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Arielle Zibrak

@zibrak.bsky.social

2.5K followers 1.3K following 540 posts

feminisms, projects, pop culture 📚 | Literary Tour of the US, The Great Courses | 12 Stories by American Women, Penguin Classics | Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures, NYU | Writing Against Reform, UMass Prof @ UWyo - views own 👐www.ArielleZibrak.com👐

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · Sep 3

Here's what I'm up to these days. SO EXCITED to write this book and talk about how the history of positive thinking in wellness impacts us all. Grateful for my agent @babedylan.bsky.social and my new editor Maria, who rocks.

Announcement of a deal report from Publisher's Marketplace that reads:
American Studies scholar and host of The Great Courses’ Literary Tour of the United States Arielle Zibrak’s WISHING OURSELVES WELL, a compelling look at the origins of the women's wellness guru archetype and "manifestation" movements through the complicated history of the 19th-century American women who pioneered the big business of alternative healing, from Mary Baker Eddy (the founder of Christian Science) to Dr. Alice Bunker Stockham (a sexual pleasure activist and eugenicist), to Maria Goldverg at Liveright, by Ayla Zuraw-Friedland at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency (USCOM).

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Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 16h

With its "medico-electrical apparatus," was Dr. James Graham's "celestial bed" in his "Temple of Health" in 1779 London a prototype for DJT's "med bed"?
There are just too many ways in which the #18thc is a useful guide to the hucksterism of 2025 America.
daily.jstor.org/the-prince-o...

Black and white image showing a nubile woman, in deshabille, reclining on the Celestial Bed, a kind of couch with a canopy over it. Statue of Mercury in a niche behind her.

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Maggie Blackhawk @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social · 16h

New essay in the Atlantic today: How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution by Ned Blackhawk (with many lessons on how we ended up where we are as a nation, and a gift link) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution

The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy.

www.theatlantic.com

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Inquest @inquest.bsky.social · 18h

"When feminist struggles enter phases of rapprochement with the state, they throw Indigenous, 'deviant,' Black, sexualized, sex-working women and other gender minorities under the bus." @reproutopia.bsky.social talks with Aya Gruber about truly abolitionist feminism.

Leaning In to State Violence - Sophie Lewis interviewed by Aya Gruber - Inquest

In ‘Enemy Feminisms,’ philosopher Sophie Lewis engages with the feminism of racists, colonizers, fascists, cops, and jailers to better understand what a truly liberatory politics needs to look like.

inquest.org

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 3d

Come hang with us! I am going to show pictures of "Live, Laugh, Love" art and explain how Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poetry impacts your own personal and specific life.

A photograph of the poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a white woman wearing a white dress and holding a wreath garland on top of her head.

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Long Lead @longlead.com · 14d

Two survivors — George Takei and Jo Anne Naka — recall living in the horse stables at the Santa Anita racetrack before they were moved to their incarceration camps.

Read THE AGE OF INCARCERATION to learn more about Japanese American incarceration from some of the last survivors of it.

Japanese American Incarceration Survivors Remember What the US Forgot

During WWII, President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act and incarcerated 125,000 Japanese Americans. Eighty years later, some of the camps’ last survivors reflect on lives scarred by injustice.

age-of-incarceration.longlead.com

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 14d

Lovely to see my book reviewed alongside Faye Halpern's in a review essay on realism by Melanie Dawson in ALH. (Two scholars I so admire!) Unfortunately I don't have institutional access yet. Can anyone out there DM a pdf?
academic.oup.com/alh/article-...

#academicsky

Realism’s Vexed Relations with the Popular

Abstract. This essay assesses the centrality of popular idioms such as sentimental sympathy (discussed by Faye Halpern’s The Afterlife of Sympathy) and soc

academic.oup.com

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 20d

Is Christine Baranski literally just the reincarnation of 19th- century New Thought novelist Clara Louise Burnham?

Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 20d

Catch me at the Mahindra center next month! The first lecture in the series by Kendra Field was extraordinary. This will be ok. If you can't make it and want to hear about eugenic feminism and positive thinking, invite me to your spot.

mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/event/ariell...

Arielle Zibrak: Exceptional Thinking: Eugenic Feminism and the Poetics of Positivity | Mahindra Humanities Center

mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu

Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 22d

I think we've all had way too much screen time and should be made to play outside for the rest of the year.

Reposted by Arielle Zibrak

Virginia Heffernan @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social · 24d

Groypers, gopniks, and the Kirk-Fuentes beef.

The American right is one nutty hospital. Me @newrepublic :

newrepublic.com/article/2004...

No Avoiding It: Post-Kirk, We Have to Learn About the Groyper Wars

We still don’t know Tyler Robinson’s motivation. But we know we need to learn about the Charlie Kirk–Nick Fuentes Armageddon, dammit.

newrepublic.com

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Heather Froehlich @heatherfro.bsky.social · 24d

Call for applications: Endangered Archives Programme
eap.bl.uk/applicants

For Applicants

eap.bl.uk

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 24d

A nice little write-up on A Literary Tour of the United States from the University of Wyoming! 🤠

UW English Professor Releases 24-Episode Literary Series with The Great Courses

Arielle Zibrak, a professor of English at the University of Wyoming, has released “A Literary Tour of the United States,” a 24-episode lecture series produced by The Great Courses.

www.uwyo.edu

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Cynthia Miller-Idriss @milleridriss.bsky.social · 26d

I wrote about the groypers and the Fuentes-Kirk fight years ago, in Hate in the Homeland. Cautioning here that there is still a lot to know about the shooter’s motivation, I’m sharing these two paragraphs here to set the history of this fight in context:

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 26d

🙏🏽

Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 26d

What reading would recommend of yours or anyone else’s on these topics?

Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 29d

Historically, in the United States, has a conservative activist (unelected) been publicly assassinated before?
#academicsky #historysky

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 29d

#academicsky #blacksky

Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 29d

Very excited to be a part of this series and looking forward to all the talks this year.

Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · Sep 5

Thrilled to announce the 25/26 schedule at the American Literature and Culture Seminar at the Mahindra Center at Harvard. Please join us if you are in town for any of these events! Many thanks to my co-organizer @notsorry-sari.bsky.social, and to all our presenters!

American Literature and Culture Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard
2025-2026 seminar schedule (all events are in-person at 12 Quincy Street, 6pm):

September 17: Kendra Field (Tufts/Hutchins Center); response by Tiya Miles (Harvard)

October 15: Arielle Zibrak (U-Wyoming); response by David Frank Holland (Harvard)

November 12: Kelly Wisecup (Northwestern/Radcliffe); response by Christopher Pexa (Harvard)

March 24: Bonnie Costello (BU); response by Carrie Preston (BU)

April 15: Sven Beckert (Harvard); response by Kaveh Yazdani (UCONN)

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 29d

People teach it so much, no one wants it out.

Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 29d

If you're thinking about Spring adoption already, please consider adding some stories by American women. Grateful for this lovely review by @davidataylor.bsky.social

David Taylor @davidataylor.bsky.social · Aug 14

I reviewed @penguinclassicsusa.bsky.social 12 STORIES BY AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS for @wirobooks.bsky.social: www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/t...

Book cover of Penguin Classics "Twelve Stories by American Women" shows a woman in 19th-century clothes facing a typewriter and looking out a window, where a variety of eight women of different skin tones in long 19th-century dresses are on a hillside doing various activities: reading, talking, walking along a path.

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · 29d

Imagine a government that solves your problems instead of is your problem.

KRQE News 13 @krqe.com · Sep 9

Governor announces New Mexico will now provide free universal child care

NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – New Mexico is becoming the first state in the U.S. to offer free early childhood education to every family in the state. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a universal ch…

www.krqe.com

Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · Sep 9

Never change, Morris.

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · Sep 9

Also @sarahebull.bsky.social seriously cool cart. I'm maybe jealous.

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · Sep 9

Look how happy we humanists are with so little. A mere cart to transport our books and puppets by. How came we to be so vilified?

Sarah Bull @sarahebull.bsky.social · Sep 9

I’m teaching my book history class across campus this semester, so my wonderful dept bought a giant steel work cart. This is going to make the whole mobile book lab thing so much easier! (Some of my colleagues also use material items, e.g. puppets, for teaching, so useful all around, I hope).

A picture of a very large red steel Milwaukee service cart in my department’s hallway, filled with materials for today’s class (less unwieldy than materials are for some weeks - a baking sheet, clay, aprons, clean up stuff, a bag containing chopsticks and gloves for people with sensory sensitivity, scrolls, wax tablets.

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Arielle Zibrak @zibrak.bsky.social · Jul 3

If you're more of an audiobook / podcast cat, A Literary History of the United States is also available on Audible. You can learn about the literature of the road on the road!

A Literary Tour of the United States

Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Across the nation’s history, American writers have produced a compelling and diverse body of literary expression, which joins the great literatures of other...

www.audible.com

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