Alix Beeston
@alixbeeston.bsky.social
Writer and academic | Author of *In and Out of Sight* (Oxford UP) and coeditor of *Incomplete* (U California P) | Coming in 2027: *Image Encounters* (Penn State UP) and a collection of Kathleen Collins's plays and screenplays (U California P)
Pinned
Unfinished: On Kathleen Collins’s “Blue Obstacles” by Alix Beeston
February 5, 2026 – “To reappraise women’s incomplete works can be to resist the exclusionary gestures—the refusals, rejections, and roadblocks—that all too often stymie and limit the public careers of...
www.theparisreview.org
A few years ago in the Kathleen Collins archive in New York, I started reading a heavily edited, coffee-spilled notebook. I'm honored to share an excerpt of Collins's first novel, virtually unread before now, in dream magazine @parisreview.bsky.social:
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
Hot on the heels of the @parisreview.bsky.social piece featuring an excerpt from Kathleen Colllins's unfinished novel "Blue Obstacles," ASAP/Journal has published a longer version of the draft materials with scholarly notes and a contextualizing essay. It's open access! 🎉🎉🎉 doi.org/10.1353/asa....
February 10, 2026 at 5:34 PM
Hot on the heels of the @parisreview.bsky.social piece featuring an excerpt from Kathleen Colllins's unfinished novel "Blue Obstacles," ASAP/Journal has published a longer version of the draft materials with scholarly notes and a contextualizing essay. It's open access! 🎉🎉🎉 doi.org/10.1353/asa....
A few years ago in the Kathleen Collins archive in New York, I started reading a heavily edited, coffee-spilled notebook. I'm honored to share an excerpt of Collins's first novel, virtually unread before now, in dream magazine @parisreview.bsky.social:
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
Unfinished: On Kathleen Collins’s “Blue Obstacles” by Alix Beeston
February 5, 2026 – “To reappraise women’s incomplete works can be to resist the exclusionary gestures—the refusals, rejections, and roadblocks—that all too often stymie and limit the public careers of...
www.theparisreview.org
February 6, 2026 at 10:27 AM
A few years ago in the Kathleen Collins archive in New York, I started reading a heavily edited, coffee-spilled notebook. I'm honored to share an excerpt of Collins's first novel, virtually unread before now, in dream magazine @parisreview.bsky.social:
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
Reposted by Alix Beeston
this will be an extraordinary book + everyone should read Alix's methodological précis!
I was lucky enough to contribute a reflection on the approach and ethical stakes of this book to @katherinegroo.bsky.social's fabulous special issue of @femmediahist.bsky.social
on new feminist methods last year: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
on new feminist methods last year: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Images Dreamed from the InsideThe Ethics of Encounter in Feminist Photography Studies
This article reflects on the process of researching and writing a critical-creative account of women and girls in photography history. It contemplates the challenges of drawing close to one’s objects ...
doi.org
January 28, 2026 at 8:54 PM
this will be an extraordinary book + everyone should read Alix's methodological précis!
✨✨✨ After a bit of a wayward journey, my critical-creative book about women and girls in photography history has found a wonderful home @psupress.bsky.social! *Image Encounters: Photography and the Feminist Art of Being Seen* is coming in late 2027 ✨✨✨
January 28, 2026 at 8:44 PM
✨✨✨ After a bit of a wayward journey, my critical-creative book about women and girls in photography history has found a wonderful home @psupress.bsky.social! *Image Encounters: Photography and the Feminist Art of Being Seen* is coming in late 2027 ✨✨✨
Reposted by Alix Beeston
The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...
Guidance for responding to 'A Fairer Pathway to Settlement' consultation
We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.
www.amnesty.org.uk
January 22, 2026 at 10:22 AM
The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...
Reposted by Alix Beeston
I got to chat with @alixbeeston.bsky.social about Here Is a Figure for her @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast! Alix asks such great questions, and it was really a joy to talk to her about where the book came from and what it’s about!
If you’d like to listen:
newbooksnetwork.com/here-is-a-fi...
If you’d like to listen:
newbooksnetwork.com/here-is-a-fi...
Sarah Dowling, "Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form" (Northwestern UP, 2025) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
January 13, 2026 at 11:55 AM
I got to chat with @alixbeeston.bsky.social about Here Is a Figure for her @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast! Alix asks such great questions, and it was really a joy to talk to her about where the book came from and what it’s about!
If you’d like to listen:
newbooksnetwork.com/here-is-a-fi...
If you’d like to listen:
newbooksnetwork.com/here-is-a-fi...
Reposted by Alix Beeston
New on Print Plus
As a part of our "Visualities" blog series, Jane Frances Dunlop explores Gertrude Stein's visual thinking, the simultaneity of perception, and interdisciplinary approaches to seeing.
Read the piece here: modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts...
As a part of our "Visualities" blog series, Jane Frances Dunlop explores Gertrude Stein's visual thinking, the simultaneity of perception, and interdisciplinary approaches to seeing.
Read the piece here: modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts...
December 4, 2025 at 6:25 PM
New on Print Plus
As a part of our "Visualities" blog series, Jane Frances Dunlop explores Gertrude Stein's visual thinking, the simultaneity of perception, and interdisciplinary approaches to seeing.
Read the piece here: modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts...
As a part of our "Visualities" blog series, Jane Frances Dunlop explores Gertrude Stein's visual thinking, the simultaneity of perception, and interdisciplinary approaches to seeing.
Read the piece here: modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts...
Reposted by Alix Beeston
This is like the British Museum complaining that someone took their stuff
December 21, 2025 at 5:46 AM
This is like the British Museum complaining that someone took their stuff
Reposted by Alix Beeston
Professional societies keep beclowning themselves buying into a lie about what an LLM "summary" is. They are inherently counterfeit: not an epistemic product of the ideas in the source, but summary-shaped text linguistically based on *other* works (in the training corpus) that use related language.
This is one of the reasons I remain horrified by seeing @historians.org suggest "ways to use gAI" that included this:
December 21, 2025 at 3:23 AM
Professional societies keep beclowning themselves buying into a lie about what an LLM "summary" is. They are inherently counterfeit: not an epistemic product of the ideas in the source, but summary-shaped text linguistically based on *other* works (in the training corpus) that use related language.
Reposted by Alix Beeston
This, for the record, is what goes into a footnote. It’s the key part of the research process where I examine the practical, methodological, ethical implications of my sources before I join the stream of interpretation. It cannot be outsourced to an LLM.
Rare footage of a footnote being born in the wild.
December 21, 2025 at 5:53 AM
This, for the record, is what goes into a footnote. It’s the key part of the research process where I examine the practical, methodological, ethical implications of my sources before I join the stream of interpretation. It cannot be outsourced to an LLM.
Reposted by Alix Beeston
I find research just as gratifying as the writing itself - whether it's for fiction or essays. I like seeking & learning, I like it when one piece of art illuminates another. I love when the process makes me feel like a detective cracking the case. denying yourself this pleasure makes no sense to me
There's Discourse about using genAI for writing research, and I want to add that every time I've done research (reading books, emailing the library, talking directly to experts, etc) I always stumble across something that inspires a new direction or adds depth that wouldn't have been there before.
December 21, 2025 at 4:00 AM
I find research just as gratifying as the writing itself - whether it's for fiction or essays. I like seeking & learning, I like it when one piece of art illuminates another. I love when the process makes me feel like a detective cracking the case. denying yourself this pleasure makes no sense to me
My latest @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview is with Jonathan Eburne, whose new book Exploded Views is a fascinating and witty experiment in returning to and reimagining unfinished scholarly projects. Listen here: newbooksnetwork.com/exploded-views
Jonathan Eburne, "Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
December 11, 2025 at 8:41 PM
My latest @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview is with Jonathan Eburne, whose new book Exploded Views is a fascinating and witty experiment in returning to and reimagining unfinished scholarly projects. Listen here: newbooksnetwork.com/exploded-views
Reposted by Alix Beeston
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
November 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
Open access for one more week folks x
What are the risks—and opportunities—of drawing close to one's objects of study as a feminist scholar? Alix Beeston reflects on her experience of writing a critical–creative account of women and girls in photography history. @alixbeeston.bsky.social
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
November 21, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Open access for one more week folks x
Reposted by Alix Beeston
My latest essay is available open access for the next two weeks! Pls read and share x
What are the risks—and opportunities—of drawing close to one's objects of study as a feminist scholar? Alix Beeston reflects on her experience of writing a critical–creative account of women and girls in photography history. @alixbeeston.bsky.social
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
November 14, 2025 at 10:49 AM
My latest essay is available open access for the next two weeks! Pls read and share x
Reposted by Alix Beeston
The first methodological note in FMH 11.4 is Alix Beeston's profound and personal meditation on the ethics of photographic encounter. It is an extraordinary piece of writing and thinking. I hope you will read it, share it, teach it.
What are the risks—and opportunities—of drawing close to one's objects of study as a feminist scholar? Alix Beeston reflects on her experience of writing a critical–creative account of women and girls in photography history. @alixbeeston.bsky.social
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
November 14, 2025 at 2:45 PM
The first methodological note in FMH 11.4 is Alix Beeston's profound and personal meditation on the ethics of photographic encounter. It is an extraordinary piece of writing and thinking. I hope you will read it, share it, teach it.
Reposted by Alix Beeston
What are the risks—and opportunities—of drawing close to one's objects of study as a feminist scholar? Alix Beeston reflects on her experience of writing a critical–creative account of women and girls in photography history. @alixbeeston.bsky.social
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
November 12, 2025 at 11:39 PM
What are the risks—and opportunities—of drawing close to one's objects of study as a feminist scholar? Alix Beeston reflects on her experience of writing a critical–creative account of women and girls in photography history. @alixbeeston.bsky.social
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
My latest essay is available open access for the next two weeks! Pls read and share x
What are the risks—and opportunities—of drawing close to one's objects of study as a feminist scholar? Alix Beeston reflects on her experience of writing a critical–creative account of women and girls in photography history. @alixbeeston.bsky.social
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
November 14, 2025 at 10:49 AM
My latest essay is available open access for the next two weeks! Pls read and share x
✨ Years in the making, submitted to the press today, out in early 2027 ✨
November 3, 2025 at 8:42 PM
✨ Years in the making, submitted to the press today, out in early 2027 ✨
Reposted by Alix Beeston
Eminently reasonable proposed principles for professors’ use of AI, from a student refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/a...
October 31, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Eminently reasonable proposed principles for professors’ use of AI, from a student refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/a...
Reposted by Alix Beeston
Sort of in connection with this piece by @alixbeeston.bsky.social I read yesterday - and highly recommend! - I've spent today wondering how different photography might seem if it had been considered similarly to creative non-fiction (rather than inherently mendacious etc)
doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Images Dreamed from the InsideThe Ethics of Encounter in Feminist Photography Studies
This article reflects on the process of researching and writing a critical-creative account of women and girls in photography history. It contemplates the challenges of drawing close to one’s objects ...
doi.org
October 31, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Sort of in connection with this piece by @alixbeeston.bsky.social I read yesterday - and highly recommend! - I've spent today wondering how different photography might seem if it had been considered similarly to creative non-fiction (rather than inherently mendacious etc)
doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Reposted by Alix Beeston
If I could offer students one bit of…advice: be brutally traditional about what is printed on your degree.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
The danger is that degrees are regarded as worthless as nobody believes students have acquired any skills any more, at least not ones they couldn't have hot from just going into an office job from school.
In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
October 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM
If I could offer students one bit of…advice: be brutally traditional about what is printed on your degree.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
If you are first-gen or in any way non traditional, this goes double. Let rich kids get degrees in AI. You get something called “English”.
Reposted by Alix Beeston
Indeed, this issue enters the world at a different moment from the one in which it began. In my introduction, I try to make sense of the histories embedded within the issue itself and clarify my own understanding of just what methods we might require from here. 5/ online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...
On Historical Methods, or Trying Not to Lose So Much
I had planned to write a different kind of introduction to this special issue on feminism’s contemporary historical methods and metahistorical concerns. That one—imagined, drafted, never completed—wou...
online.ucpress.edu
October 30, 2025 at 1:15 AM
Indeed, this issue enters the world at a different moment from the one in which it began. In my introduction, I try to make sense of the histories embedded within the issue itself and clarify my own understanding of just what methods we might require from here. 5/ online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...
This one is a bit special. I feel very lucky to have been invited to contribute an essay to a special issue of dream journal Feminist Media Histories on new methods in feminist film and media studies, edited by one of my very favourite scholars @katherinegroo.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....
Images Dreamed from the InsideThe Ethics of Encounter in Feminist Photography Studies
This article reflects on the process of researching and writing a critical-creative account of women and girls in photography history. It contemplates the challenges of drawing close to one’s objects ...
doi.org
October 30, 2025 at 8:10 AM
This one is a bit special. I feel very lucky to have been invited to contribute an essay to a special issue of dream journal Feminist Media Histories on new methods in feminist film and media studies, edited by one of my very favourite scholars @katherinegroo.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....