Caleb Smith
@c-also.bsky.social
Critic. Thoreau’s Axe (2023), Haunted Convict (2016), The Oracle & the Curse (2013), The Prison & the American Imagination (2009). Writing about Foucault & the legacies of theory for WW Norton. Tending my garden.
https://campuspress.yale.edu/calebsmith/
https://campuspress.yale.edu/calebsmith/
Reposted by Caleb Smith
“This represents saving higher education, saving public research and the standing up of faculty and staff and students”—AAUP, one of the parties that brought the case against the Trump administration
Judge Orders Trump Not to Threaten University of California’s Funding www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/u...
Judge Orders Trump Not to Threaten University of California’s Funding
www.nytimes.com
November 15, 2025 at 11:31 AM
“This represents saving higher education, saving public research and the standing up of faculty and staff and students”—AAUP, one of the parties that brought the case against the Trump administration
Reposted by Caleb Smith
"This section defines REASONS AND FEELINGS itself quite brilliantly: it’s a book working to avail itself of a different style of the “guide to writing” genre to attempt to know the world differently."
Jon Hoel on Sarah Mesle, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/10/28/w...
Jon Hoel on Sarah Mesle, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/10/28/w...
World Building - The Massachusetts Review
A Review of Reasons and Feelings by Sarah Mesle (University of Chicago Press) Sarah Mesle’s Reasons and Feelings: Writing for the Humanities Now is a new contribution to the University of Chicago Pres...
massreview.org
October 28, 2025 at 3:48 PM
"This section defines REASONS AND FEELINGS itself quite brilliantly: it’s a book working to avail itself of a different style of the “guide to writing” genre to attempt to know the world differently."
Jon Hoel on Sarah Mesle, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/10/28/w...
Jon Hoel on Sarah Mesle, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/10/28/w...
Reposted by Caleb Smith
This book is officially out today. I feel pretty confident that everyone in my feed (academic and not) could use it — I certainly got a lot from reading it in process, and, also, hearing Sarah say these things to me live and in person over a period of many years. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
October 20, 2025 at 3:59 PM
This book is officially out today. I feel pretty confident that everyone in my feed (academic and not) could use it — I certainly got a lot from reading it in process, and, also, hearing Sarah say these things to me live and in person over a period of many years. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Reposted by Caleb Smith
🚨🚨🚨
And THREE stood up!
Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact.
When we join together and fight back, WE WIN!
No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent.
LET’S GO!
#DefendHigherEd
@aaup-penn.bsky.social
And THREE stood up!
Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact.
When we join together and fight back, WE WIN!
No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent.
LET’S GO!
#DefendHigherEd
@aaup-penn.bsky.social
Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment
With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.
www.thedp.com
October 16, 2025 at 5:24 PM
🚨🚨🚨
And THREE stood up!
Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact.
When we join together and fight back, WE WIN!
No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent.
LET’S GO!
#DefendHigherEd
@aaup-penn.bsky.social
And THREE stood up!
Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact.
When we join together and fight back, WE WIN!
No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent.
LET’S GO!
#DefendHigherEd
@aaup-penn.bsky.social
Reposted by Caleb Smith
Adding in some other LK pieces into the thread. A recent short interview with TYR bsky.app/profile/yale...
László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Read his interview with Hari Kunzru in The Yale Reviewon apocalypse, art, and the urgency of the present—and his short story “An Angel Passed Above Us,” also published in TYR.
yalereview.org/article/l%C3...
Read his interview with Hari Kunzru in The Yale Reviewon apocalypse, art, and the urgency of the present—and his short story “An Angel Passed Above Us,” also published in TYR.
yalereview.org/article/l%C3...
László Krasznahorkai on hope, apocalypse, and his new short story
Hari Kunzru interviews the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai.
yalereview.org
October 9, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Adding in some other LK pieces into the thread. A recent short interview with TYR bsky.app/profile/yale...
Good morning! If you'd like to read smart things instead of all the stupid things, the new ELH is out, with essays from The English Institute. New work by Quashie, Post, Orlemanski, Yousef, CW Smith, Tongson, and yours truly, introduced by Fleissner and Enelow.
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Project MUSE - Essays from the 2024 English Institute: Expression
muse.jhu.edu
September 13, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Good morning! If you'd like to read smart things instead of all the stupid things, the new ELH is out, with essays from The English Institute. New work by Quashie, Post, Orlemanski, Yousef, CW Smith, Tongson, and yours truly, introduced by Fleissner and Enelow.
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Reposted by Caleb Smith
"Models of Ideological Analysis" by Fredric
Jameson, Opening Lecture of 1977 Institute on Culture & Society (audio)
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/models-of-...
Jameson, Opening Lecture of 1977 Institute on Culture & Society (audio)
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/models-of-...
"Models of Ideological Analysis" by Fredric Jameson
Listen now | Opening Lecture of 1977 Institute On Culture & Society
theamericanvandal.substack.com
August 12, 2025 at 7:13 AM
"Models of Ideological Analysis" by Fredric
Jameson, Opening Lecture of 1977 Institute on Culture & Society (audio)
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/models-of-...
Jameson, Opening Lecture of 1977 Institute on Culture & Society (audio)
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/models-of-...
Reposted by Caleb Smith
We're launching a new Tidewater Initiative at JHU. Our research group on working waterfronts and coastal infrastructures includes a new student research lab, courses, programming partnerships with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and more in the works. sites.krieger.jhu.edu/tidewater/
Home | The Tidewater Initiative
We are a multidisciplinary research group devoted to study, stewardship, and stories of working waterfronts, coastal infrastructures, and oceans under conditions of globalization and environmental ins...
sites.krieger.jhu.edu
August 8, 2025 at 9:28 PM
We're launching a new Tidewater Initiative at JHU. Our research group on working waterfronts and coastal infrastructures includes a new student research lab, courses, programming partnerships with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and more in the works. sites.krieger.jhu.edu/tidewater/
Reposted by Caleb Smith
So happy with how this came out.
The Jameson Tapes, Side B
with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson
theamericanvandal.substack.com
August 7, 2025 at 2:57 PM
So happy with how this came out.
Reposted by Caleb Smith
AND NOW the 2nd part! theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
August 7, 2025 at 8:00 PM
AND NOW the 2nd part! theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
Reposted by Caleb Smith
NEW!
1st of 2 installments contextualizing Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society, discusses "Marxism & Historicism," historicizing the lectures, recovering them, the commodity as its own ideology, long arc of Jameson's influence
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
1st of 2 installments contextualizing Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society, discusses "Marxism & Historicism," historicizing the lectures, recovering them, the commodity as its own ideology, long arc of Jameson's influence
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
The Jameson Tapes, Side A
with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson
theamericanvandal.substack.com
August 4, 2025 at 12:17 PM
NEW!
1st of 2 installments contextualizing Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society, discusses "Marxism & Historicism," historicizing the lectures, recovering them, the commodity as its own ideology, long arc of Jameson's influence
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
1st of 2 installments contextualizing Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society, discusses "Marxism & Historicism," historicizing the lectures, recovering them, the commodity as its own ideology, long arc of Jameson's influence
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
Reposted by Caleb Smith
Honored to be among the folks talking about Jameson on the new American Vandal podcast episode! theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
The Jameson Tapes, Side A
with Isabel Bartholomew, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Robert Tally, & Fredric Jameson
theamericanvandal.substack.com
August 4, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Honored to be among the folks talking about Jameson on the new American Vandal podcast episode! theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-jameso...
Good to join The American Vandal for this conversation about Jameson, ideology, and methods of literary analysis!
August 5, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Good to join The American Vandal for this conversation about Jameson, ideology, and methods of literary analysis!
A good, searching conversation with the hospitable August Baker of Philosophy Podcasts
philosophypodcasts.org/thoreau2
philosophypodcasts.org/thoreau2
PhilosophyPodcasts.Org: Caleb Smith. Distraction and discipline.
Caleb Smith Thoreau's axe: Distraction and discipline in American culture Today, we’re driven to distraction, our attention overwhelmed by the many demands upon it—most of which emanate from ou...
philosophypodcasts.org
July 30, 2025 at 7:08 PM
A good, searching conversation with the hospitable August Baker of Philosophy Podcasts
philosophypodcasts.org/thoreau2
philosophypodcasts.org/thoreau2
Reposted by Caleb Smith
With the rise of AI, I've begun to wonder if future graders of expository essays will even be able to grasp the sheer brilliance of Mandy Berry's famous Student Essay Unplugged? We many never see this kind of essay again, folks.
July 24, 2025 at 11:23 AM
With the rise of AI, I've begun to wonder if future graders of expository essays will even be able to grasp the sheer brilliance of Mandy Berry's famous Student Essay Unplugged? We many never see this kind of essay again, folks.
Reposted by Caleb Smith
Temporary cure for the oozing polycrisis blues: spend a couple hours chatting with @annakornbluh.bsky.social & @c-also.bsky.social about Fred Jameson.
Don’t forget to press record.
Don’t forget to press record.
July 17, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Temporary cure for the oozing polycrisis blues: spend a couple hours chatting with @annakornbluh.bsky.social & @c-also.bsky.social about Fred Jameson.
Don’t forget to press record.
Don’t forget to press record.
Reposted by Caleb Smith
Today is Karl Marx's birthday.
All books by and on Marx are on sale for up to 50% off as part of our Red May Sale.
All books by and on Marx are on sale for up to 50% off as part of our Red May Sale.
May 5th is Marx's birthday
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways – the point however is to change it. Karl Marx's contributions to the study of economics, politics, and philosophy are beyond measure. ...
www.versobooks.com
May 5, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Today is Karl Marx's birthday.
All books by and on Marx are on sale for up to 50% off as part of our Red May Sale.
All books by and on Marx are on sale for up to 50% off as part of our Red May Sale.
I am so honored and FIRED UP to introduce the legendary Angela Davis on Yale’s campus tomorrow, for a two-day lecture series on Abolition. Let’s go!
April 14, 2025 at 3:15 PM
I am so honored and FIRED UP to introduce the legendary Angela Davis on Yale’s campus tomorrow, for a two-day lecture series on Abolition. Let’s go!
Here’s a smart essay about media, distraction, and who decides what’s worth paying attention to:
What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?
From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on.
www.newyorker.com
January 23, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Here’s a smart essay about media, distraction, and who decides what’s worth paying attention to:
What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Bound for New Orleans and the MLA. Catch me at the bar, or at one of these two killer sessions:
January 7, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Bound for New Orleans and the MLA. Catch me at the bar, or at one of these two killer sessions:
Reposted by Caleb Smith
How Joe Brainard spent Christmas in 1961: played in the snow all morning, completely broke his glasses, worked on a self-portrait collage, went to a Chinese restaurant & had chow mein & 6 whiskey sours & then stayed up all night & wrote a 34-page story
December 25, 2024 at 3:13 PM
How Joe Brainard spent Christmas in 1961: played in the snow all morning, completely broke his glasses, worked on a self-portrait collage, went to a Chinese restaurant & had chow mein & 6 whiskey sours & then stayed up all night & wrote a 34-page story