iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

if you want to preorder this bad boy & set some of its very, very good essays on your fall syllabi, you can use NUP2026 to get 25% off —and I bet some of us would love to Zoom into your classes to talk?! 💗 @devingarofalo.bsky.social @nupress.bsky.social

nupress.northwestern.edu

The Barbara Johnson Collective - Northwestern University Press

Collaboratively reassesses Barbara Johnson’s legacy as a reader and thinker with an eye to contemporary conditionsAcross an archive of essays on abortion a...

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Johanna Winant @johannawinant.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

LYRIC LOGIC is out in the world now!

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Likewise lucky, and over the moon about this cover!

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Philip Leventhal @philipleventhal.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Now available! Johanna Winant's eagerly anticipated, LYRIC LOGIC: HOW MODERN AMERICAN POETRY REASONS. Use the coupon code CUP20 and save 20%! tinyurl.com/4e7vphwa @johannawinant.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

not gonna get to it for ages, so please tell me it's good!

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college: 1. The Gothic Cathedral 2. Imaginando Latinoaméricas en Neruda, Paz y García Márquez 3. “If There is No God, All is Permitted”: Theism & Moral Reasoning 4. Sex and Sensibility in the Enlightenment 5. Dinosaurs & Their Relatives

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

The idea that you would not routinely vaccinate infants against RSV just fucking boggles the mind

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

please enjoy this tiny-font version of the TOC! (w alt-text to actually read) 🌸

TOC for The Barbara Johnson Collective!

Table of Contents
LIST OF FIGURES 4
INTRODUCTION: BARBARA JOHNSON STILL 5
DEVIN M. GAROFALO AND NATHAN K. HENSLEY 5

PART I: PERSONHOOD AND ITS OTHERS 34

CHAPTER 1: SPEAKING, NON-BINARILY 35
SARAH DOWLING 35

CHAPTER 2: MONSTER / SELF / DOBBS 54
MARGARET RONDA 54

CHAPTER 3: ON CRITICAL HAUNTINGS: THREE MOVEMENTS 71
RACHEL FEDER 71

REREADING 1: PUT ANOTHER WAY 88
RIA BANERJEE, KATARZYNA BARTOSZYŃSKA, NATHAN K. HENSLEY 88

PART II: FIGURE IN THE DOMAIN OF PRAXIS 92

CHAPTER 4: BARBARA JOHNSON, SYLVIA WYNTER, AND ANTHROPOMORPHOSIS 93
DEVIN M. GAROFALO 93

CHAPTER 5: READING WITH 114
BRIAN GLAVEY 114

CHAPTER 6: METAPHOR, METONYMY, AND STYLE; OR, BARBARA JOHNSON’S QUEER RELATIONS 129
CARA L. LEWIS 129

CHAPTER 7: DECIDABILITY 142
JOHANNA WINANT 142

REREADING 2: NEVER NOW 156
SARAH DOWLING, RACHEL FEDER, MARGARET RONDA 156

PART III: PEDAGOGIES OF SURPRISE 159

CHAPTER 8: TOTALITY IN/AND DECONSTRUCTION 160
KATARZYNA BARTOSZYŃSKA 160

CHAPTER 9: THE OBVERSE OF KNOWLEDGE 175
NATHAN K. HENSLEY 175

CHAPTER 10: BARBARA JOHNSON AND VIRGINIA WOOLF, OR READING WITHIN INSTITUTIONS 192
RIA BANERJEE 192

REREADING 3: ON TURNING AND BEING TURNED 210
DEVIN M. GAROFALO, BRIAN GLAVEY, CARA LEWIS, JOHANNA WINANT 210

POSTSCRIPT 214
IS THINKING STILL FOR ME? 215
ERIN SPAMPINATO 215

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

it is a truth universally acknowledged (but forgotten by me) that if you have an essay due and you really need to work during weekend naptime, your child will not nap

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Coming down with a cold, writing an exam, staring down my own essay deadline, hoping against hope that students turn their work in: the quintessential last-week-of-classes mess

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

“Great! Some fresh snow to cover up the ugly snow leftovers from last weekend,” I caught myself thinking this morning. And I suppose that is how one becomes a winter person

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

maybe my most old-fashioned assignment is for students to memorize and recite a poem, and it is just so very fun to listen to them—strongly recommend you give yourself this end-of-term gift

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Thanksgiving break was tough for a number of reasons, but: we cleaned & reorganized 2 closets, weaned the toddler off pacis, got 8 inches of snow, and saw a coyote stroll down our street, so maybe not altogether bad?

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Ah, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the most pointless class day of the entire semester. So pointless that we’ve only had class on it for 3 years, and we’re abandoning this academic calendar and taking the whole week off again next year.

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

dan sinker @dansinker.com · 22/11/2025

Yesterday I tried to put everything I knew about whistles—where to get them, where to get instruction sheets, how to distro—into one place so you can build off it for your own community's whistle needs: dansinker.com/posts/2025-1...

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Today was ars poetica day in the intro to poetry class. Gotta add "break LLMs" to the list of things poetry can do...

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

this is beneath her, but I would so love a Patricia Lockwood review of this book

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

That the complainant is the Dean is deeply concerning www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

nytimes.com

Indiana Professor Removed From Class Over White Supremacy Lesson

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Bribing my students to come to class

15 assorted donuts from the good donut place for a poetry seminar

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

But the toddler doesn’t even have snow pants yet?!?!

Winter storm warning for Chicago. A bit extreme for mid-November

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

My empire for a poll: do I cut Conrad, Fleming, or something else? FWIW, I'm already cutting Portrait (maybe keeping "The Dead") and swapping out Hamid for Ali Smith's Autumn. But something else has to go.

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

A hilarious thing is parenting a 2yo when you have lost your voice

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

"Print is a rent strike. Close reading is for everyone. Against long-rising disparities in education, we must not capitulate to A.I. shortcuts that some argue make reading more accessible. The point of reading is to read, not to outsource reading to a machine: Everyone deserves that opportunity."

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Read a novel I bought 2 years ago when my kid was a tiny baby and I thought, oh so mistakenly, that I’d have time to read:

Ombré neon yellow and green cover of the novel “The Fraud,” by Zadie Smith, published fall 2023

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

My most significant fall break accomplishment:

Homemade wand for a 2yo in love with Abby Cadabby

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

in delightful news, the 2yo just declared capers yummy

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Steven L. Johnson @stevenljohnson.org · 17/10/2025

UVA says no to the compact

To the University of Virginia community:

On Monday of last week, Rector Rachel Sheridan and I shared a message with the community regarding the proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. We were asked to provide comments on the proposal no later than October 20.

Today, I sent the letter below to the Secretary of Education and to White House officials. The letter confirms our core values and commitments while expressing our view that federal research funding should be based on merit.

I want to thank personally the Faculty Senate, Staff Senate, Student Council, and many other members of our community who expressed their opinions on the proposed Compact, through the online form we provided and other means. Your thoughtful feedback shows a profound care for the University and a strong commitment to its future.

We will continue to work to strengthen free expression and free inquiry, protect academic freedom, ensure affordability , promote intellectual pluralism, and maintain institutional neutrality in an increasingly polarized world. I am grateful for your continued dedication to the University and I look forward to working with you on these vital projects.

Paul Mahoney
Interim President
University of Virginia

October 17, 2025

The United States Department of Education
Washington, DC 20202

Dear Secretary McMahon, Ms. Mailman, and Mr. Haley,

Thank you for your letter inviting comment on the proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. We wholeheartedly agree that “American higher education is the envy of the world.” We also agree with many of the principles outlined in the Compact, including a fair and unbiased admissions process, an affordable and academically rigorous education, a thriving marketplace of ideas, institutional neutrality, and equal treatment of students, faculty, and staff in all aspects of university operations. Indeed, the University of Virginia leads in several of these areas and is committed to continuous improvement in all of them.

We seek no special treatment in exchange for our pursuit of those foundational goals. The integrity of science and other academic work requires merit-based assessment of research and scholarship. A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education.

Higher education faces significant challenges and has not always lived up to its highest ideals. We believe that the best path toward real and durable progress lies in an open and collaborative conversation. We look forward to working together to develop alternative, lasting approaches to improving higher education.

Sincerely yours,

Paul Mahoney
Interim President
University of Virginia

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

minor indignities of the day include being subjected to repeatedly hearing the word "visioning" in a meeting

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Administrators at Indiana University baselessly fired the student media director and ordered the student paper to cease its print edition, so it'd sure be a shame if this excellent digital front page were to be widely shared today issuu.com/idsnews/docs...

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

i would like to talk to the person who scheduled all the parent & child swim time in chicago's indoor pools for naptime

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

going to try to summon the enthusiasm my 2yo shows for finding the moon every night and pointing out the orange cars on our street every morning

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

What do I cut from my c20-21 British fiction class? Conrad, HofD Joyce, Portrait Forster, Passage to India Woolf, Dalloway Achebe, Things Fall Apart Fleming, Dr. No Rhys, Wide Sarg Sea Roy, God of Small Things Z Smith, White Teeth Hamid, Exit West Bk orders for spring somehow due in a week—ack!

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Does anyone still make coursepacks for students? Super common when I was in college & grad school, but I imagine putting PDFs on the LMS has mostly (entirely?) replaced it. Anyone just printing out everything for them?

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

the day-to-day demoralizations of working in a regional public in a red state in the age of AI hype are too much today, even when I know they're by design, even when (most) colleagues and (basically all) students are fantastic

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

I have read a little bit of this, and it's so very good: smart and insightful and just really well written

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Johanna Winant @johannawinant.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

[clears throat]...I have another book coming out in the near future if you'd like to read a bit about LYRIC LOGIC, there are some very generous blurbs over at @columbiaup.bsky.social (my thanks to Marjorie Levinson, Oren Izenberg, Theo Davis, Nan Z. Da, and also @philipleventhal.bsky.social)

cup.columbia.edu

Lyric Logic | Columbia University Press

Between the Civil War and the Cold War, American literary modernism and philosophy both grappled with the challenge of novelty and the chance to make it new.... | CUP

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

doing bound-notebook reading journals this semester: I have absolutely screwed myself with how much & how fast I have to read, but they are so much better than discussion posts in all the ways that matter

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

yes, professional development modules are surely the thing that will improve morale and fix all the systems that aren't working

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Made plum torte last weekend and will make it again tomorrow

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

anybody have experience on their campus with EAB coming in to consult, and (if you have access to budget numbers) any sense of what their consulting fees are? feel free to DM

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Filled with incandescent rage at this idiocy (even despite AHIP announcing they have better sense: counting on insurance companies to do the right thing is a terrible place to be) www.ahip.org/news/press-r...

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Reposted by Cara L. Lewis

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

This is good: With Trump/RFK destroying CDC, JB Pritzker's officials are exploring the possibility of buying Covid vaccines from manufacturers and distributing them in-state themselves, source tells me. Dem govs must step up and fill the void. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/1998...

newrepublic.com

Trump’s Decapitation of CDC Takes Darker Turn—and Hands Dems a Weapon

Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker is leading a charge other Democratic governors should take up: In our America, we’ll make sure public health systems remain strong.

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Fuck these fucking fuckers for ensuring that daycares will be full of kids who can't get a covid vaccine

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

the biannual urge to catapult Bloom's taxonomy of verbs into the sun

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

I did it. I found the most 90s crayon possible

Two jungle greens crayons. “Jungle green,” which is a bright teal, is the most ‘90s color, hands-down

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

BRB going to color like it’s 1995 (with crayons from roughly 1995)

A heap of multicolored crayons in a variety of amazing colors, like peach, maroon, and copper penny

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

New trend in cover design, perhaps. Close-cropped frontal portrait to signal intimacy with (or scrutiny of) subject as well as honesty of writer (regardless of actual honesty). Only showing half the face to indicate the subject is complex and partially unknown to the public: …

Cover of Joe Manchin’s memoir, “Dead Center”

Cover of Amy Odell’s biography of Gwyneth Paltrow

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Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

at the risk of being all too earnest, sometimes writing is just plodding along, 500 words at a time, and hoping it'll eventually get good

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