Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Andrea Kaston Tange

@aktange.bsky.social

2.8K followers 1.3K following 2.5K posts

Victorianist & lit professor, gardener, lover of quirky details. Writing sporadically at https://andreakastontange.com

andreakastontange.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · Jul 16

Here you go! I'll write some new ones for this semester too. They loved them. The "read without your phone or screens in the room" was a revelation, and many of them decided to keep doing it. They had NO IDEA (& were horrified) how often they interrupt themselves to look at a phone for no reason.

Reading Scenario Experiments. This series of prompts is designed to get you thinking about how the setting for reading affects concentration, comprehension, and even the existential experience of reading. Every week, one of the following prompts will appear on the syllabus. I encourage you to try all of them that you are able. How does a different reading setting affect your mood? Your receptiveness to the prose? Your pleasure or difficulty reading? What are the particular impacts of changing your lighting or surroundings? What do you notice about yourself and about the work you are reading during this experiment?
1. read by candlelight (use a small lamp in dorms where no candles are allowed!)
2. read for one hour without checking any devices, answering texts, etc.
3. walk out into nature (climb a tree, sit on a rock, grab a spot in a hammock) and read
4. host a reading night with friends & food (sit in companionable silence, reading without chatting)
5. read aloud a chapter to someone else
6. climb into bed at night and read by flashlight under the covers for at least 30 minutes, as if you’ve already been told “lights out” as a kid
7. reread a chapter and see what new things you notice the second time through
8. change your ambient-noise level: add music if you normally read in the quiet; or read without music if you are normally a music-listener
9. read with a sketchpad at hand and sketch scenes, characters, or other elements from the story
10. practice focused listening: have someone read to you
11. make yourself a special, fancy snack on a real plate to nibble while eating: pay attention to the cooking or arranging or choosing of ingredients to make it especially appetizing first
12. make tea (even if you’re not usually a tea drinker), and read and sip
13. invent a new reading scenario for yourself, or repeat the one you liked the best from this term

[writing assignment using these prompts follows; text character limit prevents inclusion of it in full]

45 180 630

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 21h

fwiw, I feel this, and I sympathize. And also this place sounds wonderful.

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 21h

PSA: Get yourself a Committee of No—a trusted group you can ask about opportunities, offers & obligations to figure out which you should accept and which you should decline. It's a real boon in thinking through workload issues. Plus, they'll inevitably text you funny things at stressful moments.

2 5 33

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Jeff Tiedrich @jefftiedrich.bsky.social · 3d

the people who told us to calm down because Roe was settled law are the same people now telling us to calm down because the military would never open fire on Americans

670 6.6K 21K

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Anne Trubek @atrubek.bsky.social · 5d

Anthropic settlement explainer:
--look up to see if your work was included (easy)
--file a claim if it was (easy)

--Amount will likely be 1.5K (3K per book, split w/publisher)
--Money comes between now and 2027 (in separate tranches)

Submit a Claim

secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

3 19 20

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 5d

THIS is the right answer, and the place I always point to as the root of this problem.

3 4

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 6d

People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.

Emily Farris @emayfarris.bsky.social · 6d

This new column by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social makes me think about when I recently had to talk to the police for yet another safety plan, I tried to “lighten” the mood by saying that we all knew this wasn’t my first rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists.

4 320 1K

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Joanna Blackhart [They/Them] @joannablackhart.com · 8d

Holy shit this is INCREDIBLE go sign up now.

Warwick History Post-Doc Club @post-doc-club.bsky.social · 8d

Great news!
JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month

www.jstor.org/action/showL...

1 6 10

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 8d

ooohhh, I could ask her for 2.0, The Artist Version!

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 8d

It didn't work, but given the right pixie dust, I imagine it would have been brilliant. It was so pure and lovely. (I still have it on the shelf in my office. More than a decade later.)

1 2

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 8d

THE ONLY machine that would solve this problem, I'm convinced, is the "grade my papers machine" that my then-2nd-grader made for me as a birthday present. It was a highly decorated box made of paper, with an obvious input hole at the top, and an out ramp at the bottom made of a whole row of staples.

1 3

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 10d

Favorite bit of this morning's reading—in a 1925 article about the $100,000,000 alcohol ring in Philadelphia—the author decried:
"the trade in venomous distillate for beverage purposes."

It's the best scathing description of booze I have ever seen.

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 11d

It fills me with delight to contemplate how fonts date ephemera. Movie posters & book covers & advertising & newspapers &c. BEHOLD the glory of this ad for the Ziegfeld girl who took her (appropriated) shimmy on tour to dazzle audiences. Seven fonts! A curved headline! Sideways exclamation points! 😍

1 7

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 11d

This is EXCELLENT.

1) this is spot-on analysis of the problem & a great immediate 1st thing a city can do to improve outcome.

2) as a 2 min clip? He's giving history, hope & change. Speaking to women, to Jewish & Black NYers, saying "abortion." & also naming eugenics in feminism. 100/10 no notes.

Hex Anderson @dexanderson.com · 11d

Cuomo could never.

35 600 2K

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 12d

A thing I learned when I had small children, but seem continually to forget in relation to myself is that tired can actually point to hungry, and grumpy can mean tired.

1 2 20

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 14d

Isn't it? I love that.

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 14d

Thank you so much, Patrick! This was such a fun cluster to put together, and I appreciate your kind words.

1 2

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Patrick Leary @patrickleary.bsky.social · 14d

The journal Victorians (formerly The Victorian Newsletter) is out, with new format and new editor Kristen Pond, featuring a forum on amateurism and professionalization in science with intro by @aktange.bsky.social. Some terrific work here, and all is Open Access. muse.jhu.edu/issue/55573 #C19th

Project MUSE - Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature-Number 147, Summer 2025

muse.jhu.edu

1 17 27

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 15d

It's open-windows weather, and the husky enthusiasm of my delightful next-door-neighbor toddler comes wafting across the short space between our houses: here Dada! here Mama water! Even sentences I cannot wholly hear I can tell end in an exclamation point, celebrating her sheer joy of words. ♥️

1 7

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 20d

If you’re rich and not a coward, this is what you’d refer to as a “market opportunity” to dominate a media ecosystem that’s about to be covered in grotesque government slop. To be a pop of color in a sea of beige will be easier than ever. People will flock to it. You gotta be a little brave, though.

110 1.7K 10K

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 20d

This is all he said.

amieraugie.bsky.social @amieraugie.bsky.social · 20d

“The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

73 900 4.2K

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 20d

Oh, I'm so happy to hear this! Mine have been experimenting with them too, and it's been really interesting to hear about them.

1 1

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 22d

a cartoon dog is sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of a fire with the words this is fine .

ALT: a cartoon dog is sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of a fire with the words this is fine .

media.tenor.com

1 1

Andrea Kaston Tange @aktange.bsky.social · 25d

My then-19yo patiently explained how ending punctuation signaled irritation I didn't mean in texts. So I trained myself to abandon periods—at least for last sentences. (He couldn't wean me off multi-sentence texts.) Now I drop them w/o thinking w/grownups who text like writers—& I feel like a chump.

1 7

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Schooley @schooley.bsky.social · 25d

Just thinking about how the right made up an entirely fictional left wing character that resulted in so many bomb threats and the like and nobody will face consequences. But people on the left who accurately clocked the victim’s life work lost jobs.

310 6.4K 25K

Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange

Farran Smith Nehme @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 25d

The whooping-cough vaccine is part of the DTaP series of shots that you're supposed to give infants and toddlers—diptheria, tetanus, pertussis. So apparently people have gotten so g-d crazy they think their kids don't even need a shot for *tetanus.*

WBRZ News (Unofficial) @wbrz-mirror.bsky.social · 25d

Sen. Bill Cassidy said Friday that Louisiana is undergoing its worst whooping cough outbreak since 1990 and called on the nation's vaccine-leery health secretary to promote vaccinations. https://www.wbrz.com/news/cassidy-asks-kennedy-to-promote-vaccines-targeting-whooping-cough-after-major-outbreak

Cassidy asks Kennedy to promote vaccines targeting whooping cough after major outbreak

BATON ROUGE — Sen. Bill Cassidy said Friday that Louisiana is undergoing its worst whooping cough outbreak since 1990 and called on the nation's vaccine-leery health secretary to promote vaccinations.

www.wbrz.com

4 6 45