Arielle Zibrak
@zibrak.bsky.social
feminisms, projects, pop culture 📚
| Literary Tour of the US, The Great Courses
| 12 Stories by American Women, Penguin Classics
| Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures, NYU
| Writing Against Reform, UMass
Prof @ UWyo - views own
👐www.ArielleZibrak.com👐
| Literary Tour of the US, The Great Courses
| 12 Stories by American Women, Penguin Classics
| Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures, NYU
| Writing Against Reform, UMass
Prof @ UWyo - views own
👐www.ArielleZibrak.com👐
Pinned
Arielle Zibrak
@zibrak.bsky.social
· Sep 3
Here's what I'm up to these days. SO EXCITED to write this book and talk about how the history of positive thinking in wellness impacts us all. Grateful for my agent @babedylan.bsky.social and my new editor Maria, who rocks.
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
Levine’s “Forms” & now “The Activist Humanist” are compelling and this interview was fantastic. For English educators & teacher educators trying to transcend the (false) binary between teaching form & social justice, her work offers an entirely new/innovative approach to both.
"I don't think, as a leftist, I was ever going to be a person who would make a case for hierarchy. But I realized that I had been arguing for a really long time that equality is better than hierarchy. And what is that? That is a hierarchy."
The Activist Humanist with Caroline Levine
We speak with Caroline Levine, Ryan Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University, about her important book The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in…
moneyontheleft.org
November 12, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Levine’s “Forms” & now “The Activist Humanist” are compelling and this interview was fantastic. For English educators & teacher educators trying to transcend the (false) binary between teaching form & social justice, her work offers an entirely new/innovative approach to both.
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
This is a really good piece
The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons and Dragons to Be Racist
The fantastical roots of “scientific racism”
www.theatlantic.com
November 11, 2025 at 4:07 PM
This is a really good piece
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
Where can lefties improve?
I think knowledge about Christian nationalism is a big gap with progressives, lefties, socialists, etc. This is a problem because it means that people aren't always strategizing around the opposition we actually face.
Here are my recs for self-ed 🧵
I think knowledge about Christian nationalism is a big gap with progressives, lefties, socialists, etc. This is a problem because it means that people aren't always strategizing around the opposition we actually face.
Here are my recs for self-ed 🧵
The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
bookshop.org
October 30, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Where can lefties improve?
I think knowledge about Christian nationalism is a big gap with progressives, lefties, socialists, etc. This is a problem because it means that people aren't always strategizing around the opposition we actually face.
Here are my recs for self-ed 🧵
I think knowledge about Christian nationalism is a big gap with progressives, lefties, socialists, etc. This is a problem because it means that people aren't always strategizing around the opposition we actually face.
Here are my recs for self-ed 🧵
Spent last night with this soul shattering and strengthening volume edited by Jia Tolentino. Christina Sharpe! Carolyn Forché! Eula Biss! Nuar Elsadir! (Just some of my own favorites.) Floored to see my own essay in notables. Link to it in comments. xx
The Best American Essays 2025
Check out The Best American Essays 2025 - <p>“The essay has taught me how to live,” writes Jia Tolentino, this year’s <em>Best American Essays</em> guest editor. In a time of escalat...
bookshop.org
October 31, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Spent last night with this soul shattering and strengthening volume edited by Jia Tolentino. Christina Sharpe! Carolyn Forché! Eula Biss! Nuar Elsadir! (Just some of my own favorites.) Floored to see my own essay in notables. Link to it in comments. xx
"16 acres of scrubby pasture on the outskirts of Salt Lake City where the state plans to place as many as 1,300 homeless people in what supporters call a services campus and critics deem a detention camp."
Let's not argue over semantics.
Let's not argue over semantics.
October 29, 2025 at 1:38 PM
"16 acres of scrubby pasture on the outskirts of Salt Lake City where the state plans to place as many as 1,300 homeless people in what supporters call a services campus and critics deem a detention camp."
Let's not argue over semantics.
Let's not argue over semantics.
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
“ “Who heals a wound that continually opens itself?”- Kara Walker www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Breathtaking, unsettling, healing: how US artist Kara Walker transformed a Confederate monument
The sweeping exhibition Monuments, which features 19 contemporary artists, opens in LA on 23 October
www.theguardian.com
October 18, 2025 at 2:47 PM
“ “Who heals a wound that continually opens itself?”- Kara Walker www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
@notquitehydepark.bsky.social: Vendler led a feminist life, but she could never follow the banner of feminist literary criticism, labeled as such, in her lifetime: she wanted poems true to the complications (and the tragedies) that pervade our real lives, rather than allegories of right and wrong.
Interview with @notquitehydepark.bsky.social on the @libraryofamerica.bsky.social website.
www.loa.org/news-and-vie...
www.loa.org/news-and-vie...
“Putting the Poem First”: Stephanie Burt on the Towering Literary Legacy of Helen Vendler, Peerless Poetry Critic - Library of America
Helen Vendler, the leading poetry critic of her generation, sought the electrifying moment when all the parts of a work of verse click into place, “relating all to each, as a sudden shaft of light ill...
www.loa.org
October 18, 2025 at 4:58 PM
@notquitehydepark.bsky.social: Vendler led a feminist life, but she could never follow the banner of feminist literary criticism, labeled as such, in her lifetime: she wanted poems true to the complications (and the tragedies) that pervade our real lives, rather than allegories of right and wrong.
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
100%. My hot literary take is that literary fiction IS a genre, just like science fiction, horror, mystery etc. The way lit fic is treated in western culture as though it is not a genre (those awful unwashed genre masses!) is disturbingly similar to how white people are thought not to have a color.
October 13, 2025 at 10:05 PM
100%. My hot literary take is that literary fiction IS a genre, just like science fiction, horror, mystery etc. The way lit fic is treated in western culture as though it is not a genre (those awful unwashed genre masses!) is disturbingly similar to how white people are thought not to have a color.
I learned so much about Chicago and its history researching Lecture 15. Thinking today of Bronzeville, Humboldt Park, Little Village and what they meant to writers like
Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sandra Cisneros to name a few-- to US literary history as a whole.
Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sandra Cisneros to name a few-- to US literary history as a whole.
A Literary Tour of the United States
Journey from sea to shining sea to discover the richness and diversity of American writing in this deeply researched literary road trip.
www.thegreatcoursesplus.com
October 10, 2025 at 5:19 PM
I learned so much about Chicago and its history researching Lecture 15. Thinking today of Bronzeville, Humboldt Park, Little Village and what they meant to writers like
Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sandra Cisneros to name a few-- to US literary history as a whole.
Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sandra Cisneros to name a few-- to US literary history as a whole.
"The Silicon Valley heavyweight drew on a wide swath of religious thinkers, including the French-American theorist René Girard, whom Thiel knew at Stanford University, and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, whose work he said helped create the core of his own beliefs."
Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist
The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’
www.theguardian.com
October 10, 2025 at 4:35 PM
"The Silicon Valley heavyweight drew on a wide swath of religious thinkers, including the French-American theorist René Girard, whom Thiel knew at Stanford University, and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, whose work he said helped create the core of his own beliefs."
Folks watching global alt-right feminism, this is set for the 25th.
@reproutopia.bsky.social @milleridriss.bsky.social @fanniebialek.bsky.social @bardolator.bsky.social @katerqburns.bsky.social
@reproutopia.bsky.social @milleridriss.bsky.social @fanniebialek.bsky.social @bardolator.bsky.social @katerqburns.bsky.social
The NAR Vows to Stage the Largest-Ever Gathering of Christian Women
Last year on Yom Kippur, leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation staged an all-day rally in support of Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency called A Million Women. As was the case with the Million M...
religiondispatches.org
October 10, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Folks watching global alt-right feminism, this is set for the 25th.
@reproutopia.bsky.social @milleridriss.bsky.social @fanniebialek.bsky.social @bardolator.bsky.social @katerqburns.bsky.social
@reproutopia.bsky.social @milleridriss.bsky.social @fanniebialek.bsky.social @bardolator.bsky.social @katerqburns.bsky.social
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
“Another former OpenAI employee who also was not authorized to speak publicly argued that releasing a deepfake AI social media platform was the right business decision, even if it contributes to the collapse of everyone's shared sense of reality.” 💀
Sora gives deepfakes 'a publicist and a distribution deal.' It could change the internet
OpenAI's new hit app has unleashed a new wave of AI slop across the internet. But what happens when there are no rules over hyper-realistic synthetic videos?
www.npr.org
October 10, 2025 at 4:05 PM
“Another former OpenAI employee who also was not authorized to speak publicly argued that releasing a deepfake AI social media platform was the right business decision, even if it contributes to the collapse of everyone's shared sense of reality.” 💀
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
Congratulations to Maria Corina Machado, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize - her incredible optimism has already changed her country. I spoke to her, and wrote about her, at the beginning of this year:
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
The ‘Anthropological Change’ Happening in Venezuela
Maduro is still in place, but a pro-democracy movement is transforming the beleaguered country.
www.theatlantic.com
October 10, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Congratulations to Maria Corina Machado, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize - her incredible optimism has already changed her country. I spoke to her, and wrote about her, at the beginning of this year:
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
With its "medico-electrical apparatus," was Dr. James Graham's "celestial bed" in his "Temple of Health" in 1779 London a prototype for DJT's "med bed"?
There are just too many ways in which the #18thc is a useful guide to the hucksterism of 2025 America.
daily.jstor.org/the-prince-o...
There are just too many ways in which the #18thc is a useful guide to the hucksterism of 2025 America.
daily.jstor.org/the-prince-o...
October 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM
With its "medico-electrical apparatus," was Dr. James Graham's "celestial bed" in his "Temple of Health" in 1779 London a prototype for DJT's "med bed"?
There are just too many ways in which the #18thc is a useful guide to the hucksterism of 2025 America.
daily.jstor.org/the-prince-o...
There are just too many ways in which the #18thc is a useful guide to the hucksterism of 2025 America.
daily.jstor.org/the-prince-o...
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
New essay in the Atlantic today: How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution by Ned Blackhawk (with many lessons on how we ended up where we are as a nation, and a gift link) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution
The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy.
www.theatlantic.com
October 9, 2025 at 2:33 PM
New essay in the Atlantic today: How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution by Ned Blackhawk (with many lessons on how we ended up where we are as a nation, and a gift link) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
"When feminist struggles enter phases of rapprochement with the state, they throw Indigenous, 'deviant,' Black, sexualized, sex-working women and other gender minorities under the bus." @reproutopia.bsky.social talks with Aya Gruber about truly abolitionist feminism.
Leaning In to State Violence - Sophie Lewis interviewed by Aya Gruber - Inquest
In ‘Enemy Feminisms,’ philosopher Sophie Lewis engages with the feminism of racists, colonizers, fascists, cops, and jailers to better understand what a truly liberatory politics needs to look like.
inquest.org
October 9, 2025 at 12:31 PM
"When feminist struggles enter phases of rapprochement with the state, they throw Indigenous, 'deviant,' Black, sexualized, sex-working women and other gender minorities under the bus." @reproutopia.bsky.social talks with Aya Gruber about truly abolitionist feminism.
Come hang with us! I am going to show pictures of "Live, Laugh, Love" art and explain how Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poetry impacts your own personal and specific life.
October 6, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Come hang with us! I am going to show pictures of "Live, Laugh, Love" art and explain how Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poetry impacts your own personal and specific life.
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
Two survivors — George Takei and Jo Anne Naka — recall living in the horse stables at the Santa Anita racetrack before they were moved to their incarceration camps.
Read THE AGE OF INCARCERATION to learn more about Japanese American incarceration from some of the last survivors of it.
Read THE AGE OF INCARCERATION to learn more about Japanese American incarceration from some of the last survivors of it.
Japanese American Incarceration Survivors Remember What the US Forgot
During WWII, President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act and incarcerated 125,000 Japanese Americans. Eighty years later, some of the camps’ last survivors reflect on lives scarred by injustice.
age-of-incarceration.longlead.com
September 25, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Two survivors — George Takei and Jo Anne Naka — recall living in the horse stables at the Santa Anita racetrack before they were moved to their incarceration camps.
Read THE AGE OF INCARCERATION to learn more about Japanese American incarceration from some of the last survivors of it.
Read THE AGE OF INCARCERATION to learn more about Japanese American incarceration from some of the last survivors of it.
Lovely to see my book reviewed alongside Faye Halpern's in a review essay on realism by Melanie Dawson in ALH. (Two scholars I so admire!) Unfortunately I don't have institutional access yet. Can anyone out there DM a pdf?
academic.oup.com/alh/article-...
#academicsky
academic.oup.com/alh/article-...
#academicsky
Realism’s Vexed Relations with the Popular
Abstract. This essay assesses the centrality of popular idioms such as sentimental sympathy (discussed by Faye Halpern’s The Afterlife of Sympathy) and soc
academic.oup.com
September 25, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Lovely to see my book reviewed alongside Faye Halpern's in a review essay on realism by Melanie Dawson in ALH. (Two scholars I so admire!) Unfortunately I don't have institutional access yet. Can anyone out there DM a pdf?
academic.oup.com/alh/article-...
#academicsky
academic.oup.com/alh/article-...
#academicsky
Is Christine Baranski literally just the reincarnation of 19th- century New Thought novelist Clara Louise Burnham?
September 19, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Is Christine Baranski literally just the reincarnation of 19th- century New Thought novelist Clara Louise Burnham?
Catch me at the Mahindra center next month! The first lecture in the series by Kendra Field was extraordinary. This will be ok. If you can't make it and want to hear about eugenic feminism and positive thinking, invite me to your spot.
mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/event/ariell...
mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/event/ariell...
Arielle Zibrak: Exceptional Thinking: Eugenic Feminism and the Poetics of Positivity | Mahindra Humanities Center
mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu
September 19, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Catch me at the Mahindra center next month! The first lecture in the series by Kendra Field was extraordinary. This will be ok. If you can't make it and want to hear about eugenic feminism and positive thinking, invite me to your spot.
mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/event/ariell...
mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/event/ariell...
I think we've all had way too much screen time and should be made to play outside for the rest of the year.
September 17, 2025 at 1:33 PM
I think we've all had way too much screen time and should be made to play outside for the rest of the year.
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
Groypers, gopniks, and the Kirk-Fuentes beef.
The American right is one nutty hospital. Me @newrepublic :
newrepublic.com/article/2004...
The American right is one nutty hospital. Me @newrepublic :
newrepublic.com/article/2004...
No
Avoiding It: Post-Kirk, We Have to Learn About the Groyper Wars
We still don’t know Tyler Robinson’s motivation. But we know we need to learn about the Charlie Kirk–Nick Fuentes Armageddon, dammit.
newrepublic.com
September 15, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Groypers, gopniks, and the Kirk-Fuentes beef.
The American right is one nutty hospital. Me @newrepublic :
newrepublic.com/article/2004...
The American right is one nutty hospital. Me @newrepublic :
newrepublic.com/article/2004...
Reposted by Arielle Zibrak
Call for applications: Endangered Archives Programme
eap.bl.uk/applicants
eap.bl.uk/applicants
For Applicants
eap.bl.uk
September 15, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Call for applications: Endangered Archives Programme
eap.bl.uk/applicants
eap.bl.uk/applicants
A nice little write-up on A Literary Tour of the United States from the University of Wyoming! 🤠
UW English Professor Releases 24-Episode Literary Series with The Great Courses
Arielle Zibrak, a professor of English at the University of Wyoming, has released “A Literary Tour of the United States,” a 24-episode lecture series produced by The Great Courses.
www.uwyo.edu
September 15, 2025 at 4:16 PM
A nice little write-up on A Literary Tour of the United States from the University of Wyoming! 🤠