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Amardeep Singh

@electrostani.bsky.social

2.6K followers 1.4K following 410 posts

Professor of English at Lehigh University. Anglophone Postcolonial; Modernism; African American Literature; Digital Humanities. https://www.electrostani.com/

www.electrostani.com

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · Aug 21

Soft-launching: a new digital project on Indigenous Writers (Adivasi writers) from South Asia. I've been working on it this summer with a graduate student collaborator, Srishti Raj.

Adivasi literature is another glaring gap in the archive, with a lot of materials untranslated and inaccessible. 1/3

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 17h

Yes to this. And I would add:

Nuance
Context
Complexity
Uncertainty
Point of View
Alterity (other ways of being, other ways of living)
Heterogeneity
Care
Compassion
Alternatives to violence
Empathy & Sympathy

Dr Marie Allitt @marieallitt.bsky.social · 18h

Of course the bigots and fascists don’t want you to study English.

The enemy of fascism is:
Close reading
Clear communication
Questioning the meaning of what you read
Accurate spelling & grammar
Thinking for yourself
Creativity
Understanding the mechanics of argument
Imagination
Enjoyment
Joy

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 1d

Looking forward to the MSA @moderniststudies.bsky.social later this week in Boston! I'll be giving a talk on one panel, chairing another, and participating in a really cool workshop.

My talk is on Wallace Thurman and Richard Bruce Nugent, two amazing authors I'm writing about for the first time.

Panel: Queer Print Infrastructures
in Literary Modernism I
Fairfax A
Chair: Sophie Yates, University of British Columbia
Amardeep Singh, Lehigh University, “Queer Frenemies and the making
of Fire!!: On Infants of the Spring and Gentleman Jigger”
Eliza Browning, Princeton University, “Doubled Forms of Editorial
Collaboration in Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven’s Poetry”
Eleonora Guidi, University of Bologna, “Adrienne Monnier’s Mesures,
from Paris, 1935”

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Reposted by Amardeep Singh

Alan Liu @alanyliu.bsky.social · 3d

My blog post reporting on testing the use of agentic AI (the Fellou.ai browser) to start a research project on gathering definitions of the humanities: “Humanities Definitions Research Project: An Experiment with Agentic AI” (liu.english.ucsb.edu/humanities-d...).

Screenshots of the Fellou interface while its browser agent is in progress on a research task prompted by the user. (A) and (B) represent windows with multiple browser tabs open to searches. Each tab in these windows shows rapidly changing thumbnails of the websites, articles (including PDFs), and other materials that Fellou is currently searching and analyzing. A panel at the right of each window shows a partial view of the kinds of sources and topics Fellou has planned to search in response to the user’s prompt.
(C) is a window showing a periodically refreshed report on progress so far. In this window, the panel at the left shows in separate blocks some of the kinds of sources and topics that Fellou plans to search. The wide panel in the center summarizes results. And the panel at the right shows in blocks the specific sources and key phrases currently being “deep searched.”

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 2d

I'm afraid I've kind of become a little like your former committee (with the big distinction that I absolutely freaking do read my students' work!!!).

But I definitely do tell students to think of the diss. as a strategically designed text and a credential, and avoid passion projects.

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 6d

I just tried this and it's fun and beautifully designed (and maybe not *that* hard for someone who teaches English lit.!).

Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 6d

I made a lil game inspired by the Wordle universe. It's called Versedle (pronounced Verse-a-dle). You guess who wrote famous lines of literature.

As my parents can attest, it's hard! I made them an Easy Mode, but it's still kinda hard. Maybe you'll like it!

▶️ 📚: melaniewalsh.github.io/versedle/

VERSEDLE

Test your literary knowledge with Versedle!

melaniewalsh.github.io

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 6d

Phones --> Social Connection / Fun / Brainrot media
Laptops --> Work
Looking at actual printed books for hours at a time --> ???

Printed books no longer fit expectations of how we/they shape time & effort. Feels like indulgence, forced disengagement. Print interface feels increasingly strange...

Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 7d

With all the depressing news this week, seems good to take a minute to enjoy the Alaskan Fat Bear competition story, which I translate as "middle age life goals," as I eat an extra slice of my kid's birthday cake for second breakfast.

www.usatoday.com/story/pets-a...

Image from USA Today of bears gaining weight. Shows bears 32 Chunk and 856, both gaining considerable weight during the feeding period in Alaska in preparation for hibernation.

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 8d

"Poetry’s worth within commercial publishing comes from its literariness, an abstract matrix of style and taste that operates to demarcate books, authors, and genres as artistic. The oldest and most artful of genres, poetry is the apotheosis of literariness. It has cachet."

Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · 8d

It's the end of The Best American Poetry.

I wrote about the forty-year anthology project, poetry’s place in Big Five publishing, and editor David Lehman's culture wars vision of American verse.

defector.com/good-riddanc...

Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’ | Defector

When David Lehman, a poet then working as a book critic for Newsweek, proposed the project for The Best American Poetry anthology, he was searching for a national platform. His first anthology project...

defector.com

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 9d

I followed you on LinkedIn... But can you say a little about why you're quitting?

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 13d

That is a pretty strong list -- not sure I can improve it! (Different topic, but I'm impressed you can get students to stick with you for 13 novels, some of them pretty long / difficult... In my own seminars, I typically aim for 8 or 9 in a 14 week semester...)

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 13d

I had this exact question! We need a kind of shadow archive -- of everything the Tr*mp administration is attempting to erase.

The project mentioned in the NPR piece is below. Is anyone doing a version of this with climate data, CDC data related to public health, etc.?

www.citizenhistorians.org

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian | Protect History

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian is a “Crowd to Cloud” effort to steward and safeguard our institution by preserving the Smithsonian Institution’s contents as they exist in 2025. With our feet ...

www.citizenhistorians.org

Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 13d

Does it have to be a contemporary allegory? (Something like Percival Everett's "James" might be pretty good in a class like that...)

Seems like no one has yet written the Trump era's "Plot Against America" (though maybe "The Plot Against America" is exactly what one would want!)

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 13d

"If President Trump wants to highlight the greatness of America, he should be doing more to teach us about men like John Brown ... He should be praising the more than 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors—many of whom were enslaved when the war began—who fought to preserve the nation and end slavery."

KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · 13d

"These are the facts of American history. They are not distortions, nor is displaying this information at national parks ideologically motivated. These and similar facts explain much about our nation." slate.com/news-and-pol...

Trump Is Trying to Memory-Hole One of the Most Important Historical Images of Slavery

Virtually every historian of the Civil War knows that slavery was the moving force for secession which led to the Civil War.

slate.com

Reposted by Amardeep Singh

Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 14d

A birthday present for Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s 200th: you can now read Chapter 1 of my new book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction online for free for a limited time! Please share widely. Book info in the comments. Check out: academic.oup.com/book/60645/c...

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 16d

Microdeth

Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks — I should have tagged @digblk.bsky.social :-) Great conference; incredible scholarly community at PSU.

Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 16d

Was at Cornell this past weekend -- giving a talk on Toni Morrison in the new *Toni Morrison Hall*. Pretty cool & a nice conference overall.

I also drove down to Penn State for the Frances Harper 200 conference.

A few highlights from both conferences here:

www.electrostani.com/2025/09/two-...

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · 22d

Creative writing job in my department. TT, 2/2 teaching load. Looking for emphasis on creative nonfiction.

Feel free to reach out if interested / curious!

careers.insidehighered.com/job/3401532/...

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing with a Specialization in Creative Nonfiction - Bethlehem, Pennsylvania job with Lehigh University | 3401532

The Department of English at Lehigh University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor with a specialization in Creative Nonfic...

careers.insidehighered.com

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · Aug 30

Daisy Rockwell: "The University of Chicago administration... refuses to be outdone by the likes of Harvard, Columbia, and Brown. It has decided to drop its wrecking ball on itself since the Trump administration has not yet gotten around to it." chicagomaroon.com/48353/viewpo...

Lost in Extraterrestrial Translation

The University celebrates the success of area studies alumni, all the while erasing the programs that made those careers possible.

chicagomaroon.com

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Reposted by Amardeep Singh

Daisy Rockwell @shreedaisy.bsky.social · Aug 27

An excerpt from my new novel, Alice Sees Ghosts in @scroll.in.web.brid.gy ! scroll.in/article/1085...

Daisy Rockwell’s new novel: Alice’s ancestral home is crumbling, and a spectre is haunting her

An excerpt from ‘Alice Sees Ghosts’.

scroll.in

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · Aug 27

And in case you want to see the wonderful Storymaps-ArcGIS project she put together, it can be found here:

storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b6fa...

The Poetic Response to Patrice Lumumba's Assassination

The following map contains 100 poems that mention, address, or center on Patrice Lumumba. All of these poems were written in the long aftermath of his assassination. The location on the map for each p...

storymaps.arcgis.com

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · Aug 27

A student in my Digital Humanities grad class this past spring took her final project on Patrice Lumumba and Global poetry and turned it into a legit publication... Well done, Maya!

thecontrapuntal.com/patrice-lumu...

Patrice Lumumba in Global Poetry - The Contrapuntal

"From Jamaica to Palestine to South Africa, poets have transformed Patrice Lumumba into a symbol of resistance. Sixty years after his assassination, the Congolese leader lives on in verse.

thecontrapuntal.com

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · Aug 21

Thanks! It’s been quite an eye-opening project — have learned a lot

Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · Aug 21

And there's a "Gentle Introduction and Reader's Guide" which might be good for students. Consider assigning if you have room in your fall syllabus (keywords: postcolonial/decolonial literature, indigenous literatures, environment/ecocriticism). 3/3

scalar.lehigh.edu/adivasi-writ...

Adivasi Writers: Adivasi Writers: an Introduction to India's Indigenous Literature

Educational Resource Collection for India's "Tribal" (Scheduled Tribe) Writers

scalar.lehigh.edu

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Amardeep Singh @electrostani.bsky.social · Aug 21

We did research to track down info. about authors, their texts, anthologies, periodicals, etc.

We also experimented with AI translation (yes, this may be controversial!), curting a small selection of key texts that are not available in English. IMHO GenAI has gotten pretty good at translating! 2/3

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