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Karl Steel

@karlsteel.bsky.social

4.1K followers 3K following 7.1K 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

♨ naïve dumbass @atticusgf.bsky.social · 12h

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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Reposted by Karl Steel

Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 15h

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 · 21h

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 · 21h

(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 · 1d

😒😐

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

"Woo! punk rock"

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

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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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

Listening to Stevie Wonder yesterday while putting dinner together and wondering how many defenders of "Western Civilization" have a favorite Stevie Wonder song

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David Klion @davidklion.bsky.social · 1d

The notion that Bari will be "running CBS News" is slightly misleading. What the reporting suggests is that Tom Cibrowski, a guy with normal qualifications, will be doing that. Bari will be Emperor Ellison's Vader-esque enforcer, outside the chain of command, intervening at will.

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Anna Wilson @annapwilson.bsky.social · 1d

#Pamela I don't know why more novels don't have their characters frequently request to read the novel they are in and then say how good it is, how wise, how likely to be on the NYT bestseller list, etc

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

Sweet Precious Baby Press

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Kevin @kevjg.bsky.social · 1d

a fascist president, a corrupt president, a vindictive president, a senile president we might endure — but a pelagian president?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Trump: "I want to be good because you want to prove to God so you go to that next step, right? So that's very important to me."

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

I like that Basic publishes books that are so

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 1d

I didn't assign the whole of Roman de Silence to my grad students bc I figured everyone had already read it. No! 1 in 16. The problem of the common book left aside because too common and gradually becoming uncommon again.

Here's what I wrote for today about it

medievalkarl.com/general-cult...

medievalkarl.com

Reposted by Karl Steel

Johanna Winant @johannawinant.bsky.social · 1d

I’m shilling CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY hard because I’m so proud of it —specifically because it, like every close reading, is the product of a community and an offering to a community.
@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social
and I collaborated with each other and also 22 brilliant contributors.

stack of copies of CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 2d

🎅

Reposted by Karl Steel

Juan C Chavez @inafutureage.bsky.social · 2d

Did you or a friend or a family member get attacked by Trump’s brown shirts this weekend? I’d like to hear about it and maybe do something about it. My email is jchavez [at] ojrc [dot] info. Please put “Seeking Legal Advice re: ICE Building” in subject line. All inquiries are confidential.

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 2d

Federal officers used tear gas against Portland ICE protesters while Trump said "paid insurrectionists" were “burning” the city.

Trump claims ‘Portland is burning’ while federal agents intensify ICE protests

Federal officers used tear gas against Portland ICE protesters while Trump said "paid insurrectionists" were “burning” the city.

www.oregonlive.com

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 2d

The Patagonia Vest and also the Nuggets line in One Battle After Another

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 2d

(I first encountered the song years ago now, thank god, in my 'on the apps' days, when a lot of folks listed it as a top song, and after a first listen, it became an automatic NOPE. just awful! but in some ways it's exactly what the original deserves)

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 2d

snapshot here
medievalkarl.com/general-cult...

On the Unsuitability of Human Dogs: Medieval Reason, Falling Sheep, and The Limits of Clever Animals – Medieval Karl

medievalkarl.com

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 2d

why didn't i just do a chaucer book

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 2d

(several years and chapters into this book project, and thinking that maybe the fact that it's taking so long is that it needs to be credible about scholastic philosophy (chapters 1-2), boethius (chapter 3), history of emotion (chapter 4), and marguerite porete (chapter 5)) (help)

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

Nepo Babies

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

Well it didn't

Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 4d

I got tickets to EVERYONE BATTLES EVERYONE EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE or whatever that movie's called that you're all going on about for tomorrow afternoon, and as the big man hasn't been seen in public since Tues, if the Big Event happens during my time in Movie Land I will be so annoyed.

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Karl Steel @karlsteel.bsky.social · 3d

Fabulous movie !