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Hester Blum

Hester Blum

@hesterblum.bsky.social

3.4K followers 1.7K following 750 posts

A patched professor in Queen Nature’s granite-founded College. Polar humanities, C19, oceanic studies. Ask me about Moby-Dick. I teach environmental and nineteenth-century American literature at WashU. Protect trans kids. She/her. hesterblum.com .. more

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Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · May 16

Some personal news: I will be leaving Penn State and joining Washington University in St. Louis as the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Chair of English. My husband Jonathan Eburne will be J. H. Hexter Chair in Humanities at WashU. We are thrilled and energized by this new chapter in our lives. 1/3

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 5d

This story is nuts and clearly murder?? or murder by man-must-summit?? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/w...

A Woman Froze to Death on an Alpine Trek. Is Her Boyfriend to Blame?

www.nytimes.com

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 5d

I am a fanatic about Craig in those movies and you nailed exactly why he is so angry all the time

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 5d

This is so so smart about Daniel Craig's Bond:

Lauren Eriks Cline @lerikscline.bsky.social · 8d

Thank you to the brilliant editors at @mid-theory.bsky.social for the chance to write about some of my favorite subjects: transfictional character, gender performance, and Daniel Craig’s tenure as a post-9/11, “serially straight” James Bond.

The Drag of Being Bond

It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. One of popular media’s perennial questions, whether the role is currently filled or not, is “who will be the next James Bond?” It…

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 5d

This is incredible!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 7d

Heed, heed, heed:

Shane Anderson 🏳️‍🌈 @shaneanderson.bsky.social · 7d

"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!

Shane Anderson 🏳️‍🌈 @shaneanderson.bsky.social · 7d

"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!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 7d

Hell yeah Essex County!

Reposted by Hester Blum

Lauren Eriks Cline @lerikscline.bsky.social · 8d

Thank you to the brilliant editors at @mid-theory.bsky.social for the chance to write about some of my favorite subjects: transfictional character, gender performance, and Daniel Craig’s tenure as a post-9/11, “serially straight” James Bond.

The Drag of Being Bond

It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. One of popular media’s perennial questions, whether the role is currently filled or not, is “who will be the next James Bond?” It…

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 8d

My outfit for the day it happens

Axl Rose on the Use Your Illusion tour in white spandex short shorts, high tops with AXL on the tongue, a white bandana, and a stars and stripes leather jacket

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 8d

Hayao Miyazaki

Reposted by Hester Blum, Robert B. Reich

Parker Molloy @parkermolloy.com · 8d

Notice how Trump and Republicans were having the worst couple weeks in the administration's history and they decided to pivot to hardcore attacking trans people?

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 8d

how do you like THAT soppressata

hideously grinning David Brooks in the Epstein files--my caption refers to hideous Brooks's infamous 2017 column that included the following fake story: "Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican."

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 8d

This man is here to "protect" children

creepy pedo-looking white man with combover and dahmer glasses spouting utter lies about gender

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 8d

This is a genocidal policy

NPR @npr.org · 8d

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to announce a package of measures that would together ban gender-affirming care for minors. A press conference is set for 11 a.m. Thursday. n.pr/44xQKdD

RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz to announce moves to ban gender-affirming care for young people

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to announce a package of measures that would together ban gender-affirming care for minors. A press conference is set for 11 a.m. Thursday.

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Mark D. White, Hester Blum , and 1 more Lisa W. Fazio, Mark D. White, Hester Blum, Élisabeth Vallet

NPR @npr.org · 8d

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to announce a package of measures that would together ban gender-affirming care for minors. A press conference is set for 11 a.m. Thursday. n.pr/44xQKdD

RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz to announce moves to ban gender-affirming care for young people

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to announce a package of measures that would together ban gender-affirming care for minors. A press conference is set for 11 a.m. Thursday.

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 9d

His snarl “YOU, Lieutenant WEINberg” is the greatest depiction of casual antisemitism I’ve ever seen

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 12d

Shithole country

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · 23d

This weekend is the next iteration of Terror Camp, a free online conference for polar exploration enthusiasts, which has the highest level of intellectual content and hilarity I have ever encountered: www.terror.camp @terrorcamp.bsky.social

Terror Camp | Polar Fan Conference

Terror Camp is an annual virtual gathering of hundreds of polar exploration enthusiasts. Inspired by AMC's The Terror and the history of the Franklin Expedition, this polar exploration conference feat...

www.terror.camp

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 26

Good morning St Louis

The cover of the St Louis post-dispatch: the top headline reads “Judge: Wig photos were private”

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 22

And the book is incredible

Amanda Wyatt! Visconti @literaturegeek.bsky.social · Nov 22

Seth Rockman: 'Experiential research as a method for IDing questions you didn’t know to ask, rather than providing answers you wouldn’t have had...an experiential research method lets us envision more things we want to know about the past' (experiential=do something the way it was done in the past)

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 22

Same, must-watch (and must-share with your a.i.-pushing administrators):

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · Nov 22

This video is so overwhelming I had to sit down & stare at the wall awhile. I was physically shaking.

I had heard some of these anecdotes before - Proctorio & Tubman bot - but Tanksley synthesizes them (with much much more), revealing undeniable regime of EdTech racialized surveillance & policing…

Ruha Benjamin @ruha9.bsky.social · Nov 22

I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ

Reposted by Hester Blum

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · Nov 22

This video is so overwhelming I had to sit down & stare at the wall awhile. I was physically shaking.

I had heard some of these anecdotes before - Proctorio & Tubman bot - but Tanksley synthesizes them (with much much more), revealing undeniable regime of EdTech racialized surveillance & policing…

Ruha Benjamin @ruha9.bsky.social · Nov 22

I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ

Howard University AI Panel

YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Joe R. Feagin, Fabián Muniesa , and 6 more Joanna Bryson, Joe R. Feagin, Fabián Muniesa, Hester Blum, Mary Rice, Tama Leaver, Manuel Puppis, Manisha Sinha, Anita Gohdes

Ruha Benjamin @ruha9.bsky.social · Nov 22

I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ

Howard University AI Panel

YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley

Reposted by Hester Blum

Amanda Wyatt! Visconti @literaturegeek.bsky.social · Nov 22

Seth Rockman: 'Experiential research as a method for IDing questions you didn’t know to ask, rather than providing answers you wouldn’t have had...an experiential research method lets us envision more things we want to know about the past' (experiential=do something the way it was done in the past)

Screenshot of text from an interview answer by Seth Rockman: " SR: There are so many problems with transcending our subjectivities; so many difficulties when encountering the violence that structured a past that can't and shouldn't be reproduced or approximated. And that creates a real barrier.
But at the same time, as historians, we are committed to inhabiting other
bodies and living in other times and making sense of universes that don't make
sense in our own. Our craft requires imagining ourselves across differences of
cosmology and spirituality, of material conditions, of the day-to-day experiences of
survival. But this gets ever more difficult when our subjects lived on the margins of
the societies whose structures of exploitation and exclusion endure to the present
day.
That's why I've been thinking about experiential research as a method for
identifying questions that you didn't know to ask, rather than providing answers that
you wouldn't have had otherwise. For example, I've been doing some dyeing
projects with my undergraduates in a class called "A Textile History of Atlantic
Slavery," and what we stress in that class is, No, you are not pretending to be a West
African woman in 1774. No, you're not pretending to be an enslaved woman on a
South Carolina plantation in 1854. You are yourself, you are now, and you're up to
your elbows in a pot of really cold water. When students are toting buckets of water
to rinse their fabrics, they realize that water is very heavy. And the questions then
follow: How did people in the past move water? How did their backs and bodies
experience this work? Who was doing this kind of work? We are then prompted to
ask questions about infrastructure, about bodily experience, about the gendered
division of labor.
Once we're asking these kinds of questions, then we can go searching for the answers. An archival record might not prompt us to pose these questions. An experiential research method allows us to envision more things that we…

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 21

It's a capacious field!

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 21

A BLUE HUMANITIES job: jobs.uc.edu/job/Cincinna...

Assistant Professor, Blue Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences

Assistant Professor, Blue Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 16

highly recommended whether you are binging it in order to take a break from the news about vile academic workplaces or not

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 16

The Chair Company is the Twin Peaks of office shows, everyone watch now

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 16

He sounds like Humbert Humbert in these emails

Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Nov 15

Epstein money directly funded that video program