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Laura Vrana

@callmevrana.bsky.social
632 followers 331 following 398 posts

African American poetry scholar. ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/978…. Univ of South AL Associate Professor & former Emory FCHI Poetics Fellow. All opinions mine, not that of my employer. She/her/hers.

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Reposted by Laura Vrana
Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 12h
If you're in these states, *TODAY* is deadline to register to vote. Arizona, Arkansas Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas. Even if you think you've registered: doesn't hurt to check! And there's a lot happening across them. A thread with stakes on each. ⬇️
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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
1) I haven’t knowingly used it, and that “knowingly” makes a big difference. 2) have taken steps to turn it off so that I don’t use it unknowingly (next post).
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Teaching Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl last week was...interesting. Students, when discussing why she had to emphasize her desire to remain "pure," drew links to rape culture today, victim blaming, and why women have to be "perfect" for their stories to garner outrage...
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Woke up early on a Saturday to grade some papers before baby gets up (please clap), but my institution's Canvas site is down so I can't even get to the documents. I'm pretty sure this means I just don't have to grade them ever, right?
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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
We are ruining our own institutions, which is sad for us and great for our enemies.
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SE Strongman @strongman.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I said something to this effect to a colleague yesterday about the push for faculty to use AI in teaching and research. Thinking about stuff is supposed to be the main thing, isn’t it?
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Sarah Jane Cervenak @sjcerv.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Writing during the semester is hard but it's still happening in so many forms and under-recognized creativities. Trying to keep this in mind and hope it encourages you too
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Fr Chase 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁 @kalanthropos.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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Jack Hopkins-The Original @therealjackhopkins.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Todd Blanche now says "one-sided news" is a national security threat worth barring the press over. That's not a legal standard. It's a viewpoint test. I didn’t go to law school…and didn’t need to, to know that the First Amendment exists to STOP government from judging which coverage is balanced.
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Louisa @louisathelast.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I would literally rather see you scribble a stick figure on a postit note than whatever you’re considering doing with AI
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Love this whole thread on the subject...
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I still don't get Southern football culture or much enjoy participating in it too often, *but* I do have to admit that baby-sized football-themed outfits of the sort one might have put her in today for a Saturday brunch outing can be pretty adorable...
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
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Bailey Townsend 🦀 @pds.dad · 22/09/2026
Welcome back having to turn on the kitchen light to see in the morning. I did not especially miss you
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/09/2026
i think you can fairly say that the second trump administration is the most racist federal administration since woodrow wilson and honestly i'm not sure that it isn't more racist than wilson's
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Thought this was already established - but I guess some folks need this type of evidence & won't accept other versions. (Like when Clotilda wreck was discovered; local Black communities were all "shrug, we knew it, oral history" - but some wouldn't believe them) www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
newyorker.com
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Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 20/09/2026
Americans: oh, look, a systemic issue. I will solve it individually
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Sarah Jane Cervenak @sjcerv.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
“and I am more than one way to see the word-world.” Canisia Lubrin, The Dyzgraphxst
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Whatever scientist thought, "We found an effective antibiotic for mastitis, just requires 4 doses daily for 10 days, each strictly scheduled dose on an empty stomach so no food for 2 hours before or after each - done!" never dealt with the schedule constraints of working breastfeeding mothers...
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
We've reached the stage of grading 400-level papers in an age of AI where I find myself commenting in the margin far too enthusiastically: "YES! RECLAIM THE EM-DASH! LOVE IT!" before realizing the student won't understand how AI suspicions have prompted many to just stop using the lovely em-dash...
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Sarah Jane Cervenak @sjcerv.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Good morning. Astonished to share that my first book is 12 years old today. Thanks for reading, teaching and supporting ❤️❤️❤️ @dukepress.bsky.social
Photo of the black and white cover of ‘Wandering: Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom’ . The photo on the cover is of the artist photographer Carrie Mae Weems walking a cobblestone road by an ocean. She is wearing a long black dress and looks out to the sea.

There is a bunch of blue, orange and purple balloons that read ‘happy birthday’ placed at the corner of the cover
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Not Obama's heartfelt, genuinely emotional post about losing the family dog Sunny making me full-on tear up about how THAT WAS ONCE OUR PRESIDENT and now we have...*gestures about despairingly*...
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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Rest in peace costume designer Bob Mackie (1939-2026), who created probably the most famous costume ever to appear in a TV comedy. The costume sent-up Scarlet O'Hara making a dress from curtains in "Gone With The Wind." Carol Burnett: "I saw it in the window and just couldn't resist!"
americanhistory.si.edu
Miss Starlett costume, worn by Carol Burnett on "The Carol Burnett Show"
“I saw it in a window and just couldn’t resist it,” Carol Burnett remarked about her outrageous “curtain dress,” worn in a comedy sketch that…
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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The rule they are overturning was predicted to give $120 billion in public health benefits by 2047, with projections that by 2035, it would would prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 360K asthma attacks, 48K school absence days and 57K lost workdays each year
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"It's numbing, our acceptance of our unfolding reality, this ability to adjust to anything. The mounting losses we are sustaining and calling an American way of life is exactly what it is: the American way of undoing life....[W]e are in a state of collective loss..." ~Claudia Rankine, Triage (103)
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
My resolve not to post pictures of baby online is being sorely tested by the fact that she this morning got ahold of my copy of David Blight's enormous Douglass biography and proceeded to flip through it and I got some great angles quickly before taking it away for a more 9-month-old-safe toy...!
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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Too many people online seem to conflate left politics with being obnoxious and scathing and Mamdani is such a model for combining a principled ideological vision with civility and grace. You shake hands, you act like a grown up even whether others aren’t. You show up.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
“We were tired of being called racists for scapegoating minorities for filth and poverty”
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
THIS WHOLE THREAD. YES!
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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.
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Prof. Anthea Butler @antheabutler.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I totally get why Lonnie Bunch is leaving the Smithsonian, but I am also very worried and very sad for what may come. All of the nation's history is in peril, and who knows what kind of historian may be coming to lead it under this administration
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Eric Columbus @ericcolumbus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Happy 72nd Birthday to Ruby Bridges, who at the age of 6 desegregated the New Orleans public schools. She’s younger than 30 senators and our last two presidents—and only 7 years older than Barack Obama. The past isn’t past.
Ruby Bridges, age 6Ruby Bridges flanked by three U.S. Marshals on the steps of her schoolNorman Rockwell’s painting depicting the event, “The Problem We All Live With,” originally published as a centerfold in the January 14, 1964 issue of Look magazine. Ruby Bridges talking with President Obama as they look at Rockwell’s painting while it was temporarily displayed at the White House in 2011.
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Amy Earhart @aearhart.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
His leadership was monumental. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is a gem. I’m dismayed about where we as a country are heading… it’s post reconstruction again.
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Totally normal to say "Thin love ain't no love at all" to my baby as a life lesson regularly, right?
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Ward Q. Normal (he/him) @wardqnormal.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
A particularly infuriating aspect of this A.I. bullshit is that nobody seems to remember that we all got along just fine without it for centuries. How are we all suddenly incapable of reading and understanding written words? Of creating art? Of telling stories? It’s madness.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The neo-Nazi party made huge gains in the German elections thanks to the backing of the world‘s biggest billionaire and most prominent publicizer of white nationalist conspiracies on the planet. Good thing there’s no comparable relationship in the US for our media to explore.
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Late-night half-watching Practical Magic on TV, and now I've gone down a rabbithole marveling over the fact that apparently somehow no one has ever written (?!?) about how much its ending plot-wise is a *direct mirror* of the ending of Beloved (sanitized, whitened, but pretty identical in key ways)?
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Official now: I am/was the final Faculty Senate President in University of South Alabama history, as the Board of Trustees voted today on policies to comply w state legislation HB580. "Unprecedented times," indeed. Exhausted - but honored to have worked with/tried to serve my exceptional colleagues.
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4fuxake @blueheartedly1.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
School meals should be free for everybody. Charging children to eat somewhere they are legally required to be for the entire day is crazy.
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Today sucks for certain professional reasons, BUT I just had an unexpected hour-long high-level conversation with a student about Toni Morrison (Paradise and Sula, which he's been reading just for fun, not part of our course), and it reminded me of the *joy* of this job sometimes!
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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
My colleague @jeffsharlet.bsky.social has been asking his students to tell him about their AI usage anonymously. www.chronicle.com/article/my-s...
chronicle.com
Opinion | My Students Hate AI. But They Can’t Stop Using It.
Big Tech has gotten them addicted to cheating, and they’ve internalized the blame.
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ceej @ceej.online · 03/09/2026
I do think “every rich person went insane during covid because it was the first time they’ve been inconvenienced in decades” felt a little reductive at first but damn if isn’t more and more compelling as the years drag on
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This week in teaching, I got to talk with students about Venture Smith's 18th century narrative and questions of white mediation, authority, voice, and how we define freedom and resistance by today's standards (and whether those are fair to apply back). It was pretty amazing, not gonna lie.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Students who nod and smile during lecture when we try to make a point? Heroes
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 02/09/2026
how i be getting around in my car now that Apple Maps and Google Maps are dead to me
pic of printed out paper Mapquest directions mounted to rearview mirror
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Laura Vrana @callmevrana.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Don't sleep on this amazing-looking book by the ever-brilliant Howard Rambsy II, which I pre-ordered weeks ago and which comes out tomorrow! www.bloomsbury.com/us/one-black...
bloomsbury.com
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tekla 💜✨ @tekla.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
as a parent of a young child: why is it always midnight
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Humor Satire Memes @funnysnarkyjoke.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
A photo of a massive, lavish breakfast spread covering a glass dining table. The spread includes multiple stacked waffles, bowls of scrambled eggs, fried chicken, bacon, sausage patties, hash browns, French toast, a large bowl of mixed fruit, shrimp, syrup, and three full jugs of orange juice. 

people in movies have this kind of breakfast and they only grab a strawberry and be like "gotta go hun!"
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The richest man owns X. The second and fourth richest men control Google. The third richest man owns The Washington Post. The sixth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. And now the seventh richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros. See the problem here?
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