I got to pop past here again today.

📣Manchester folks! “Making Queer Photography Visible Now,” featuring V & A museum curator Zorian Clayton, in conversation with Prof. Jackie Stacey, on his fab new book, Calling the Shots: A Queer History of Photography, is on @manchester.ac.uk next Wed, 12 Nov from 4-5 pm in Sam Alex A113.

I’m not gonna lie: this was a sheer delight to work on & I’m excited to see it now has a cover. That I got to include Emma Goldman & Dawn Powell alongside W.D. Howells, Audre Lorde, Dorothy Parker, Paule Marshall, Djuna Barnes, Helen Keller & Margaret Fuller (among others) was a great bonus.

A meeting of the Higher Education arm of the National Exec of my union brought me to London today, & as luck would have it, the walk there allowed me to make a brief stop at this most sacred spot this morning.

Grateful for the inspired and inspiring talks that @libankerdc.bsky.social @posypoet.bsky.social @mbpearl.bsky.social gave at today’s “Resistance in the Age of Trump 2.0” roundtable today & for the great student turnout!

UK HE peeps! If thinking about the crisis our sector is in (& where we go from here) is your jam, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Looking forward to discussing the resurgence of the American expat on screen & setting Too Much & Emily in Paris alongside Henry James & James Baldwin this Thursday evening at @britishlibrary.bsky.social
“America Now” event on “Americans Abroad.”

“Hope in this sense is the recognition that…the future is not (as it is so often spoken of) a place that already exists, toward which we are trudging.” Rebecca Solnit’s manifesto against fatalism (or “meeting nazis halfway”) is top of my hope-giving reading list for this week.

Grateful that I got to celebrate our wonderful American Studies students today & grateful, too, that I got to see this dear colleague! @mbpearl.bsky.social

That Turku was such a kid-friendly city was a great bonus for these budding Americanists. #NAASpirations

Thank you @naas2025 for a *superbly* organized conference, three days of great talks & inspiring keynotes, & such a lovely closing reception. #NAASpirations

Prof. Adrienne Brown (U of Chicago) gave an extraordinary talk on her new book The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Home Ownership yesterday as this year’s Henry Box Brown Lecture in American Studies at the University of Manchester.

The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Politics, edited by Jack Kerkering, is hot off the press and I wish it didn’t feel quite so timely for the moment we find ourselves in. Spoiler alert: Emma Goldman & Henry James both make an appearance in my essay for it.

I'm standing for a @ucu.org.uk National Executive Committee (NEC) role in this election because I believe we can build a better union & wage a stronger fight for our sector. If you share that vision, I'd be grateful for your vote. But whomever you support, please make your voice heard.

I just posted my @ucu.org.uk NEC ballot. I voted for @dyfrigjones.bsky.social & a slate of candidates who acknowledge the crisis that our sector is in & how urgently we need to work together to address that at a local, national & UK policy level. THAT gives me hope in an otherwise dark time.

I'm running for a spot on UCU's National Executive Committee (NEC) because I believe in the power of our collective action, transparent leadership & long-term strategies to protect our sector. Ballots open 27 January. #UCUNEC