Nathan K. Hensley
@nathankhensley.bsky.social
Action without Hope (2025) • Forms of Empire (2016) • Fresno, Silver Spring • https://www.nathankhensley.net/ • he/him/his • Everything here in personal capacity only
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo242060390.html
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo242060390.html
I admit to having a different Victorian studies conference occupying my mind just this week, but man am I psyched for this, and deeply honored to be part of it. MVSA rules. I can’t wait.
CINCY!
CINCY!
If you or anyone you know would be interested in a GREAT Victorian studies conference in the spring, here's the CFP. Proposals due Dec 6. Especially let anyone within driving distance of Cincinnati know! The lovely @nathankhensley.bsky.social will be keynote speaker. midwestvictorian.org/conference/
Conference
“The Underground: Prohibition, Abolition, Expression”2026 Call for Papers April 10-12, 2026, hosted by Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. Baker Street Station on the Metropolitan Railway, 1863 &#…
midwestvictorian.org
November 11, 2025 at 1:11 AM
I admit to having a different Victorian studies conference occupying my mind just this week, but man am I psyched for this, and deeply honored to be part of it. MVSA rules. I can’t wait.
CINCY!
CINCY!
I am only just catching up on the Joyce Carol Oates thing from yesterday and am dying that in her list of expressions that might show you had a shred of humanity this 87 year old lady listed “acclaim for a favorite team”— acclaim! It’s perfect
November 10, 2025 at 5:20 PM
I am only just catching up on the Joyce Carol Oates thing from yesterday and am dying that in her list of expressions that might show you had a shred of humanity this 87 year old lady listed “acclaim for a favorite team”— acclaim! It’s perfect
these people deserve nothing from us
November 10, 2025 at 2:12 PM
these people deserve nothing from us
November 9, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
Writing my dissertation partly in this room was one of the great experiences of my scholarly life. They kept complete standard editions of American authors against one of the walls. Also I was still smoking cigarettes at the time and would go down to Bryant Park. A++++
The Rose Reading room at the NYPL, for instance, is a place where literally anyone can have access to world class research materials— a universe of ideas— and, if they use them right, and stay at it, they can become a genius
November 9, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Writing my dissertation partly in this room was one of the great experiences of my scholarly life. They kept complete standard editions of American authors against one of the walls. Also I was still smoking cigarettes at the time and would go down to Bryant Park. A++++
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
I always go to NYPL when I'm in town, especially 42nd St and Lincoln Center. Chicago PL's Vivian Harsh Research Collection is absolutely incredible, and more people should know about it www.chipublib.org/vivian-g-har...
Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection
Available by Appointment Only
Request an appointment to visit CPL's special collections and archives.
The Vivian G. Harsh Research…
www.chipublib.org
November 9, 2025 at 2:38 PM
I always go to NYPL when I'm in town, especially 42nd St and Lincoln Center. Chicago PL's Vivian Harsh Research Collection is absolutely incredible, and more people should know about it www.chipublib.org/vivian-g-har...
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
I love this observation. There's so much accessibility to knowledge if only we have the courage to go after it.
Yes! The thing abt public libraries that is so beautiful & crucial is the idea that *anybody* could do this — you need no credential, there’s no gatekeeping, literally any person can be an intellectual. You can come from absolutely nothing & yet, by means of curiosity + work, create real knowledge
I wrote a significant chunk of my first book at a Chicago Public Library, an amazing public space where people could read books and newspapers, access the internet, or just keep warm for a while on a cold day. This is appalling.
November 9, 2025 at 2:51 PM
I love this observation. There's so much accessibility to knowledge if only we have the courage to go after it.
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
An incredibly macabre irony that at the same moment mass language archives are being looted to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, our own public access to our preeminent form of archiving language is being slowly strangled to death.
Yes! The thing abt public libraries that is so beautiful & crucial is the idea that *anybody* could do this — you need no credential, there’s no gatekeeping, literally any person can be an intellectual. You can come from absolutely nothing & yet, by means of curiosity + work, create real knowledge
I wrote a significant chunk of my first book at a Chicago Public Library, an amazing public space where people could read books and newspapers, access the internet, or just keep warm for a while on a cold day. This is appalling.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 AM
An incredibly macabre irony that at the same moment mass language archives are being looted to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, our own public access to our preeminent form of archiving language is being slowly strangled to death.
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
TBQH, Reading Rooms in public libraries are magical. We have a small one in our genealogy library, and it’s a miracle.
November 9, 2025 at 12:04 AM
TBQH, Reading Rooms in public libraries are magical. We have a small one in our genealogy library, and it’s a miracle.
Yes! The thing abt public libraries that is so beautiful & crucial is the idea that *anybody* could do this — you need no credential, there’s no gatekeeping, literally any person can be an intellectual. You can come from absolutely nothing & yet, by means of curiosity + work, create real knowledge
I wrote a significant chunk of my first book at a Chicago Public Library, an amazing public space where people could read books and newspapers, access the internet, or just keep warm for a while on a cold day. This is appalling.
CPL is an absolute palace to the people and these proposed cuts are abominable. Artificial austerity. Chicago folks, read this, check the links to bug the mayor and your alders—this can be fought and won.
November 8, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Yes! The thing abt public libraries that is so beautiful & crucial is the idea that *anybody* could do this — you need no credential, there’s no gatekeeping, literally any person can be an intellectual. You can come from absolutely nothing & yet, by means of curiosity + work, create real knowledge
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
A student from a different institution referred to me as "that tender poet guy" in their email to me, and I couldn't be happier to have that reputation. I'm proud of this book and the interdependence that made it:
www.smallharborpublishing.com/books/whats-...
www.smallharborpublishing.com/books/whats-...
What's Left is Tender by Travis Chi Wing Lau — Small Harbor Publishing
www.smallharborpublishing.com
November 8, 2025 at 9:17 PM
A student from a different institution referred to me as "that tender poet guy" in their email to me, and I couldn't be happier to have that reputation. I'm proud of this book and the interdependence that made it:
www.smallharborpublishing.com/books/whats-...
www.smallharborpublishing.com/books/whats-...
if you want to see these and register fast, i'll get you the links!
November 8, 2025 at 6:58 PM
if you want to see these and register fast, i'll get you the links!
thread
Ok, it's a new day, it's a blue sky, I want to find a very specific niche of the internet. I love hoops, I love hats, and I love writing criticism. I'm going to review all thirty of the 2024-2025 NBA City Edition New Era fitted hats that dropped today. Here goes nothing... 1/x
November 8, 2025 at 4:23 PM
thread
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
just finished teaching edwin drood, the atmosphere — the suffocating claustrophobia of it felt so familiar
November 7, 2025 at 11:34 PM
just finished teaching edwin drood, the atmosphere — the suffocating claustrophobia of it felt so familiar
Amazing day of digital panels in our first @navsa2025.bsky.social presession today— thanks so much to all who contributed!
Programs for the in person conference have just arrived, and they are… nice 🤩
Programs for the in person conference have just arrived, and they are… nice 🤩
November 7, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Amazing day of digital panels in our first @navsa2025.bsky.social presession today— thanks so much to all who contributed!
Programs for the in person conference have just arrived, and they are… nice 🤩
Programs for the in person conference have just arrived, and they are… nice 🤩
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
what’s up Baltimore
November 7, 2025 at 6:34 PM
what’s up Baltimore
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
Nuremburg trials is the moderate position
He said that the agents would throw food at them to eat. The agents threatened to withhold food for a week and to beat him up if he didn't sign deportation papers. He said he saw others refuse and get beaten/receive no food. He signed because he was afraid.
November 7, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Nuremburg trials is the moderate position
Sapere aude y’all
Mamdani got a humanities degree.
His win helps to illustrate that one of the central forces driving higher ed’s dissolution of the humanities is the fear that teaching people how power works can also lead to their interest in seizing it on behalf of the less powerful.
His win helps to illustrate that one of the central forces driving higher ed’s dissolution of the humanities is the fear that teaching people how power works can also lead to their interest in seizing it on behalf of the less powerful.
November 6, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Sapere aude y’all
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
I'm giving what might be the "biggest" talk of my life tomorrow, at Cambridge, and I seem to have written my most certifiably bonkers talk yet for it, about Jacobite poetics and Sean Bonney via Charles Le Brun, called "Non-Literary Beauty?". If you're in Cambridge, come see me in the Eng Dept @ 5pm!
November 5, 2025 at 2:08 PM
I'm giving what might be the "biggest" talk of my life tomorrow, at Cambridge, and I seem to have written my most certifiably bonkers talk yet for it, about Jacobite poetics and Sean Bonney via Charles Le Brun, called "Non-Literary Beauty?". If you're in Cambridge, come see me in the Eng Dept @ 5pm!
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
These data centers facilitate the greatest transfer and consolidation of wealth in human history in the service of cruelty, surveillance, imprisonment, deportation, job loss, and the ugliest fucking art you’ll ever see.
November 4, 2025 at 4:37 AM
These data centers facilitate the greatest transfer and consolidation of wealth in human history in the service of cruelty, surveillance, imprisonment, deportation, job loss, and the ugliest fucking art you’ll ever see.
listening to this right now and it's incredible
November 5, 2025 at 8:33 PM
listening to this right now and it's incredible
Fascinating! "Discounting tables [of the early 1600s] were thus not tools of instrumental rationality evincing a new capitalist mentality, but tools of social accommodation and products of the era’s “economy of obligation.”"
"How and why do new techniques of economic reasoning...take hold in certain historical moments?"
Today's #histSTM lunchtime read: @calculatedvalues.bsky.social's award-winning article on mathematical tables & financial calculation in early modern England.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Today's #histSTM lunchtime read: @calculatedvalues.bsky.social's award-winning article on mathematical tables & financial calculation in early modern England.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
November 5, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Fascinating! "Discounting tables [of the early 1600s] were thus not tools of instrumental rationality evincing a new capitalist mentality, but tools of social accommodation and products of the era’s “economy of obligation.”"
Seen in retrospect, world-historical changes often start with small things: for instance a single electoral campaign or one election result, or even a whole night of them.
Then, in time, these victories gather & become durable, and then, later, the change they made seems to have been inevitable. LFG
Then, in time, these victories gather & become durable, and then, later, the change they made seems to have been inevitable. LFG
BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York City mayoral race, NBC News projects. nbcnews.to/4nIzNUC
November 5, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Seen in retrospect, world-historical changes often start with small things: for instance a single electoral campaign or one election result, or even a whole night of them.
Then, in time, these victories gather & become durable, and then, later, the change they made seems to have been inevitable. LFG
Then, in time, these victories gather & become durable, and then, later, the change they made seems to have been inevitable. LFG
Reposted by Nathan K. Hensley
Just waiting to see what the kids do with Cuomo’s concession speech
November 5, 2025 at 2:26 AM
Just waiting to see what the kids do with Cuomo’s concession speech