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Karl Steel

@karlsteel.bsky.social

4.1K followers 3K following 7.2K posts

Brooklyn College / Grad Center Medievalist. Posthumanism. How to Make a Human (Ohio State UP 2011); How Not to Make a Human (Minnesota UP 2019). Currently working on The Irrational Animal. website is medievalkarl.com

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · Dec 31

Last day 2024, signed an advance contract for Book 3, THE RATIONAL ANIMAL: ON HUMAN LIMITS IN THE MIDDLE AGES (U of Minnesota Press).

a picture of the first bit of the contract

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Reposted by Karl Steel

Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 3h

I've attempted and abandoned a memoir about living through the digital media bubble a few times, but man do I have stories about AJAM.

Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 4h

Actually just occurred to me that those of us who worked at Al Jazeera America — a hugely expensive boondoggle backed by an authoritarian regime that thought it could have it both ways — are uniquely well positioned to predict the future of CBS News.

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 8h

I mean, short and obvious but Raymond Williams' entry on Nature in Keywords

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 8h

week 7, in a city under siege for 32 days and counting, and the students who are able to come to class despite the blitz are showing up like their lives depend on those 50 minutes of togetherness, poetry, and big questions

Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 9h

IDK, man. School started 2 weeks ago for us, and once again students remind me that they’re so curious and interested in the world and anxious to ask big questions. We hear that these questions are no longer useful or relevant, but wherever that’s coming from, it’s not what students believe.

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 9h

Remain a big fan of the DSA runs here in NYC. If you like running and chatting lightly about politics and other stuff leftishly, one good place to do that is Fridays at Grand Army Plaza at 7am, followed by a nice easy loop of the park. Related ! Gaza5k on Sunday, Prospect Park, it'll be huge.

Reposted by Karl Steel

Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 13h

Rankings are austerity

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 14h

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 13h

'tis!

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 21h

Springsteen ?! Too obvious ?

((Herschel)) @jaklacroix.bsky.social · 1d

What's a band or musician where you like one album and then nothing else they released?

I'll go first:

Avenged Sevenfold - City of Evil
New Politics - New Politics

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

Now thinking vaguely about weird vs whimsy

Reposted by Karl Steel

Rónán Hession @ronanhession.bsky.social · 1d

And congratulations to @ottiliemulzet.bsky.social !

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

ok ok! yes, SOME TRICK is wonderful

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

Honestly tho has any nob lit winner ever been as blessed with a world-class director as Krasn&c is with Bela Tarr?

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

Santantango rewatch booked

Michael Li (李之樸) @mcpli.bsky.social · 1d

Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai wins the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/b...

Laszlo Krasznahorkai Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

www.nytimes.com

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

Brothers from another Mother

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

They literally replaced a Black woman with a guy named Todd Blanche, or, as I like to call him, Dead White

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 1d

It is simply accurate to call this regime segregationist.

Trump Fires Black Officials From an Overwhelmingly White Administration

www.nytimes.com

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

@laurakolb.bsky.social ...

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 2d

Virginia State Senate Dems just brought down fire and fury regarding the “Compact,” notifying the President and Rector that UVA would lose ALL STATE APPROPRIATIONS if it signs and cedes the University to “federal political control.” Notably, their letter directly restates points made here by @siva.

Siva @sivav.bsky.social · 2d

The “compact” for higher ed is an unserious document written by unserious people from a position of spectacular ignorance. No one should take it seriously. Sadly, my bosses are taking it seriously.

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

🌀🐦‍🔥😩🔥

Reposted by Karl Steel

dead manu walking @profchander.bsky.social · 2d

students said they weren’t really poetry fans but loved novels, so i wrote down a line they picked out from jane eyre, scanned it, noted the metrical substitutions and internal rhymes. reader, they took pictures of the chalkboard.

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♨ naïve dumbass @atticusgf.bsky.social · 2d

crazy umwelt. you're shooting through the sky doing somersault captures of moths while screaming, then all of a sudden one crinkles its genitals at you and you go dark. or one hits you with the echolatory equivalent of chaff and you bite away a wing tail instead.

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 2d

Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.

(RNS) — Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray.

“I invited them to repentance,” Black, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said in an interview. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire.

“We could hear them laughing,” Black said.

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

Just read Barbara Newman's chapter on Marguerite Porete, the Roman de la Rose (including religious rewritings of same), and Picard love poetry contests, and whew, 50+ pages, nearly 200 endnotes, and among the best Porete things I've yet read
undpress.nd.edu/978026803611...

Medieval Crossover

The sacred and the secular in medieval literature have too often been perceived as opposites, or else relegated to separate but unequal spheres. In Medieval ...

undpress.nd.edu

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

(just saw on another social media site a friend of a mutual acquaintance who announced that she's writing in a protest vote for Adrianne Adams and it's a sign of something that I just privately fumed and brought this here as a parenthetical complaint. Why not hang a tiny sign in your apartment?)

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

😒😐

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

"Woo! punk rock"

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

Tbh I was listening to Wagner the other day and also wondering if Vance Miller Kash etc have any competence at all even in ecstatic response to even basic-ass opera. I mean this isn't exactly Les mammeles de Tiresias.

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