"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
My students were just talking about this idea yesterday: we were reading a chapter about how the tech industry eats its young. (And my class sizes have jumped waaay up in the last two years. I suspect that’s not a coincidence.)
Did you also let the dogs out?
love this! I’m always surprised when people I write to thank thank me back. Academic work can be the loneliest public work. Also, if you don’t already have it, open an email folder called “Read when depressed” to store every nice email you get. It helps me get through times my work feels pointless.
Hey! Scholars! If you're using someone's work in your class, sometimes it's nice to email them and tell them, because then they might feel good about their research instead of entirely crushed by the academic humanities' ongoing descent into the grave
We have a tenure-stream job opening at the University of Prince Edward Island! Please pass this on to anyone with a specialization in Canadian Literature. #Canadianliterature www.upei.ca/hr/competiti...
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
—FDR, 1937
Go from this to Katabasis, R F Kuang’s novel about grad students who enter a Dante-esque hell to find their supervisor.
Feb 7, 1601: Richard II is performed at the Globe a day before the ill-fated Essex Rebellion. #OTD #Shakespeare
As you field students' questions and concerns, you feel hurt and frustrated: this gradeless system is supposed to relieve anxiety, not cause it! What is going on? @karismjones.bsky.social www.growbeyondgrades.org/blog/stuck-i...
Wow. Shakespeare was always better than he needed to be.
Yes! After near burnout while teaching through Covid, I decided on the 9-5, M-F route. Though I occasionally have to work on the weekends, I keep track and claim the time back later. Exhaustion does nothing for good teaching and scholarship.
what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.
The CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) urged academics to avoid nonessential travel to the US way back in April. Some still go, but many of us are hard nos. www.caut.ca/news/caut-ad...
Definitely me! Early modern and children’s lit.
“But in these cases/ We still have judgment here, that we but teach/ Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return/ To plague th’ inventor: this even-handed justice/ Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice/ To our own lips.” All leaders should read Macbeth. Not as a leadership manual.
My kids were born early 90s, so my most honest answer would be a Raffi or Fred Penner album, but this one is still perfect: and CanCon.
Heyyyyyyy did you miss us?
We're back with a new episode on PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE, featuring special guest @fourfootedbeasts.bsky.social !!
www.podbean.com/ei/dir-hkttu...
@mobydickatsea.bsky.social, @levostregc.bsky.social, and @shakespeare.lol are killing it this year.
Thanks for sharing this document, @rweingarten.bsky.social.
I read it, and I believe it's inexcusably inadequate and will not prepare teachers or schools to confront the very real dangers of the "A.i." products pushed by your partners, including OpenAI.
A few thoughts for your consideration...
Love the tunes: worried about how prophetic the ending might be in the current climate. (Also the first play I ever saw when I was just 5: scared the bejeezus out of me.)
OMG. So I was not the only one. 34 years later, and I can still remember it so clearly. Yes, labour was more manageable,
I recently went to a scary talk about how much that has been digitized (in my field, Early Modern lit and history) has already been lost — when funding runs out, researchers move on, platforms no longer work (not to mention when a whole national deposit library gets hacked).
Saving this thread for my Research Methods class in January. (I do have colleagues excitedly praising how much time you save letting LLMs do your lit reviews for you, so holding undergrads to a higher standard, I guess?)
"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future."
- @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit.
Incredible words.
Listen to all of it!
One of the glories of London is that it’s a true world city, despite the efforts of small minds and shrivelled hearts.
Everyone’s from everywhere, but we’re all Londoners, and so it’s always been.
Day 4 of 5 for #ungrading interviews for first-year portfolios and for third-year learning letters, and wow, that’s exhausting work for a serious introvert. But there was also joy and opportunities for connection, and it still beats sitting alone in my office grading. (But now there is wine.)
