Bethany Holmstrom
@bdholms.bsky.social
CUNY prof, writer, dog spoiler. Appalachian roots. she/her.
bethanyholmstrom.com
bethanyholmstrom.com
Free Mahmoud Khalil
March 10, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Free Mahmoud Khalil
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
I wrote about a Vietnamese Catholic church in Houston that holds an annual crawfish festival (Viet-Cajun style, of course). We're talking 22,000 pounds of crawfish consumed over a span of three days. It's in the March issue of Texas Highways. (Yes, the state of Texas has its own travel magazine.)
This Massive Viet-Cajun Crawfish Boil Is a Religious Experience
A Houston church has preached the gospel of the Viet-Cajun style and turned it into a Texas phenomenon
texashighways.com
February 28, 2025 at 10:54 PM
I wrote about a Vietnamese Catholic church in Houston that holds an annual crawfish festival (Viet-Cajun style, of course). We're talking 22,000 pounds of crawfish consumed over a span of three days. It's in the March issue of Texas Highways. (Yes, the state of Texas has its own travel magazine.)
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
“If a scholar studying these historical phenomena cannot be hired at CUNY, if a job advertisement mentioning these historical phenomena cannot be posted at CUNY, it’s safe to say that it probably won’t be long before any course examining these phenomena cannot be taught at CUNY.”
Kafka Comes to CUNY
Three days ago, the New York Post reported that Hunter College was looking to hire a scholar in Palestinian Studies. The job ad read: We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens ...
coreyrobin.com
March 1, 2025 at 2:02 PM
“If a scholar studying these historical phenomena cannot be hired at CUNY, if a job advertisement mentioning these historical phenomena cannot be posted at CUNY, it’s safe to say that it probably won’t be long before any course examining these phenomena cannot be taught at CUNY.”
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
A new McCarthy era is upon us. Stupid, depressing, and dangerous as ever. I wonder whose name will carry the dunce cap in the history books. Too many are complicit. I’ll need to find upset and action, but for now I’m feeling grief at the dehumanization inherent to all this.
February 26, 2025 at 10:42 AM
A new McCarthy era is upon us. Stupid, depressing, and dangerous as ever. I wonder whose name will carry the dunce cap in the history books. Too many are complicit. I’ll need to find upset and action, but for now I’m feeling grief at the dehumanization inherent to all this.
& this Between the Covers episode is required listening!
Don't miss today's conversation with Omar El Akkad, about a book I'll surely be thinking alongside for a long time. A map, a guide, a thinking through & a breakup letter with the American dream.
Audio📻🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/omar...
@aaknopf.bsky.social @canongate.co.uk @textpublishing.bsky.social
Audio📻🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/omar...
@aaknopf.bsky.social @canongate.co.uk @textpublishing.bsky.social
Omar El Akkad : One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Tin House
In late October 2023, weeks into Israel’s bombing of northern Gaza, the novelist Omar El Akkad retweeted a video taken by a Gazan man. This video showed a lifeless moonscape with endless empty streets...
tinhouse.com
February 25, 2025 at 5:02 PM
& this Between the Covers episode is required listening!
Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — out today!
February 25, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — out today!
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
Extremely excited to start off the year with a conversation with Zahid Rafiq who wrote the best story collection I read in 2024, eleven remarkable stories set in modern day Kashmir.
Audio📻🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/zahi...
@tinhouse.bsky.social
Audio📻🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/zahi...
@tinhouse.bsky.social
Zahid Rafiq : The World With Its Mouth Open - Tin House
Today’s guest Zahid Rafiq discusses his debut short story collection The World With Its Mouth Open, eleven remarkable stories set in modern-day Kashmir. Prior to writing fiction Rafiq was a journalist...
tinhouse.com
January 1, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Extremely excited to start off the year with a conversation with Zahid Rafiq who wrote the best story collection I read in 2024, eleven remarkable stories set in modern day Kashmir.
Audio📻🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/zahi...
@tinhouse.bsky.social
Audio📻🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/zahi...
@tinhouse.bsky.social
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
I know academics who use AI regularly, for work and play, and I'd really like them, and universities, to tell me how they contend with AI's bottomless appetites for power and water.
Is asking ChatGPT to interpret a Xmas song or making it write your syllabus worth this to you?
Is asking ChatGPT to interpret a Xmas song or making it write your syllabus worth this to you?
December 23, 2024 at 2:45 PM
I know academics who use AI regularly, for work and play, and I'd really like them, and universities, to tell me how they contend with AI's bottomless appetites for power and water.
Is asking ChatGPT to interpret a Xmas song or making it write your syllabus worth this to you?
Is asking ChatGPT to interpret a Xmas song or making it write your syllabus worth this to you?
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
At some point you can't blame administrations and poor leadership and you have to admit that there are just a huge number of actual academics out there who are voluntarily choosing to pour corrosive acid on their own institutions
www.engadget.com/ai/ais-next-...
www.engadget.com/ai/ais-next-...
AI’s next job? Making assignments for college courses
UCLA professors are using a new AI-powered tool for materials.
www.engadget.com
December 9, 2024 at 1:32 PM
At some point you can't blame administrations and poor leadership and you have to admit that there are just a huge number of actual academics out there who are voluntarily choosing to pour corrosive acid on their own institutions
www.engadget.com/ai/ais-next-...
www.engadget.com/ai/ais-next-...
Just (finally!) read Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer, and if ever there was a time to make this novel into a movie…
November 12, 2024 at 7:42 PM
Just (finally!) read Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer, and if ever there was a time to make this novel into a movie…
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
I can't think of a better poet or a better suited conversation to confront and transform the long shadow of the days ahead than this one with today's guest Danez Smith. Join us as we navigate a way through
Audio📻🖤🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/dane...
Audio📻🖤🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/dane...
Danez Smith : Bluff - Tin House
Danez Smith’s poetry is so many things, a poetry of resistance, of elegy, of joy, of care, of repair. Their poetry is Afrofuturist and Afropessimist. It’s nature poetry, decolonial poetry, queer poetr...
tinhouse.com
November 8, 2024 at 8:12 PM
I can't think of a better poet or a better suited conversation to confront and transform the long shadow of the days ahead than this one with today's guest Danez Smith. Join us as we navigate a way through
Audio📻🖤🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/dane...
Audio📻🖤🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/dane...
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
“Joyce is right about history being a nightmare—but it may be the nightmare from which *no one* can awaken. People are trapped in history and it is trapped in them.”
(Baldwin)
(Baldwin)
November 7, 2024 at 1:19 PM
“Joyce is right about history being a nightmare—but it may be the nightmare from which *no one* can awaken. People are trapped in history and it is trapped in them.”
(Baldwin)
(Baldwin)
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
Before you say something mean about Henry Kissinger, take a breath and see if you can think of something meaner
November 30, 2023 at 2:05 AM
Before you say something mean about Henry Kissinger, take a breath and see if you can think of something meaner
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
i think it should be a bigger story that NYC’s public libraries are now being forced to close on Sundays due to budget cuts while the NYPD spends 95% of the Library system’s total budget to get new encrypted radios that prevent people from knowing when the cops kill people
The NYPD is spending $390 million on a new, encrypted radio system
The public and news reporters will no longer be able to listen in.
gothamist.com
November 21, 2023 at 5:52 PM
i think it should be a bigger story that NYC’s public libraries are now being forced to close on Sundays due to budget cuts while the NYPD spends 95% of the Library system’s total budget to get new encrypted radios that prevent people from knowing when the cops kill people
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
“Smaller bombs.”
U.S. officials said they have privately outlined several steps to Israel to reduce civilian casualties in its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, including using smaller bombs, when going after Hamas leaders and infrastructure.
U.S. Officials Outline Steps to Israel to Reduce Civilian Casualties
The measures include using smaller bombs against Hamas, U.S. officials said.
www.nytimes.com
November 4, 2023 at 10:07 PM
“Smaller bombs.”
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
For the LA Review of Books I wrote about the feminist dystopias of recent TV, and why so many shows seem to be imagining worlds (mostly) w/out men. With thanks to @thisblue.bsky.social for the sharp edits! lareviewofbooks.org/article/wher...
Where the Boys Aren’t
Recent TV series have been imagining worlds without men. What does this absence make possible? asks Elizabeth Alsop....
lareviewofbooks.org
November 3, 2023 at 4:15 PM
For the LA Review of Books I wrote about the feminist dystopias of recent TV, and why so many shows seem to be imagining worlds (mostly) w/out men. With thanks to @thisblue.bsky.social for the sharp edits! lareviewofbooks.org/article/wher...
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
Liberty has over 15,000 students on campus and over 100k students online and charges over $20k in tuition per year, getting nearly a billion dollars in federal loans and grants a year for its students
Somehow I feel like $37.5 million is nowhere remotely enough of a penalty for what they hid
Somehow I feel like $37.5 million is nowhere remotely enough of a penalty for what they hid
October 23, 2023 at 9:14 PM
Liberty has over 15,000 students on campus and over 100k students online and charges over $20k in tuition per year, getting nearly a billion dollars in federal loans and grants a year for its students
Somehow I feel like $37.5 million is nowhere remotely enough of a penalty for what they hid
Somehow I feel like $37.5 million is nowhere remotely enough of a penalty for what they hid
Reposted by Bethany Holmstrom
RPK group--partly responsible for decimating WVU (laying off friends and colleagues, ruining educational opportunities for West Virginians, wrecking our local economy)--is based out of a tiny, unmarked building in an Annapolis strip mall. Not at all shady.
October 19, 2023 at 12:28 PM
RPK group--partly responsible for decimating WVU (laying off friends and colleagues, ruining educational opportunities for West Virginians, wrecking our local economy)--is based out of a tiny, unmarked building in an Annapolis strip mall. Not at all shady.
Got to hear Helen Garner tell stories on a Soho rooftop & picked up her newly reissued The Children’s Bach (a favorite!) & This House of Grief — absolutely magical evening
October 13, 2023 at 12:26 AM
Got to hear Helen Garner tell stories on a Soho rooftop & picked up her newly reissued The Children’s Bach (a favorite!) & This House of Grief — absolutely magical evening
still can’t get over that my employer — a community college!— closed the transfer office, with zero warning & no explanation, & now have told us: “don’t worry, there’s a committee we just threw together to figure out how to address this gap, & also there’s this webpage you can send students to”?!??
October 3, 2023 at 1:41 PM
still can’t get over that my employer — a community college!— closed the transfer office, with zero warning & no explanation, & now have told us: “don’t worry, there’s a committee we just threw together to figure out how to address this gap, & also there’s this webpage you can send students to”?!??
our corner in Brooklyn this morning
September 29, 2023 at 3:49 PM
our corner in Brooklyn this morning