Bat signal
10.03.2026 20:47
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Bat signal
It’s a picture of me with my new book Quiet protest a new history of activism during the Vietnam war
My first copy of Quiet Protest just arrived! It will be out on 1 April, published by @newsouthpublishing.bsky.social (although there will be early copies for sale at the Newcastle Writers Festival from 27-29 March) and launches and author talks to follow.
is it good that Iran is putting mines in the strait of hormuz? we asked this group of Iowa republican voters, who agreed that the real problem was trans athl
It’s a really good issue
“This year’s International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) conference took place one week ago, as of this writing. The conference was in Washington, D.C., as it happens just across the street from the White House, and in a grim coincidence the United States began an illegal and impetuous war against Iran on Saturday night, just as the conference attendees walked past the White House and ventured out to dinner. The orders to begin the war, perhaps aptly, did not emanate from inside the White House itself, or from anywhere in D.C., but rather from a private club in Florida, far from the seats of government where grave decisionsเอส such as a declaration of war are constitutionally required to be collectively rather than unilaterally made. (Even 15 months into the American fascist experiment, we should not be so afraid of being labeled naïve as to avoid calling this out.) The fact was a reminder of how thoroughly the American government has been cleaved from the work of governing. Nonetheless the White House -- and the whole district, really -- teemed with actors, quite actually armed, performing security theater. Mobs of National Guardsmen clogged escalators to the Metro; Secret Service agents rode their bicycles in tight, endless circles near 17th Street; men with cell phone holsters and wraparound shades warily patrolled the tarps and holes of the erstwhile East Wing. Impunity and violence, work from the permanent collection, were on public view in the”
permanent collection, were on public view in the public galleries of the city, from which the actual government seemed to have long since absconded. This is what we study, isn’t it? Performance? The presentation of symbolic systems, for power, survival, critique. Artifice does real things, we know. IASPM explained the performances of Ellington/Roan/Veloso, the threading of impossible needles through brilliant stagecraft and persona-building, the doing of politics through artifice. Savvy to it, we stepped outside and became compulsory audience to the performance of police whose stagecraft was very really trained upon us, political power growing from (the display of) the barrel of a gun. Nothing could make me prouder, I thought during the conference, than to keep doing exactly what JPMS does, to think rather than concede thought amidst the performance of violence. This issue’s articles examine musical keepsakes (Lauren Alex O’Haga); musical labor and artificial intelligence (Will Mason); Peloton instruction (Rachel Allison and Braden Leap); and cassette tapes in East Bay punk scenes (Sean L. Peters). Each piece is politically attuned, and each is intensely curious. Authoritarianism does not look kindly on curiosity. We are not supposed to ask about AI, about capital, about memory and selfhood, or about the expressions of marginal kids, as these pieces respectively do. It is dangerous to recognize power as performance, performance as power. That is precisely why we must do it
Working on the intro to the next issue of JPMS, aware that we might be in altogether different humanitarian crisis by the time it runs
Pedagogy Under Threat (in the U.S. and Beyond) - Sponsored by AAS Diversity and Equity Committee Sat, March 14, 2026 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM PDT Location: VCC, Room 212 Over the last decade, higher education has experienced a disconcerting variety of threats which have taken a variety of forms at institutions globally, include but are not limited to restrictions on academic freedom, budget cuts and the adjunctification of instruction, the elimination of entire departments, surveillance, and much more. In recent years, the United States in particular has been a site of further and accelerated existential attacks on the infrastructure of the humanities, area studies, higher education as a whole, and students whose identities or activism make them vulnerable, destabilizing the foundations of critical pedagogy and rejecting the necessity of diversity, equity, and justice for educators and students alike. The reckless and often extractive push towards new and little-understood technologies like generative AI without consideration of their influence on teaching, research, or student development further hinders instructors of every discipline and background. Finally, the militarization of campus security, including intensive surveillance technology, has restricted free speech. With repercussions far beyond North American academic circles, these trends both echo and resonate with the experiences of colleagues and institutions around the world. These targeted forms of disempowerment have effects well beyond US borders, necessitating that we both raise awareness of these issues and collaborate on strategic paths forward.
As we get closer to #AAS2026, a number of scholars on the Diversity and Equity Committee panel "Pedagogy Under Threat (in the U.S. & Beyond)" have found that they cannot attend the conference due to visa issues. We are therefore encouraging scholars to stop by and share in this important discussion.
Very proud to host Peter Beinart at Stony Brook later this month. This has been a dream of mine for a while, and I'm thrilled about it.
Mar 30 5:30pm at our Humanities Institute, w/Bruce Robbins. "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning."
calendar.stonybrook.edu/site/humanit...
Beinart was very generous with us, and frankly the admin showed up in terms of supporting (rather than sidelining) the effort. We shall see who attends and the vibe, but I can think of few people better than Beinart (and Robbins) to combine frankness with depth of historical knowledge.
Very proud to host Peter Beinart at Stony Brook later this month. This has been a dream of mine for a while, and I'm thrilled about it.
Mar 30 5:30pm at our Humanities Institute, w/Bruce Robbins. "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning."
calendar.stonybrook.edu/site/humanit...
Thanks for saying this. Whenever there’s a moment of protest, I get interviewed a bunch about “but where are the protest songs?” and my response has been that anti-ICE whistles are the current US protest music. They’re the sonic communicative thing expressing dissent and bringing people together.
There’s always room for different layers of dissent in the same movement, some referential and drawing on powerful, recognizable symbols (as Guthrie has provided in this moment and others), and some pragmatically responsive to the material needs of the current situation. That’s whistles now.
My perspective is that /this/ moment is a little more folk/protest music throwback, but that might just be my bias. Regardless, there's always been musical responses to crisis.
I’ve published on this and I stand by it.
Protest music doesn’t always sound like Woody Guthrie.
read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/...
Thanks for saying this. Whenever there’s a moment of protest, I get interviewed a bunch about “but where are the protest songs?” and my response has been that anti-ICE whistles are the current US protest music. They’re the sonic communicative thing expressing dissent and bringing people together.
Super fascinated by the fact that Sun Ra really loved “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and this solo version sounds like it could be on Mr Rogers which is from a concert that the mighty mighty Bill Lupoletti had a hand in making happen
youtu.be/2B7qbxWXgWA
Recently had “the talk” with my kids (about how Siamese Dream is good but Billy Corgan is really, really, really stupid). They took it well.
Writing about LLMs with the aid of LLMs was a stale gimmick the very first time it was used. I don’t understand the rhetorical move there, especially in 2026.
I’m honestly not sure what accounts for the overeager buy-in! Fear of being uncool?
Scratch the surface, and it's another "this is just over the horizon!"
I'm also genuinely perplexed by the arguments that the flow should now be "great idea" --> claude does everything --> scientific singularity. The great ideas *come from* the artisanal work of doing the actual work.
AI absolutely might put us out of work, but not because it can replicate the quality of what humans currently do. Like any disruptive capitalist “innovation,” it’s a simulacrum that’s far cheaper and just barely convincing enough. Let’s not mistake it for being an actual substitute.
Some social scientists are ethnographers. What is the AI answer to ethnography?
Shocking, I know, but AI in academic writing is premised on a denial of — if not an attack on — black feminist scholarship that asks researchers to always tell us where they stand in their research.
AI cannot be reflexive, and in fact it undermines reflexivity, yet another reason to avoid it.
The amount of pacifism-shaming in the newspaper, suggesting that anyone who questions war lacks guts or doesn't understand that bad guys need to get dealt with, is ... exactly what happens at the beginning of every war.
But don't worry, war-dead, they'll acknowledge the complexities later!
And then the second.
The amount of pacifism-shaming in the newspaper, suggesting that anyone who questions war lacks guts or doesn't understand that bad guys need to get dealt with, is ... exactly what happens at the beginning of every war.
But don't worry, war-dead, they'll acknowledge the complexities later!
War, the famously efficient activity that never harms innocents. How are we doing that discourse again!
The new These Puzzles Fund Abortion puzzle pack is on pre-sale now. I edited a lovely puzzle for it, and the constructor lineup is stellar as always. Solve some top-tier crosswords and help super reproductive rights won’t ya
fund.nnaf.org/campaign/the...
I’ll bite on those dining recommendations
I also saw two Secret Service guys on bikes whose patrol routes were just two adjacent, ten-foot circles. Seemed dizzying and was simply primo security theater
The gangs of like twelve National Guardsmen patrolling empty DC Metro Stations, armed to the teeth and absent mindedly gnawing on Chick-Fil-a while doing a word search on their phone, make the government's concern with budget efficiency very funny