Marc Blanc
@blancpages.bsky.social
Literary and cultural historian of the left; professor; Midwesternist. Words in Jacobin, Chicago Review, Belt, History News Network, and a few bathroom stalls.
Pinned
Marc Blanc
@blancpages.bsky.social
· Feb 23
Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism
Printed out of a cattle barn in Missouri, Anvil published some of the biggest leftist writers of the 1930s, including Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. Its popular vision for a multiracial socialism...
jacobin.com
Thrilled that my favorite article so far is up on @jacobinmag.bsky.social today. Place and region matter when talking to people about socialism, and Missouri’s Anvil magazine spoke to rural/Midwestern workers eloquently and intimately in the 1930s. jacobin.com/2025/02/anvi...
"What radicalized you?"
Realizing people could work as service labor for a community where they couldn't afford to live. A small but profound insight at a young age about the fundamental reality of exploitation in a capitalist society
Realizing people could work as service labor for a community where they couldn't afford to live. A small but profound insight at a young age about the fundamental reality of exploitation in a capitalist society
“What radicalized you?”
Hunger amidst abundance.
Hunger amidst abundance.
‘What radicalized you?’
I dunno, being a decent person?
I dunno, being a decent person?
October 28, 2025 at 6:09 PM
"What radicalized you?"
Realizing people could work as service labor for a community where they couldn't afford to live. A small but profound insight at a young age about the fundamental reality of exploitation in a capitalist society
Realizing people could work as service labor for a community where they couldn't afford to live. A small but profound insight at a young age about the fundamental reality of exploitation in a capitalist society
Incredible!
I haven't seen people here mention this letter from the mayor of Illinois' 2nd-largest city (Aurora, 40+% Latino)
to the Aurora Police
following egregious attacks by immigration in Aurora and related protests
So here it is!
to the Aurora Police
following egregious attacks by immigration in Aurora and related protests
So here it is!
October 25, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Incredible!
Today's classroom takeaway, via Willa Cather's My Antonia: ChatGPT can't read literature allusively. After asking it to identify the influence of WWI, the Russian Revolution, and the Homestead Act on the novel's themes, it couldn't provide any passages that weren't direct historical references.
September 30, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Today's classroom takeaway, via Willa Cather's My Antonia: ChatGPT can't read literature allusively. After asking it to identify the influence of WWI, the Russian Revolution, and the Homestead Act on the novel's themes, it couldn't provide any passages that weren't direct historical references.
Reposted by Marc Blanc
things were better when the computer lived in its own specific room and you only went in there sometimes
August 21, 2025 at 4:36 PM
things were better when the computer lived in its own specific room and you only went in there sometimes
Reposted by Marc Blanc
July 7, 2025 at 5:25 PM
It's an honor to be included!
Check it out: the pre-order link for Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest! This book collects dozens of #LiteraryLandscapes essays, and pre-orders will ship in November—perfect for Christmas! www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p0...
Lingering Inland
www.press.uillinois.edu
June 25, 2025 at 5:28 PM
It's an honor to be included!
"Who most clearly saw the real crux of the conflict, most definitely knew his own convictions and was readiest at the crisis for decisive action, was a man whose leadership lay not in his office, wealth, or influence, but in the white flame of his utter devotion to an ideal." Du Bois on John Brown
June 20, 2025 at 5:10 PM
"Who most clearly saw the real crux of the conflict, most definitely knew his own convictions and was readiest at the crisis for decisive action, was a man whose leadership lay not in his office, wealth, or influence, but in the white flame of his utter devotion to an ideal." Du Bois on John Brown
This Juneteenth, I'm reading W.E.B. Du Bois's excellent biography of John Brown. ✊
June 19, 2025 at 6:41 PM
This Juneteenth, I'm reading W.E.B. Du Bois's excellent biography of John Brown. ✊
"In truth always thinkers who do not work have tried to unite workers who do not think. Only working thinkers can unite thinking workers." –W.E.B. Du Bois, "Dark Princess" (1929)
June 17, 2025 at 3:46 PM
"In truth always thinkers who do not work have tried to unite workers who do not think. Only working thinkers can unite thinking workers." –W.E.B. Du Bois, "Dark Princess" (1929)
If anyone tells you that the US isn't a class society/class conscious society, advise them to try to get approved for an apartment in a big city. This is brutal
June 4, 2025 at 7:14 PM
If anyone tells you that the US isn't a class society/class conscious society, advise them to try to get approved for an apartment in a big city. This is brutal
Walt Whitman was the original selfie king. Long before Instagram, he staged portraits to craft his image — even faking a butterfly landing on his finger. In his lifelong search for the “real Me,” the more images he collected, the more he seemed to lose himself in their contradictions
Like today’s selfie-takers, Walt Whitman used photography to curate his image – but ended up more lost than found
The poet obsessively collected images of himself, foreshadowing both the good and the bad of today’s selfie culture.
buff.ly
May 30, 2025 at 6:26 PM
"The cultural production of radical left-wing movements ultimately should struggle not over space on the terrain, but over the authority of the marketplace in people’s cultural and political lives." Jacqui Germain in @journalspectre.bsky.social
spectrejournal.com/on-this-land...
spectrejournal.com/on-this-land...
On This Land We All Get Fed – Spectre Journal
Jacqui Germain reflects on the difficulties and tasks facing the leftist artist in a cultural space geared towards the political right.
spectrejournal.com
May 24, 2025 at 4:53 PM
"The cultural production of radical left-wing movements ultimately should struggle not over space on the terrain, but over the authority of the marketplace in people’s cultural and political lives." Jacqui Germain in @journalspectre.bsky.social
spectrejournal.com/on-this-land...
spectrejournal.com/on-this-land...
Incredibly proud and awed by the talent of my wife, @madisonjblanc.bsky.social, who dropped a killer EP last week. If diaristic alt-pop is your jam, I recommend this
open.spotify.com/album/1HqiX5...
open.spotify.com/album/1HqiX5...
All Good Things
Maddi Sullivan · EP · 2025 · 4 songs
open.spotify.com
May 22, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Incredibly proud and awed by the talent of my wife, @madisonjblanc.bsky.social, who dropped a killer EP last week. If diaristic alt-pop is your jam, I recommend this
open.spotify.com/album/1HqiX5...
open.spotify.com/album/1HqiX5...
Hard to tell if the centrist profiles following me lately are bots or if neoliberal consensus thinking just has a bot-like quality to it
May 22, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Hard to tell if the centrist profiles following me lately are bots or if neoliberal consensus thinking just has a bot-like quality to it
Reposted by Marc Blanc
"[A] democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." - FDR (1938)
a man stands at a podium with microphones that say wor on them
ALT: a man stands at a podium with microphones that say wor on them
media.tenor.com
January 26, 2025 at 9:58 PM
"[A] democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." - FDR (1938)
👎👎
Some sad confirmation from @bcgl.bsky.social while I was at UW last week—the National Digital Newspaper Program—which builds Chronicling America—has been shut down
Historical newspapers are probably the archival material most used by the general public—for genealogy, local history—it’s such a loss
Historical newspapers are probably the archival material most used by the general public—for genealogy, local history—it’s such a loss
About this Collection | Chronicling America | Digital Collections | Library of Congress
Search America's Historic Newspaper Pages through 1963 Please Note: The Library of Congress has transitioned the longstanding Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers website to this new digi...
www.loc.gov
May 12, 2025 at 4:28 PM
👎👎
Reposted by Marc Blanc
Katy Perry going to space--while Trump is disappearing people and throwing the country into economic collapse--is the "Whitey on the Moon" of our times.
April 10, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Katy Perry going to space--while Trump is disappearing people and throwing the country into economic collapse--is the "Whitey on the Moon" of our times.
Reposted by Marc Blanc
Curtailing people’s ability to read widely and carefully, to locate, assess, and compare different sources for themselves, and to write in their own voice about what they find and what it means, is arguably more effective than censorship. It is also one of the most obvious effects of generative AI.
April 11, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Curtailing people’s ability to read widely and carefully, to locate, assess, and compare different sources for themselves, and to write in their own voice about what they find and what it means, is arguably more effective than censorship. It is also one of the most obvious effects of generative AI.
Whole thread is spot on
Tish losing marks the real end of the political front that developed after Micheal Browns murder - what killed it was money
April 9, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Whole thread is spot on
Reposted by Marc Blanc
On Monday, March 31, 2025 we learned that DOGE is targeting the NEH with the aim of substantially reducing its staff, cutting the agency’s grant programs, and rescinding grants that have already been awarded.
Learn what steps you can take here: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...
Learn what steps you can take here: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...
Save the NEH! – National Humanities Alliance
nhalliance.org
April 1, 2025 at 10:19 PM
On Monday, March 31, 2025 we learned that DOGE is targeting the NEH with the aim of substantially reducing its staff, cutting the agency’s grant programs, and rescinding grants that have already been awarded.
Learn what steps you can take here: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...
Learn what steps you can take here: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...
Thrilled that my favorite article so far is up on @jacobinmag.bsky.social today. Place and region matter when talking to people about socialism, and Missouri’s Anvil magazine spoke to rural/Midwestern workers eloquently and intimately in the 1930s. jacobin.com/2025/02/anvi...
Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism
Printed out of a cattle barn in Missouri, Anvil published some of the biggest leftist writers of the 1930s, including Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. Its popular vision for a multiracial socialism...
jacobin.com
February 23, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Thrilled that my favorite article so far is up on @jacobinmag.bsky.social today. Place and region matter when talking to people about socialism, and Missouri’s Anvil magazine spoke to rural/Midwestern workers eloquently and intimately in the 1930s. jacobin.com/2025/02/anvi...
Nancy Fraser, "Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do about It."
February 20, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Nancy Fraser, "Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do about It."
Was thrilled to participate in a record-breaking #douglassday! "If there is no struggle, there is no progress"
February 14, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Was thrilled to participate in a record-breaking #douglassday! "If there is no struggle, there is no progress"
So excited to participate here in STL! #douglassday
Join us on Feb. 14th, Frederick Douglass’s chosen bday, for a day of collective love for Black history! You can join thousands of others to help make American history accessible for everyone by transcribing fascinating historical records! #DouglassDay @douglassday.bsky.social
This year's Douglass Day theme, "You Make History," emphasizes the power of communities in shaping the past, present, and future through storytelling, and the celebration of Black excellence. Join us on Douglass Day, February 14th, to honor this legacy and make history together!
#DouglassDay
#DouglassDay
February 12, 2025 at 8:04 PM
So excited to participate here in STL! #douglassday
Amidst all the strife in the world, I had the best day of my life last Saturday. I love you @madisonjblanc.bsky.social
February 12, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Amidst all the strife in the world, I had the best day of my life last Saturday. I love you @madisonjblanc.bsky.social