Jordan Alexander Stein
@jordanstein.bsky.social
Literature professor and book historian, except for one time I wrote a book about Nina Simone
Will you be at MLA and/or can you get to Toronto a week from Saturday? Come launch, come party! Bring a friend.
December 29, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Will you be at MLA and/or can you get to Toronto a week from Saturday? Come launch, come party! Bring a friend.
The rumor is true! I used the publishing history of Grove Press’s 1960s French translations to think about the history of midcentury gay male sexuality and the idioms it created, and how those shaped queer theory in the 1990s
@jordanstein.bsky.social aims to historicize “outing” in queer Melville scholarship, the better to understand how and why that idiom appeared as it did in "Sex in Translation: Melville, Mayoux, Ashbery" muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Project MUSE - Sex in Translation: Melville, Mayoux, Ashbery
muse.jhu.edu
December 10, 2025 at 9:37 PM
The rumor is true! I used the publishing history of Grove Press’s 1960s French translations to think about the history of midcentury gay male sexuality and the idioms it created, and how those shaped queer theory in the 1990s
The special issue I co-edited on "Melville's Queer Afterlives" is here and it's queer. This issue has EVERYTHING: gay pirates, dirty pictures, racist internet fanfic, Gilbert Gottfried, original poetry, and just so many French people.
Available at your library, but LMK if you're paywalled...
Available at your library, but LMK if you're paywalled...
Project MUSE - Leviathan-Volume 27, Number 3, October 2025
muse.jhu.edu
December 8, 2025 at 10:08 PM
The special issue I co-edited on "Melville's Queer Afterlives" is here and it's queer. This issue has EVERYTHING: gay pirates, dirty pictures, racist internet fanfic, Gilbert Gottfried, original poetry, and just so many French people.
Available at your library, but LMK if you're paywalled...
Available at your library, but LMK if you're paywalled...
"A miniature book published by St. Onge was the only book taken on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, and was thus the first book on the moon"
November 25, 2025 at 10:03 PM
"A miniature book published by St. Onge was the only book taken on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, and was thus the first book on the moon"
For many of the years that Raymond Weaver taught at Columbia University, he lived at 200 W 108th Street, and maybe, just maybe, this now defunct mailbox in the building’s lobby was the one at which he posted his first letters to Elizabeth Melville Metcalf
November 24, 2025 at 11:53 PM
For many of the years that Raymond Weaver taught at Columbia University, he lived at 200 W 108th Street, and maybe, just maybe, this now defunct mailbox in the building’s lobby was the one at which he posted his first letters to Elizabeth Melville Metcalf
Take your watermark questions to The Grolier Club, they said.
(They were totally right!)
(They were totally right!)
November 18, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Take your watermark questions to The Grolier Club, they said.
(They were totally right!)
(They were totally right!)
Dictionnaire de bibliographie Haitienne (1951) by Max Bissainthe is the first modern and still most comprehensive bibliography of Haiti printing. His typescript drafts at NYPL reveal his process, with note cards, paperclips, and typewriter errors corrected with scissors and now very yellowed tape
November 7, 2025 at 11:59 PM
Dictionnaire de bibliographie Haitienne (1951) by Max Bissainthe is the first modern and still most comprehensive bibliography of Haiti printing. His typescript drafts at NYPL reveal his process, with note cards, paperclips, and typewriter errors corrected with scissors and now very yellowed tape
Honestly thought I was just doing some due diligence at the American Antiquarian Society, but found truly amazing unique and under-cataloged Haiti items, plus some surprising interactions between print and manuscript
November 5, 2025 at 9:15 PM
Honestly thought I was just doing some due diligence at the American Antiquarian Society, but found truly amazing unique and under-cataloged Haiti items, plus some surprising interactions between print and manuscript
There comes a time in every man’s life where he must face up to how little he knows about the stamps on French Revolutionary documents.
(No, but seriously, please recommend some readings.)
(No, but seriously, please recommend some readings.)
October 22, 2025 at 7:53 PM
There comes a time in every man’s life where he must face up to how little he knows about the stamps on French Revolutionary documents.
(No, but seriously, please recommend some readings.)
(No, but seriously, please recommend some readings.)
It becomes clear that this item’s excellent catalog record must have been a bit hard won.
September 12, 2025 at 8:54 PM
It becomes clear that this item’s excellent catalog record must have been a bit hard won.
I’m an English professor in the US in 1967. I bought a house in town my first year on the job and earned tenure with two articles. My wife cooks my meals and my secretary does my typing. I have to read all the books published this year about the one author I study. There were two of them.
September 7, 2025 at 10:05 PM
I’m an English professor in the US in 1967. I bought a house in town my first year on the job and earned tenure with two articles. My wife cooks my meals and my secretary does my typing. I have to read all the books published this year about the one author I study. There were two of them.
"i asked grok" "i asked chagpt" yeah well I asked a rare books librarian and they found things I didn’t even know I was looking for, while answering questions about provenance
June 15, 2025 at 7:09 PM
"i asked grok" "i asked chagpt" yeah well I asked a rare books librarian and they found things I didn’t even know I was looking for, while answering questions about provenance
Hello from the archives!
June 12, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Hello from the archives!
Another good book day!
June 5, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Another good book day!
Good book day
May 30, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Good book day
Little known fact: Mary, the character played by Parker Posey in the 1995 indie film "Party Girl," was actually based on me in college
April 21, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Little known fact: Mary, the character played by Parker Posey in the 1995 indie film "Party Girl," was actually based on me in college
If astrology isn’t real, why does Sarah Michelle Gellar share a birthday with Frederic Jameson?
April 14, 2025 at 10:44 PM
If astrology isn’t real, why does Sarah Michelle Gellar share a birthday with Frederic Jameson?
Reposted by Jordan Alexander Stein
Big ups to @jordanstein.bsky.social for stopping by my class to talk about Nina Simone! He's got a whole ass book about her: www.dukeupress.edu/fantasies-of...
www.dukeupress.edu
March 25, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Big ups to @jordanstein.bsky.social for stopping by my class to talk about Nina Simone! He's got a whole ass book about her: www.dukeupress.edu/fantasies-of...
The British Library’s incredibly rare and totally pristine copy of the complete 1875 French translation of Marx’s Capital in quarto was personally donated by the author, and while I am not 100% sure what I mean by it, I feel compelled to say: it could always be like this
March 13, 2025 at 2:18 PM
The British Library’s incredibly rare and totally pristine copy of the complete 1875 French translation of Marx’s Capital in quarto was personally donated by the author, and while I am not 100% sure what I mean by it, I feel compelled to say: it could always be like this
Happy 82nd birthday, Nina Simone!
Nina Simone: To Love Somebody (Live in Antibes, 1969)
YouTube video by Nina Simone
www.youtube.com
February 21, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Happy 82nd birthday, Nina Simone!
Short essay adapted from "Fantasies of Nina Simone" is up at The American Psychoanalyst
tapmagazine.org/all-articles...
tapmagazine.org/all-articles...
Nina Simone — Tap Magazine
A biographer’s fantasy
tapmagazine.org
February 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Short essay adapted from "Fantasies of Nina Simone" is up at The American Psychoanalyst
tapmagazine.org/all-articles...
tapmagazine.org/all-articles...
Contrary to popular supposition, Deleuze and Guattari were not a couple. It was more of a schizuationship
February 13, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Contrary to popular supposition, Deleuze and Guattari were not a couple. It was more of a schizuationship
Happy birthday, Harriet Jacobs!
Wow did you call it or what
Wow did you call it or what
February 11, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Happy birthday, Harriet Jacobs!
Wow did you call it or what
Wow did you call it or what
When we were in grad school, I recall that he in all sincerity wrote a seminar paper whose argument turned the "fact" that gay men cannot look at each other's faces when they have sex
Screenshots of Clune testimony in favor of Ohio SB1, with alt text
February 7, 2025 at 5:34 PM
When we were in grad school, I recall that he in all sincerity wrote a seminar paper whose argument turned the "fact" that gay men cannot look at each other's faces when they have sex