Cline @lerikscline.bsky.social · Dec 18

Thank you to the brilliant editors at @mid-theory.bsky.social for the chance to write about some of my favorite subjects: transfictional character, gender performance, and Daniel Craig’s tenure as a post-9/11, “serially straight” James Bond.

The Drag of Being Bond

It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. One of popular media’s perennial questions, whether the role is currently filled or not, is “who will be the next James Bond?” It…

mid-theory.com

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Dec 21

This is incredible!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Dec 19

Heed, heed, heed:

Shane Anderson 🏳️‍🌈 @shaneanderson.bsky.social · Dec 19

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future."

- @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit.

Incredible words.
Listen to all of it!