Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · 12d

1

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks to my colleague Pavel Andrade.

3

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · 16d

This time next week at Texas Tech University: both Victor Sierra Matute and Cristina Pardo Porto in the house.

2 3 8

Reposted by Susan Larson

elenore @dropthatphone.bsky.social · 26d

I am begging everyone with my heart and soul to read a fucking book. If you haven’t done it in a long time, you can still do it. A lot of people are investing in illiteracy futures right now, and they’re playing in your face trying to get you to pay for your own ignorance.

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 26d

The imagined consumer on the landing page for Google's NotebookLM is a student in an upper-division literature course who has been assigned James Joyce's "Ulysses," and asks the software to summarize the novel and identify its themes.

Who is this advertising for?

14 43

Reposted by Susan Larson

Drew McKevitt @drewmckevitt.bsky.social · 28d

And we're back to the question of who gets to define what counts as disciplinary knowledge. Does the expert who has spent their lives studying the subject get to define it in the classroom? Or the 20 year old right wing activist who literally believes the president can make laws by dictate?

1 19 110

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · 29d

bsky.app/profile/mave...

Jeffrey Winfield 💙 🌈 🫂 🫘 @maverickhammed.bsky.social · Sep 8

John Oliver talks about Donald Trump’s war on higher education, the history of right-wing attacks on what universities research and teach, and how a weird little tree frog might – might! – just save us all. 👍♥️😁
#JohnOliver #Trump #HBO #BlueSky

Trump vs. Higher Education: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight

youtu.be

1

Reposted by Susan Larson

Ana F. Cebrián 🍉 @meriendismo.bsky.social · Sep 5

Aquí empiezan mis colaboraciones con @ctxt.es
Mil gracias por la invitación 😊

Abecedario para unas lecturas en común ctxt.es/es/20250901/...

Abecedario para unas lecturas en común

Agustín (de Hipona) y Benito (Pérez Galdós)

ctxt.es

9 45 130

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Sep 5

We can’t wait to see you in West Texas.

1

Reposted by Susan Larson

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 25

no matter what the tech grift oligarchs sell, no matter how much the authoritarians intimidate, people hunger for the freedom to learn

www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

As The Fall Semester Opens, Major Universities Tout Record Enrollments

In a year where American colleges face mounting political & financial challenges, several major institutions are touting record enrollments for the fall, 2025 semester.

www.forbes.com

2 41 190

Reposted by Susan Larson

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 15

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

AGAINST AI

against-a-i.com

42 430 750

Reposted by Susan Larson

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 12

Joins HELU for “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bill: Higher Ed Fights Back” on Monday, August 18th at 7:30 PM ET/ 6:30 CT / 5:30 MT / 4:30 PT, with Sara Garcia, a policy analyst for Bernie Sanders, and Thomas Gokey of the Debt Collective

higheredlaborunited.org/2025/08/11/a...

August 18 – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bill: Higher Ed Fights Back! – Higher Education Labor United

higheredlaborunited.org

6 8

Reposted by Susan Larson

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · Aug 12

Counterpoint: There is has never been a more urgent time to write a book. Technofascism is, among other things, an attempt to capture and enclose literature and literacy. Print is a rent strike.

kate wagner @katewagner.wehwalt.net · Aug 11

is there anything more pointless right now that writing a book? feels that way to me

6 190 590

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Aug 12

François-Nicolas Vozel traces the afterlife of May ‘68 in the thinking of Marguerite Duras in RQ 72.3.
Keywords: Duras – Blanchot – Deleuze – J.S. Bach – May ’68. doi.org/10.1080/0883...

Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible! May-ssianic Realism in Duras’s Détruire dit-elle and Nathalie Granger

Like Blanchot, Duras experienced May ‘68 as a miraculous event, a messianic interruption of the order of things, which, despite its eventual failure, generated an enduring fascination on the writer...

doi.org

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Aug 3

Víctor Sierra Matute looks at the figure and ideological function of the ‘prince of Spanish lyric poetry’ Garcilaso de la Vega to trace how literary canonization is a historically layered process shaped by evolving disciplinary frameworks in RQ vol. 72.3.
doi.org/10.1080/0883...

2 1 7

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Aug 3

Thank you Aaron Hanlon, Eric Hayot and Anna Kornbluh for HUMANITIES WORKS: posters, postcards, and handouts to support the humanities. humanitiesworks.org/posters/

The Posters – HUMANITIES WORKS

humanitiesworks.org

1 3

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Aug 3

Footage from Les Blank’s 1976 film about norteño music captures the quintessential Texas sound of the accordion of Flaco Jimenez, RIP.

youtu.be/CXrwwHaBrb0?...

Flaco Jimenez - En Vivo (1976)

YouTube video by drcossnuevoleon

youtu.be

1

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Jul 28

Caglar Erteber's review of Agnese Codebò's'The Slum and the City: Culture and Dissidence in the Villas Miseria of Buenos Aires,' tells the story of how slums matter as spaces that produce new aesthetics and social alliances. Just out in RQ vol. 72.3.
www.tandfonline.com/toc/vroq20/7...

2

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Jul 28

Hot off the press: Pavel Andrade's review of a new book about the Mexican intelligentsia’s obsession with labor and idleness in their attempts to create a wealthy, independent nation between 1821-1852. Romance Quarterly, vol. 72(3). doi.org/10.1080/0883...

1 2

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Jul 28

The brilliant Luis Prádanos strikes again: this time proposing a series of tactics for a "pedagogy of degrowth that minimizes the use of unnecessary corporative technologies while discussing the political ecology of technology." An inspiring read for the year ahead. DOI: 10.4324/9781032650159-24

3

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Jul 25

bsky.app/profile/anna...

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Jul 24

always reposting, it's the rules, like the best lipsynch

Lauren Ginsberg @laurenginsberg.bsky.social · Jul 24

(1) that STEM produced more job prospects. Then has been debunked w studies showing employers increasingly seek humanistic skills & this will increase w AI. “when it comes to employment prospects, majors in art history and philosophy outperform some STEM-based counterparts.” according to the Fed/2

Reposted by Susan Larson

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Jul 21

syllabus time, teaming up for the herculean efforts of reinventing writing assignments. here, some prompts for required weekly low stakes 250-500 word reflections/ process pieces that have proven relatively conducive to real writing in lit class. please share any similar suggestions in thread.

Describe something you learned from lecture this week that you didn’t know just from doing the readings.

Connect something you learned in 209 this week to something you are learning in another of your classes this semester.

If Monday and Wednesday assigned readings were from two different texts, make connections between the two. Do they share themes? Forms? Tone? Historical context? Do you find them equally interesting?

Look at the very first paragraph of one of our texts and discuss how the opening lays the groundwork for the rest of the work. Quote specific lines, phrases, or images.

Using quotes from a text, persuade someone (friend or foe, your grandma or your senator) to change their mind about something important.

Compose a 5 song playlist to accompany an assigned reading from this week, and write a few sentences for each song, explaining your choices.

Describe an idea you had in response to the readings/lecture/discussions for our class this week- any idea, about literature, or the world, or yourself. How might you pursue this idea, in your studies or elsewhere?

Choose a passage (no more than 10 lines) from the readings this week and rewrite it, changing at least one of the literary aspects such as: person (change from first to third-person or vice versa), tense (change from past to present etc), focalizing character (i.e. write it from a different character's perspective), style (adjectives, diction, description, tone). Then write 2-3 sentences about the effect of your changes.

Compose a yelp review to strangers, or a letter to a specific person, or a booktok style video, recommending a novel/poem/play from this week’s reading.

Write a letter to someone who has questioned your choice of majoring or minoring in English, explaining why you value what you’re learning. Include quotes / ideas from this week’s readings.

47 120 520

Reposted by Susan Larson

Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social · Jul 19

www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/v...

Verso Selected Theory

Theory becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Shop a selection of Verso theory titles below: [book-strip index="1" style="buy"]

www.versobooks.com

1 10

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Jul 17

WORD.

1

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Jul 17

Bárbara Espinosa's ES PA ÑO LA is a great novel about migration, underemployment and domestic labor that WOW -- has an ending that I did not see coming.

2

Susan Larson @susanlarson.bsky.social · Jul 17

Students Want the Liberal Arts. Administrators, Not So Much. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

‘The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.’

Opinion | Students Want the Liberal Arts. Administrators, Not So Much.

www.nytimes.com

1