Crystal Lake
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crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Crystal Lake
@crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
1.1K followers 750 following 65 posts
Writer, editor, & English professor in Dayton, OH. Artifacts: How We Think & Write About Found Objects. Co-founder: the-rambling.com. From rural Appalachia & writing about it. Posts are my own. She/her.
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crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Crystal Lake @crystal-b-lake.bsky.social · Mar 28
Fire up your typing fingers, friends, because I can’t wait to read your essays as a new member of PMLA’s advisory board starting this summer.
Reposted by Crystal Lake
lkonstan.bsky.social
Thanks to @evankindley.bsky.social for shepherding this into print. www.chronicle.com/article/peer...
Peer Review Paranoia
The system is built on trust between scholars. AI is undermining that.
www.chronicle.com
September 2, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Crystal Lake
shannonhale.bsky.social
my college kid was heartbroken when on the first day of class the professor said "I used to spend 3 weeks teaching this part, but just have AI create it for you and we'll skip it." Skipping the most creative part of the work. The part my kid most looked forward to.
August 21, 2025 at 1:50 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Here’s a thing I’ve started to do: leave a little “Survival Kit” for our graduate student instructors in their offices before the first day of classes. It includes…
picture of a white mesh office supply caddy filled with the items listed in the post
August 21, 2025 at 4:00 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
It was such a joy today to get to fan girl all the way out and introduce our graduate student instructors in English to Catherine Denial, whose work has influenced so much of the work I’ve been doing these last several years with our grad program. 😍
photograph of 8 graduate students standing with Catherine Denial.
August 18, 2025 at 11:24 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Any other Hopkins authors get the LLM licensing email? Thoughts?
July 22, 2025 at 6:41 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
open.spotify.com/track/0Puj4Y...
Sabotage
Beastie Boys · Ill Communication · Song · 1994
open.spotify.com
July 12, 2025 at 2:20 AM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
“Work a little harder. / Work another way.”
July 12, 2025 at 2:15 AM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
💯
mkirschenbaum.bsky.social Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · Jun 25
I do a lot of my reading now via ebooks, but for a certain kind of academic reading where you’re trying to get a sense of the whole book while diving in and out here and there—spot checking, skimming, reading closely, checking citations—there’s no substitute for the physical thing in your hands.
June 25, 2025 at 10:24 PM
Reposted by Crystal Lake
timcarvell.bsky.social
There are whole movies that don’t have the twists and turns of this paragraph.
Since the eighties, LuPone has been based in Connecticut. Years ago, she and Johnston got a flock of chickens and named them Marilyn, Rita, Eartha, Foghorn Leghorn, and the Fabulous Miller Sisters (Pia, Alexandra, and Marie-Chantal). All but three were massacred in a raccoon attack. "It was horrific," LuPone said. "There was blood and feathers and guts all over the place when my husband heard me screaming. He came down in this Victoria's Secret underwear, barefoot. We looked in the hen hut, and there was the raccoon, basically looking at us, going, I ain't finished.'"
May 26, 2025 at 8:14 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
The work of the ACLS matters now more than ever, and I’m floored by the honor of being among this year’s awardees!
acls1919.bsky.social American Council of Learned Societies @acls1919.bsky.social · May 7
ACLS awards 36 Project Development Grants, the largest cohort in the history of the program: bit.ly/4iPRP4A

The $5,000 grants support scholars in teaching-intensive faculty roles who are undertaking promising research in the #humanities and #socialsciences.
ACLS Awards 36 Project Development Grants
Project Development Grants support faculty in teaching-intensive roles pursuing research in the humanities and social sciences
bit.ly
May 7, 2025 at 5:27 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Let ‘em cook!
Book stack: Shows of London Milton on Film Pleasures of the Imagination Act of Reading The Spectator vol 3 Storythinking Reading in the Brain
April 24, 2025 at 12:09 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
In my happy place.
Title page for Archibald Alison’s Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790)
April 10, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Crystal Lake
drkarrschmidt.bsky.social
Here's a VERY Rare Book!
Dare I say.... a UNICORN?

How could I (almost) miss that it's #NationalUnicornDay?
#volvelle #interactive #popup
#NewberryLibrary
i-share-nby.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01...
April 9, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Crystal Lake
shannonmattern.bsky.social
Data providers like EBSCO, ProQuest, Sage + Cengage are “implementing “local controls” on databases, particularly related to health + race. ‘Under even the smallest of threats, the co’s have provided the tools or have secretly put on the tools… that apply the content blocking on these systems”
April 9, 2025 at 2:34 AM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
I guess even the cats are angry hedge fund managers now, and nothing makes sense anymore.
picture of a cat wearing a neck tie and shaking its “fist”
April 8, 2025 at 1:15 AM
Reposted by Crystal Lake
mwyarbrough.bsky.social
This exciting resolution from Rutgers University Senate is exactly the kind of model I think higher ed needs: a mutual defense pact of, in this case, Big 10 schools. They call for member institutions to create a joint defense fund and make resources available to any member institution under attack.
Excerpt from Rutgers University Senate resolution calling for a Mutual Academic Defense Compact. The excerpt reads: "BE IT RESOLVED THAT, the Rutgers University Senate urges the President of Rutgers University to formally propose and help establish a Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) among all members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance; BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT, under this compact, all participating institutions shall commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund. This fund shall be used to provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement;"
March 30, 2025 at 2:47 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Fire up your typing fingers, friends, because I can’t wait to read your essays as a new member of PMLA’s advisory board starting this summer.
March 28, 2025 at 11:49 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
For all you #severance fans, don’t sleep on this brilliant essay about the show by the one and only @drew-strombeck.bsky.social.

the-rambling.com/2022/10/21/i...
Living to Work in Severance - The Rambling
In this essay, Andrew Strombeck considers how Severance reminds its viewers that the Always-Be-Hustling era masks grim truths about work. As long as we view work as a place to find our best selves, we...
the-rambling.com
March 23, 2025 at 5:47 AM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Eighteenth-Century Studies is looking for a new Book Review Editor! Deadline to apply is April 15. Details are at asecs.org/publications...
Eighteenth-Century Studies – ASECS
asecs.org
March 20, 2025 at 7:24 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Delighted to feature this essay—a must-read for anyone interested in eighteenth-century numismatics—as part of the Vetusta Monumenta project!
March 13, 2025 at 1:29 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
These are the days, it never rains but it pours…
March 2, 2025 at 3:08 AM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
The irony that now we really do need someone in the government to “stop the steal.”
Headline from NYT “House Passes Budget Plan to Slash Spending…”
February 26, 2025 at 3:28 AM
Reposted by Crystal Lake
kasiaiskasia.bsky.social
I’ve got a new essay in @thepointmag.bsky.social reviewing books by Michael Chaouli, Jonathan Kramnick, and Lauren Oyler, and talking about what I love about (reading about) literary criticism, and how I do not love The Discourse.

thepointmag.com/criticism/a-...
A Twist of the Kaleidoscope | The Point Magazine
Has academia ruined literary criticism? Is this the end of literary studies? Has contemporary culture reduced authors to mere influencers building their brand? Or is […]
thepointmag.com
February 20, 2025 at 5:37 PM
crystal-b-lake.bsky.social
Check out @drew-strombeck.bsky.social with work from a new book project in the latest issue of NOVEL! 😍
dukepress.bsky.social Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · Feb 17
Novel, the official journal of the Society for Novel Studies, is devoted to the best new criticism and theory in novel studies: https://buff.ly/3D3XNjx

Volume 57, Issue 3 is now available. View the table of contents: https://buff.ly/3CRMtXS
The cover of NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Volume 57, Number 3, November 2024. The teal-colored cover lists article titles and authors, including Hamish Dalley, Karl Manis, Guy Davidson, Paul Stasi, Tara K. Menon, and Andrew Strombeck, along with a section for reviews by multiple scholars.
February 17, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by Crystal Lake
titachico.bsky.social
Good news!

My beloved little wonder book is freshly published by @cambridgeup.bsky.social !

Digital access is available for free through 27 Feb 2025.

Please share! Please welcome this beauty into the world!

#C18L #18thcentury

DOI: doi.org/10.1017/9781...
On Wonder
Cambridge Core - English Literature 1700-1830 - On Wonder
doi.org
February 13, 2025 at 6:01 PM