Alexander Manshel
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manshel.bsky.social
Alexander Manshel
@manshel.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.4K following 300 posts
Assoc. Prof., McGill English | Book: WRITING BACKWARDS (Columbia UP) | Articles: The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, LARB, Public Books, Post45, PMLA, and MELUS | Next Up: The History of High School English |📍Montreal
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manshel.bsky.social
huge if true
A screenshot of an email from "Dr.Tony Morrison" with the subject line "Congratulation's Dear Winner"
October 31, 2025 at 6:32 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Just learned that WRITING BACKWARDS has won Narrative's 2026 Perkins Prize, "awarded to the book making the most significant contribution to the study of narrative in a given year." A true honor, especially given the prize's past recipients!

www.thenarrativesociety.org/barbara-and-...
A paperback copy of "Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon" on a wooden desktop.
October 29, 2025 at 1:04 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Michiganders! I'll be giving a talk at MSU next Tuesday afternoon. If you're interested in "High School English and the Making of American Readers," I'll hope to see you there!
Poster for a public talk by Alexander Manshel at Michigan State University. The talk is titled "High School English and the Making of American Readers" and it will take place on Tuesday, September 30 at 4 pm in Wells Hall B342. The talk is part of MSU's lecture series "University Studies Now."
September 22, 2025 at 3:07 PM
manshel.bsky.social
This past weekend I had the distinct honor of officiating the wedding of two dear friends. Wondering where to put Ordained Minister in the Universal Life Church Dot Org on my CV
A white badge with gold lettering that says “Clergy” above the logo for the Universal Life Church, an organization that will temporarily ordain you online for around fifty bucks.
September 16, 2025 at 5:47 PM
manshel.bsky.social
To Kill a Mockingbird, Gatsby, and the rest of the high school canon are as much a part of common culture as the Gettysburg Address or “I Have a Dream”
September 7, 2025 at 3:31 PM
manshel.bsky.social
I had a great time talking with @lefigaro.fr's Adrien Jaulmes about GATSBY LE MAGNIFIQUE and its impact on American culture...

www.lefigaro.fr/internationa...
Screenshot of "L'argent: Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Long Island, Gatsby le Magnifique," article in Le Figaro, by Adrien Jaulmes.
August 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM
manshel.bsky.social
New AIvy League just dropped…
A long list of scam universities in the InsideHigherEd story, “Inside a Network of Fake College Websites.”
August 14, 2025 at 12:10 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Thanks to Pieter Vermeulen for his thoughtful and generous review of WRITING BACKWARDS in Criticism! digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcont...

@columbiaup.bsky.social @philipleventhal.bsky.social
“This pays dividends in the form of deeply original close readings that are much less predictable than those in sociologically more monolithic works. Add to that the engaging writing style (for a first book Writing Backwards contains a remarkable number of truly excellent dad jokes), and this makes Writing Backwards a consistently rewarding and insightful work of criticism.”
July 14, 2025 at 2:50 PM
manshel.bsky.social
A screenshot from another social media site that reads: Mentioned Georg Lukács in a conversation and my friend said, “I think it’s pronounced George Lucas”
June 4, 2025 at 1:14 AM
manshel.bsky.social
I'm writing about the history of study guides at the moment, and am researching the early days of SparkNotes, back when it was largely staffed by Harvard undergrads. It turns out that their very first guides to DRACULA, OTHELLO, and PRIDE & PREJUDICE were written by none other than...Ross Douthat?!
An Internet Archive screenshot of TheSpark.com from April 2000, which lists the titles and authors of their various "SparkNotes." Here, we see the study guides to Shakespeare's Othello and Austen's Pride and Prejudice are written by then-Harvard undergrad Ross Douthat
May 24, 2025 at 8:12 PM
manshel.bsky.social
and on Sunday, June 1st... Katie Deane, Angelina Eimannsberger, @bekahwaalkes.bsky.social, Maggie Boyd, and @rakdr.bsky.social on "Reading Genre and Genre Readers."

We'd love to see you there!
Katie Deane (Birmingham), Market Research and the Construction of Genre Readers Angelina Eimannsberger (UPenn), Readers Who Know What They Want: Grassroots Genre-shaping in Romance Bekah Waalkes (Boston College) and Maggie Boyd (BostonU), Getting On the Same Page? What Book Clubs Can Teach Literary Scholars Julie Rak (Alberta), The Return of Commonplacing: Journaling and Information Management for the 21st Century
May 21, 2025 at 3:07 PM
manshel.bsky.social
On Saturday, May 31st... @markmcgurl.bsky.social, @jdporter.bsky.social, Matthew Eatough, and Shakti Jaising on "New Critics and New Criticism"...
Saturday, May 31st Paper Titles: Mark McGurl (Stanford), Criticism at Scale: BookTube and Literary Hyper-Abundance J.D. Porter (UPenn), The Popular Life of Literary Critical Language Matthew Eatough (Baruch College, CUNY), *The Untranslated* and the Art of Amateur Criticism Shakti Jaising (Drew), Televisual Literature: From PBS to Netflix
May 21, 2025 at 3:07 PM
manshel.bsky.social
On Friday, May 30th...Clayton Childress, Simone Murray, Michelle Smith, @alexbacalja.bsky.social, @benlibman.bsky.social, and me on "The Curricular and the Extra-Curricular"...
Friday, May 30th, 2025 Clayton Childress (UBC). How Shared is Common Culture? A View from the Middle School Library Simone Murray (Monash), Michelle J. Smith (Monash) and Alex Bacalja (U.Melb), Where Is the Digital in High-school English? Alexander Manshel (McGill), CliffsNotes, SparkNotes, and Shmoop: A New History of Literary Criticism Ben Libman (Stanford), Grove Press and the Extramural Teach-In
May 21, 2025 at 3:07 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Thinking this afternoon of the time I got to hear W.S. Merwin read his haunting poem "Search Party," about a lifetime of learning and his lost dog Maoli
W.S. Merwin, "Search Party" By now I know most of the faces that will appear beside me as long as there are still images I know at last what I would choose the next time if there ever was a time again I know the days that open in the dark like this I do not know where Maoli is I know the summer surfaces of bodies and the tips of voices like stars out of their distances and where the music turns to noise I know the bargains in the news rules whole languages formulas wisdom that I will never use I do not know where Maoli is I know whatever one may lose somebody will be there who says what it will be all right to miss and what is verging on excess I know the shadows of the house routes that lead out to no traces many of his empty places I do not know where Maoli is
April 18, 2025 at 6:27 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Yes to wrestling with the questions that matter! Yes to working with colleagues across disciplines! Yes to passionate and principled students eager to make change! This is what it’s all about and it has been such a pleasure, and such a solace!
Cover images for Worked Over, Severance, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Help Wanted, The Managed Heart, The Guest, The Last Human Job, and Lightning Rods.
March 20, 2025 at 2:12 PM
manshel.bsky.social
All that plus @jamiemccallum.bsky.social’s WORKED OVER + Ling Ma’s SEVERANCE + Ben Stiller’s SEVERANCE and it’s been a fabulous semester!
Cover images for Worked Over, Severance, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Help Wanted, The Managed Heart, The Guest, The Last Human Job, and Lightning Rods.
March 20, 2025 at 2:12 PM
manshel.bsky.social
We read Harry Braverman opposite Adelle Waldman’s HELP WANTED, studied Arlie Hochschild’s concept of “emotional labor” in Emma Cline’s THE GUEST, and are now taking up @allisonpugh.bsky.social’s new book on automation alongside Helen DeWitt’s LIGHTNING RODS
Cover images for Worked Over, Severance, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Help Wanted, The Managed Heart, The Guest, The Last Human Job, and Lightning Rods.
March 20, 2025 at 2:12 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Barry is a sociologist of labor, I’m a scholar of contemporary literature, and our students are 120 first-years from all over the world. We’ve spent the past semester pairing sociology and fiction to ask questions about why we work so hard, who we become at work, and what we can do to change things
Cover images for Worked Over, Severance, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Help Wanted, The Managed Heart, The Guest, The Last Human Job, and Lightning Rods.
March 20, 2025 at 2:12 PM
manshel.bsky.social
These past few months have been dark, but many of the brightest moments have come from the classroom. I’ve been co-teaching a new course with @eidlin.bsky.social on “The Fictions and Realities of Work,” and it has been exhilarating!
Cover images for Worked Over, Severance, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Help Wanted, The Managed Heart, The Guest, The Last Human Job, and Lightning Rods.
March 20, 2025 at 2:12 PM
manshel.bsky.social
MONTREAL! Please join me at De Stiil books on Tuesday, March 18th at 6:00, where @4fishgreenberg.bsky.social and I will be discussing his wild new novella, A THIRD TERM!
The cover of Paul Greenberg’s novella A THIRD TERM. The image, drawn by the cartoonist Barry Blitt, features the current President of the United States on a debate stage opposite George Washington.
March 17, 2025 at 12:18 PM
manshel.bsky.social
The deviousness of this particular step in the path to coordination is to corner the most status-quo-seeking individuals into the temptation to do wrong, and dirty their hands for the sake of keeping the status quo, inviting them to do a “minor” wrong in order to steer back toward “normalcy”—unless they can see that the status quo has been utterly broken, and a minor wrong, in this instance, is major.
February 23, 2025 at 8:57 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Very excited to be giving a lecture tomorrow night (Feb. 20) as part of the St. Louis Literary Award and Saint Louis University's Campus Read series! If you're in the area, or want to attend by Zoom, you can find the details here: www.slu.edu/library/st-l...
Slide for talk titled "The Museum of Historical Wonders: Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad" by Alexander Manshel. The slide features of a photograph of Whitehead giving an acceptance speech at the National BookAwards in a snazzy blue and black tuxedo.
February 19, 2025 at 1:53 PM
manshel.bsky.social
I had a great time discussing contemporary fiction, recent history, literary prizes, and more with Caterina Domeneghini and Claire Barnes for New American Studies Journal!

Here's a link to our conversation and an excerpt from my book... nasjournal.org/NASJ/article...
A screenshot of the first question of the interview linked above.
February 11, 2025 at 1:28 PM
manshel.bsky.social
Did you read THE GREAT GATSBY in High School?

Or have you taught it in HS? I’m writing a piece for the book’s 100th birthday and I need your help!

What do you remember about how the book was taught? Specific assignments, discussions, exercises, essay prompts? The further back the better!
Cover of The Great Gatsby (1925)
January 22, 2025 at 1:03 PM
manshel.bsky.social
If you're at #MLA25, please join @samcohen.bsky.social, @ebrier.bsky.social, @nearleft.bsky.social, @westmank.bsky.social, Eric Bennett, and me at "Saving Literary History." I'll be talking about how we can address the "end of the English major" by engaging our high school English colleagues!
MLA 2025. Session 501, "Saving Literary History." Saturday, January 11. 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM. Hilton New Orleans Riverside — Churchill B1 (2nd Floor). Description: "What is the place of literary history in our curricula as departments shrink? As faculty losses and enrollment declines make it difficult to retain historical survey courses and period distribution requirements, and trends in literary study deemphasize attention to literary history in favor of other modes and objects of study, should we continue to teach literary history? If so, how?"
January 9, 2025 at 5:29 PM