Christian Haines
@cphiliphaines.bsky.social
English Prof at Penn State University. Wrote a book on utopia and politics, A Desire Called America (Fordham UP, 2019). Writing on Marxism, lit theory, speculative fiction (SFF), contemp novels & poetry. Assoc Editor of Utopian Studies. Views my own.
Reposted by Christian Haines
!!!BOOK NEWS!!!
Do you want a signed copy of *The Edge of Space-Time*? Do you want to support a queer/Black and Asian-owned bookstore?
Through 30 March, if you preorder from @loyaltybooks.bsky.social, you are guaranteed a signed AND personalized copy:
loyaltybookstores.com/preordersspa...
😻 📚💙
Do you want a signed copy of *The Edge of Space-Time*? Do you want to support a queer/Black and Asian-owned bookstore?
Through 30 March, if you preorder from @loyaltybooks.bsky.social, you are guaranteed a signed AND personalized copy:
loyaltybookstores.com/preordersspa...
😻 📚💙
January 28, 2026 at 7:34 PM
!!!BOOK NEWS!!!
Do you want a signed copy of *The Edge of Space-Time*? Do you want to support a queer/Black and Asian-owned bookstore?
Through 30 March, if you preorder from @loyaltybooks.bsky.social, you are guaranteed a signed AND personalized copy:
loyaltybookstores.com/preordersspa...
😻 📚💙
Do you want a signed copy of *The Edge of Space-Time*? Do you want to support a queer/Black and Asian-owned bookstore?
Through 30 March, if you preorder from @loyaltybooks.bsky.social, you are guaranteed a signed AND personalized copy:
loyaltybookstores.com/preordersspa...
😻 📚💙
Reposted by Christian Haines
since talk of general strikes has come back (a good thing imo!), re-upping this piece on some of why the law is an obstacle to those and fosters a labor movement less inclined to those
organizing.work/2023/08/the-...
organizing.work/2023/08/the-...
The National Labor Relations Act Is Anti-Strike Legislation
Nate Holdren explains how the very legislation that gave workers the right to strike also ensured strikes would become less frequent.
organizing.work
January 25, 2026 at 7:06 PM
since talk of general strikes has come back (a good thing imo!), re-upping this piece on some of why the law is an obstacle to those and fosters a labor movement less inclined to those
organizing.work/2023/08/the-...
organizing.work/2023/08/the-...
Reposted by Christian Haines
when I visited the Galaxy's Edge section of Disney World, the Stormtroopers were walking around pretending to ask random people for IDs and this was understood to be an obvious sign of fascist villainy.
January 19, 2026 at 4:54 PM
when I visited the Galaxy's Edge section of Disney World, the Stormtroopers were walking around pretending to ask random people for IDs and this was understood to be an obvious sign of fascist villainy.
Reposted by Christian Haines
‘Roddenberry understood that progress required visibility. You don’t reach a future that “takes delight in differences” by hiding them. You reach it by putting those differences front and center‘
Star Trek is Delivering on Gene Roddenberry's Original Dream (Despite the "Outrage")
Despite some backlash online, new Star Trek show, Starfleet Academy, has remained true to Roddenberry's dream.
comicbook.com
January 18, 2026 at 1:39 AM
‘Roddenberry understood that progress required visibility. You don’t reach a future that “takes delight in differences” by hiding them. You reach it by putting those differences front and center‘
Promises of a radical breakthrough in post-human intelligence and miraculous productivity gains have captured the animal spirits of investors to the point where, as the FT’s Ruchir Sharma put it, ‘America is now one big bet on AI’.
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
Cédric Durand, After AI — Sidecar
Legacies of the bubble.
newleftreview.org
January 18, 2026 at 11:03 AM
Promises of a radical breakthrough in post-human intelligence and miraculous productivity gains have captured the animal spirits of investors to the point where, as the FT’s Ruchir Sharma put it, ‘America is now one big bet on AI’.
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
Reposted by Christian Haines
This comes up in movement histories over and over again! Despair is your enemy’s friend! Good organizers know this!!
i have been reading Tom Ricks’ “Fighting the Good War” which is a military analysis of the civil rights movement, and one thing that comes abundantly across is that movement leaders and ordinary people made it a practice to refuse to fall into despair and cynicism.
January 16, 2026 at 1:56 PM
This comes up in movement histories over and over again! Despair is your enemy’s friend! Good organizers know this!!
Reposted by Christian Haines
it should not surprise anybody who follows my work that I wrote a bunch more songs last year. (Peter Balkan was written in 2024.) Here's one we're releasing early in honor of Bob Weir. Enjoy -- we're donating proceeds to the American Cancer Society. themountaingoats.bandcamp.com/track/going-...
Going to Fennario, by the Mountain Goats
track by the Mountain Goats
themountaingoats.bandcamp.com
January 16, 2026 at 3:09 PM
it should not surprise anybody who follows my work that I wrote a bunch more songs last year. (Peter Balkan was written in 2024.) Here's one we're releasing early in honor of Bob Weir. Enjoy -- we're donating proceeds to the American Cancer Society. themountaingoats.bandcamp.com/track/going-...
New Claudia Rankine, poetic reckonings with history.
Claudia Rankine returns with TRIAGE on August 4, 2026. This is a book for those complicated but beautiful friendships that we come to rely on to unsettle us, to make us better.
Preorder:
www.graywolfpress.org/books/triage
Preorder:
www.graywolfpress.org/books/triage
January 15, 2026 at 7:49 AM
New Claudia Rankine, poetic reckonings with history.
Reposted by Christian Haines
Shipping this week! Issue 07: Romance. Dependent. Detached. Trauma Bonded. The Incest Lobby. Revolution Against Romance. Reading for Love and Labor. Surrealist Bedfellows. Mad Love. Essays by Nadia Bou Ali, hannah baer, Moon Charania, Davey Davis, Kaleem Hawa, Anna Kornbluh, Thomas Ogden, & more.
December 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Shipping this week! Issue 07: Romance. Dependent. Detached. Trauma Bonded. The Incest Lobby. Revolution Against Romance. Reading for Love and Labor. Surrealist Bedfellows. Mad Love. Essays by Nadia Bou Ali, hannah baer, Moon Charania, Davey Davis, Kaleem Hawa, Anna Kornbluh, Thomas Ogden, & more.
Reposted by Christian Haines
Some good political theology from Adam Kotsko (or, why it's not going to get any better): adamkotsko.substack.com/p/neutral-gr...
Neutral Ground
On politicization and the decay of legitimacy
adamkotsko.substack.com
January 14, 2026 at 3:35 PM
Some good political theology from Adam Kotsko (or, why it's not going to get any better): adamkotsko.substack.com/p/neutral-gr...
Reposted by Christian Haines
“Our country is at war with its people, and your goodness makes you an enemy, a citizen insurgent.“ —Danez Smith
An Elegy for My Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good
Fellow poet Danez Smith memorializes the Minneapolis mother's call to witness
www.harpersbazaar.com
January 14, 2026 at 3:33 PM
“Our country is at war with its people, and your goodness makes you an enemy, a citizen insurgent.“ —Danez Smith
Reposted by Christian Haines
this is great @strangehorizons.bsky.social feat. @charliejane.bsky.social @annaleen.bsky.social and more! strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Feminist Futurism Versus Project 2025: An Empowering Speculative Salon
When Le Guin talks about genre writers as “the realists of a larger reality” we surrender the power of that when we narrow our work to only depict one type of future. We have great power to restore…
strangehorizons.com
January 13, 2026 at 5:06 PM
this is great @strangehorizons.bsky.social feat. @charliejane.bsky.social @annaleen.bsky.social and more! strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Reposted by Christian Haines
If you're interested in radical politics and literature, do not miss my recently published book "Socialism and British Literature: A People to Come" @livunipress.bsky.social liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....
Socialism and British Literature | Home
Roberto del Valle Alcalá is Associate Professor of English Literature at Södertörn University in Sweden and a Beatriz Galindo Senior Fellow at the University of Alcalá in Spain.
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk
January 13, 2026 at 10:24 AM
If you're interested in radical politics and literature, do not miss my recently published book "Socialism and British Literature: A People to Come" @livunipress.bsky.social liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....
Reposted by Christian Haines
The Conversation has a good account of where we are in a scholarly publishing environment increasingly driven by commercial publishers. The culmination: "The scholarly system is overwhelmed by quantity, distorted by profit motives, and is stripped of its purpose of advancing knowledge."
The 5 stages of the ‘enshittification’ of academic publishing
Academic publishing now shows the same decline that has hit social media and online marketplaces.
theconversation.com
January 12, 2026 at 4:38 PM
The Conversation has a good account of where we are in a scholarly publishing environment increasingly driven by commercial publishers. The culmination: "The scholarly system is overwhelmed by quantity, distorted by profit motives, and is stripped of its purpose of advancing knowledge."
Reposted by Christian Haines
Monopoly Capital Goes to War
graceblakeley.substack.com/p/monopoly-c...
graceblakeley.substack.com/p/monopoly-c...
January 12, 2026 at 1:02 PM
Monopoly Capital Goes to War
graceblakeley.substack.com/p/monopoly-c...
graceblakeley.substack.com/p/monopoly-c...
There are certain departments at universities filled with folks who have lucrative side hustles doing consulting (business, economics). These departments seem more and more to be feeders for higher levels of administration. I find it difficult to trust individuals with one foot out the door.
This seems to strongly suggest that the incoming president of UVA doctored his CV to the edge of outright dishonesty, and that the most recent changes came months before Jim Ryan was forced, as if they were made in anticipation in Ryan’s removal. augustafreepress.com/news/vanishi...
How UVA’s presidential search missed what took us an hour to find
Inside Higher Ed frames the controversy surrounding Scott C. Beardsley's appointment as the University of Virginia's president.
augustafreepress.com
January 12, 2026 at 12:10 PM
There are certain departments at universities filled with folks who have lucrative side hustles doing consulting (business, economics). These departments seem more and more to be feeders for higher levels of administration. I find it difficult to trust individuals with one foot out the door.
Reposted by Christian Haines
If you read Dracula & thought “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis & the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual & national anxieties are,” you’re in luck! Editor, reviewer, & scholar @marmercurio.bsky.social talks us through Richard Marsh's THE BEETLE:
A Meal of Thorns 41- THE BEETLE with Marisa Mercurio
If you read Dracula and thought: “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis and the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual and national anxieties are,” you&rsqu…
ancillaryreviewofbooks.org
January 12, 2026 at 12:00 PM
If you read Dracula & thought “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis & the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual & national anxieties are,” you’re in luck! Editor, reviewer, & scholar @marmercurio.bsky.social talks us through Richard Marsh's THE BEETLE:
Reposted by Christian Haines
politically, the biggest problem with a lot of SF/F worlds is that they erase the working class. they may imagine political conflicts, they may feature oppressed or lumpen characters, but production seems to just happen without being a central contradiction in society.
January 11, 2026 at 3:36 PM
politically, the biggest problem with a lot of SF/F worlds is that they erase the working class. they may imagine political conflicts, they may feature oppressed or lumpen characters, but production seems to just happen without being a central contradiction in society.
Reposted by Christian Haines
The reactionary centrist logic is simple: if the left does something bad it’s the left’s fault, and if the right does something bad, it’s also the left’s fault for making them do it. It’s a simple formula and once you see it every one of their arguments is the same
January 10, 2026 at 11:24 PM
The reactionary centrist logic is simple: if the left does something bad it’s the left’s fault, and if the right does something bad, it’s also the left’s fault for making them do it. It’s a simple formula and once you see it every one of their arguments is the same
Reposted by Christian Haines
Renee Nicole Good, the woman murdered by ICE today. www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...
‘She was an amazing human being:’ Mother identifies woman shot, killed by ICE agent
Renee Nicole Good, 37, lived in the Twin Cities with her partner.
www.startribune.com
January 7, 2026 at 10:11 PM
Renee Nicole Good, the woman murdered by ICE today. www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...
Reposted by Christian Haines
Part 2 of @strangehorizons.bsky.social's 2025 In Review has been published!
Every year has real breadth, but this year feels especially so. If you're into the horse race, the runners and riders are numerous; if you're after great recommendations, there are a tonne of all kinds here.
Explore it!
Every year has real breadth, but this year feels especially so. If you're into the horse race, the runners and riders are numerous; if you're after great recommendations, there are a tonne of all kinds here.
Explore it!
2025 In Review: Part Two
The second part of our reviewers' picks of 2025.
strangehorizons.com
January 7, 2026 at 1:09 PM
Part 2 of @strangehorizons.bsky.social's 2025 In Review has been published!
Every year has real breadth, but this year feels especially so. If you're into the horse race, the runners and riders are numerous; if you're after great recommendations, there are a tonne of all kinds here.
Explore it!
Every year has real breadth, but this year feels especially so. If you're into the horse race, the runners and riders are numerous; if you're after great recommendations, there are a tonne of all kinds here.
Explore it!
Reposted by Christian Haines
Just out: Miriam Tola on the return of the commons in the political imaginary. Bringing together feminist, postcolonial, and ecological traditions, Tola gives a fascinating account of urban politics in contemporary Rome in which the commons has returned as a force for political justice.
January 6, 2026 at 4:45 PM
Just out: Miriam Tola on the return of the commons in the political imaginary. Bringing together feminist, postcolonial, and ecological traditions, Tola gives a fascinating account of urban politics in contemporary Rome in which the commons has returned as a force for political justice.
Reposted by Christian Haines
Translation is a delicate work that requires deep knowledge of both languages. Nuances and subtleties—two aspects of writing AIs are notoriously terrible at—can be lost or deranged if not carefully considered during the translation process.
HarperCollins Will Use AI to Translate Harlequin Romance Novels
The publisher is teaming with a company that claims its proprietary AI can ‘provide 2 to 3 times higher quality translations’ than other large language models.
www.404media.co
January 6, 2026 at 3:19 PM
Translation is a delicate work that requires deep knowledge of both languages. Nuances and subtleties—two aspects of writing AIs are notoriously terrible at—can be lost or deranged if not carefully considered during the translation process.
Reposted by Christian Haines
This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.
Don’t miss it.
Don’t miss it.
The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.
All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.
www.chronicle.com
January 6, 2026 at 2:10 PM
This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.
Don’t miss it.
Don’t miss it.
Reposted by Christian Haines
I wrote a book about January 6 and what I called the "slow civil war" in which it was a battle, called The Undertow. In 2022 Vanity Fair published an excerpt of the in-progress called "January 6 Was Only the Beginning." I think we really nailed that headline...
www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06...
www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06...
January 6 Was Only the Beginning
To Trump’s true believers, the insurrection was an act of faith, Ashli Babbitt is a martyr, and white is not only a race, but a spiritual state.
www.vanityfair.com
January 6, 2026 at 2:07 PM
I wrote a book about January 6 and what I called the "slow civil war" in which it was a battle, called The Undertow. In 2022 Vanity Fair published an excerpt of the in-progress called "January 6 Was Only the Beginning." I think we really nailed that headline...
www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06...
www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06...