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srtoliver.bsky.social
sr_toliver
@srtoliver.bsky.social
3.1K followers 660 following 450 posts
Assistant Professor @ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | #Literacies, #EduSky, #AcademicSky, #BlackSky |she/her| Award-winning author (😆) | website: www.ReadingBlackFutures.com 💖💚
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srtoliver.bsky.social
From August 2025 to now, the department of labor has continually posted these AI images of their American Dream. What do you notice? What do you wonder?
Image of white man profile with houses and a church in the background. Image of white family (man, woman, boy, girl) in a church pew with an American flag in the background. Image of a white family (man, woman, boy, girl) facing a house. In the background are three buildings: a church, a factory, and (maybe) a school. A white man facing front with an American flag and construction cranes in the background. “Americans first.” is shown at the bottom in white lettering.
October 24, 2025 at 4:58 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I love doing this one a year. It lets me see where I’m directing most of my research energy ❤️

scholargoggler.com
Word cloud documenting major foci of Stephanie Toliver’s work, based on her Google scholar page. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=445gUJQAAAAJ&hl=en
September 5, 2025 at 9:45 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I am not surprised in the least 🙃

www.idrlabs.com/jock-nerd-pr...
Jock-Nerd/Prep-Goth Test Result: You are 28.2% Goth, 60% Nerd, placing you in the True Nerd category. True Nerds are highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about particular academic or technical subjects. Nerds are sometimes seen as being more interested in academics, technology, or other "nerdy" pursuits than in popular culture or mainstream social activities. Nerds often spend a lot of time and energy pursuing their interests, to the point where others can regard them as a bit obsessed with their hobbies.
August 2, 2025 at 10:46 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I’ve seen this before and I share it every time. It’s an accurate summary of what I do even if I struggle to explain it most of the time lol
Image describing the multiple roles of a lecturer (UK)/professor (US). Includes various items for teaching (e.g., setting up LLM, developing & revising courses, professional development), research (e.g., conferences, analyzing data, sharing research with the public), and service (e.g., committee work, mentoring, public/community service).
July 12, 2025 at 10:50 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I’ve never done a “graphical abstract” for a paper before, but this is one for an article (Confronting Colonial Control: Afrofuturist Literacy Stances Versus Book Bans in the Battle for Spacetime) that will come out soon in RRQ (Reading Research Quarterly)!
Graphical abstract of a research paper. Flows from colonial power to research approach to meta-ethnographic findings to conceptual innovation to conceptual findings.
June 16, 2025 at 6:43 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I’m so excited to be working alongside some of my favorite literacy educators as a newly elected Trustee of the @ncte.org
Research Foundation!
Picture of Stephanie R. Toliver with banner saying “trustee of the NCTE Research Foundation”
June 7, 2025 at 2:31 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Tonight, I played PS5 for the first time. I also played NBA2k for the first time. This game was against my 11yo.

Gentle reader, I won. Yall can’t tell me nothing for the next month 😂

He just said he’s going to play every day so he can beat me.

Idc.. he’s never living this down
Picture of final score in NBA2k25 (Bucks 71, Lakers 67).
May 29, 2025 at 3:52 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Someone took time out their day to type this. I’d be wrong if I corrected it, right? Lol

I’m still gonna write op-eds. Sorry to this person 🤷🏾‍♀️
"White settlers" conveniently leaves out black slave owners. Weird how you didn't address that. 40 million slaves alive today live where? Pro tip - none in north america or Europe. Except for the human smuggling you people and your cult condoned, endorse, fight legally for and finance. Im FAR more concerned about who is doing 8 out of 10 shootings in every community across america. Roughly 5% of the population committing over 50% of the nations violent crime. That's current. Not 200 years ago. Even more shocking is that people like you are allowed to infest, infect and indoctrinate young minds with your political mental disorder.
April 29, 2025 at 12:53 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I’ve been feeling really blah about writing, struggling to find my voice and feeling like I’m not a good writer (this is not a plea for anyone to tell me otherwise, but a way to acknowledge feelings and be transparent). Because of this, I’m getting back to writing in my notebook.

It’s helping 😊
A picture of a notebook page full of messy writing, including strikethroughs and squiggly lines and arrows.
February 18, 2025 at 10:40 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
It’s so weird that this paper is finally out in the world. It began during a time of rereading Kindred and the Parable books. I’m excited to continue this work, but also feeling so many other things right now…
Screen shot of first page of an academic paper titled: Kindred Rites of Sankofa: On Octavia Butler’s Histofuturist Approach to Artful Inquiry
February 13, 2025 at 6:00 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I feel like I did good!
Smiling Black woman with sisterlocks posing for a photo with arms crossed.
February 12, 2025 at 2:28 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
So like… remember when the conversation was about #AlternativeFacts? Because this is a big one…. I also have to point out that a huge tool of #colonialism is naming/renaming. #AcademicSky #BlackSky
Screenshot from Apple Maps centering the Gulf of Mexico Screenshot from Google centering the Gulf of Mexico with the name Gulf of America
February 11, 2025 at 2:11 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Dress for the job you want, right??

Choices were made….
Picture of Ivanka Trump in a green dress. Picture of Serena Joy from Handmaids’s Tale in a green dress
January 21, 2025 at 5:34 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
What am I supposed to do with this?!?!?
Image showing temperature of -3 with real feel at -16.
January 21, 2025 at 5:09 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Happy #J15 to all who celebrate! 💖💚
Picture is of a Black woman with sisterlocks. The woman has a black AKA shirt. AKA letters are green with pink trim. Below the letters is the sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha in pink letters.
January 16, 2025 at 3:40 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I’ve now been in academia long enough for the “all” and “since xxxx” columns on Google Scholar to be different. Yay! 😆

*I know it hasn’t been a long time, but it’s still cool, and I celebrate everything lol
Image of Google Scholar page for S. R. Toliver
January 2, 2025 at 7:21 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
7 more books than last year! We’ll see what 2025 brings!! 📚
Picture of S.R. Tolivers year in books. There were 38,646 pages read, a total of 89 books.
December 31, 2024 at 5:47 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I made an academic year in review (in Apple Clips)! I know publications and awards aren’t everything, but with all that’s happened over the course of this year, I’m proud of the work and relationships I’ve built in 2024 ❤️
#AcademicSky
#BlackEduSky
#BlackAcademicSky
#EduSky
#YearInReview
#Wrapped
December 16, 2024 at 12:17 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky📚💫
#BookChallenge
#Blackbooksky

18/20
Book cover of playing in the dark by Toni Morrison. Cover is in sepia with image of Morrison holding a hat.
December 15, 2024 at 5:47 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky📚💫
#BookChallenge
#Blackbooksky

17/20
Cover of book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe Cover is of an art exhibit of black particles with title and author on the bottom.
December 12, 2024 at 5:36 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
So… this happened!!!

I wasn’t in the room because I had to use the restroom, but hey, my picture looked good! 😅 #literacies
Picture of a PowerPoint slide for an early career award. Winner is Stephanie Toliver, a Black woman with locs in an orange dress with an arms-folded pose
December 5, 2024 at 9:58 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I love all of these (via blueskyroast.com)

What’s really funny is that I didn’t realize how much queer literature I read, but I went to look at my Goodreads and realized that I have a very wide reading palate!
December 4, 2024 at 8:53 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky📚💫
#BookChallenge
#Blackbooksky

16/20
Book cover for Beloved by Toni Morrison. Image is the title and author name in gold on a red background.
December 2, 2024 at 7:00 AM
srtoliver.bsky.social
I’m not that person, but I could be, and this person should be grateful for it. What I will say is I found the person’s LinkedIn profile, and as I feared, the person is employed by a school. This weird email is in response to my op-ed on comic books in Fulcrum. #ThisIsAmerica #EduSky #literacies
Screenshot of email. It says: What society has become, whether similarities in your mind of comic books, when people thy to redefine what a man or woman is, when we allow(d) this crazy thinking to happen, when there are more genders than spaghetti sauce, I think its dangerous and not good for society! Sam Briton, a few others in the cabinet is comic book! In adjusting and fixing problems in America, the last 40 years we have allowed the people we pitied to take over with their ideals, and now we have a circus! Star Trek, and some comic book stuff/shows can portray respect and integrity, good against evil, but hopefully we stop this circus and restore integrity! Second email screenshot. It says: Sorry but its wrong! If you want to blame generational, or other reasons, I just blame allowing this to start and then take over pushing the sensible out the window!
December 1, 2024 at 8:42 PM
srtoliver.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky📚💫
#BookChallenge
#Blackbooksky

15/20
Cover image for book, Blood Like Magic, by Liselle Sambury. Image is of dark-skinned Black girl with thick black hair looking over her shoulder.
December 1, 2024 at 2:14 AM