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Chris Hanlon

@chrishanlon.bsky.social
650 followers 192 following 150 posts

Professor of United States literature, Arizona State; co-editor, ALH Review & The Dial; author, America’s England (2013) & Emerson’s Memory Loss (2018); allegedly storied; will bell the cat.

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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Here’s the AI policy my students get today. Prolly won’t be getting any innovation awards this year. youtu.be/YfLmqLlUDvg
youtu.be
Statement on AI
YouTube video by Professor Chris Hanlon
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Anyone else read this?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Who would have guessed that Ross Douthat, who has used the NYTimes platform to do things like normalize the likes of Doug Wilson, would now be moving to CBS and the post-purge 60 Minutes?
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
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In These Times @inthesetimes.com · 29/05/2026
In Arizona, clean energy candidates beat utility insiders backed by business groups and Turning Point Action. Marjorie Kelly and @thomasmhanna.bsky.social report that advocates for renewable energy and affordability now hold a majority on the Salt River Project board.
inthesetimes.com
The Pro-Democracy and Climate Movements Just Scored a Win In an Unexpected Place
Arizona residents recently won a major fight for democratic public ownership of their electric utility.
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
What better way to celebrate RW Emerson’s 223rd birthday than by joining the @emersonsociety.bsky.social and perusing the latest issue of the Dial? @c19americanists.bsky.social emersonsociety.org thedialjournal.org
emersonsociety.org
Home - Emerson Society
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society is dedicated to fostering scholarship on and appreciation of the life and writings of one of America’s greatest authors. The
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Emerson Society @emersonsociety.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Happy 223rd birthday to Ralph Waldo Emerson 🎉 Taking this opportunity to remind you all that The Dial’s latest issue (vol. 2, no. 2), edited by @chrishanlon.bsky.social, is available online!
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
“Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
As usual Matt Seybold breaks it down 👇🏻
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I’ve got some thoughts in today’s Chronicle. www.chronicle.com/article/dont... (Sans paywall:) archive.ph/Blzzk
chronicle.com
Opinion | Don’t Let Silicon Valley Turn Education into Slop
Against “academic content assetization.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I’ve got some thoughts in today’s Chronicle. www.chronicle.com/article/dont...
chronicle.com
Opinion | Don’t Let Silicon Valley Turn Education into Slop
Against “academic content assetization.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
@andrewmaynard.net , who helped author the six “design principles” ASU published last year, notes that even given a “transmission” model of education, Atomic flouts the principles’ concern for “the rights of individuals’ privacy and agency in the use of their data, individually and in aggregate.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Fantastic. “I think you can master complex subjects in like 20 minutes. Please let me run your university.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
ASU’s Faculty Ethics Committee on AI Technology: “We have a responsibility to develop and deploy AI models and applications with attention to the rights of individuals’ privacy and agency in the use of their data, individually and in aggregate.” ai.asu.edu/faculty-ethi...
ai.asu.edu
Faculty Ethics Committee on AI Technology | Artificial Intelligence
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
The Chronicle’s coverage iterrogates the ASU Board of Regents’ assertion—in tension with longstanding faculty exemptions under US Copyright definitions of Works For Hire—that it owns faculty teaching materials. archive.ph/MNJN2
archive.ph
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Cannot wait to see the new Illinois districting map
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Here’s @samleecole.bsky.social describing exactly how awful ASUAtomic makes ASU look: www.kjzz.org/the-show/202...
kjzz.org
Professors blindsided by new ASU AI tool that chops up their lectures and uses them out of context
Atomic is a new ASU platform that creates AI-generated versions of ASU faculty’s lectures cutting down often long videos to short clips for quicker learning.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
insidehighered.com
Faculty Concerned About ASU’s New AI Course Builder
ASU debuted the web app quietly this month and faculty—whose content the AI pulls from—are concerned about how it works and who can access it.
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Sam Cole @samleecole.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
no credit to the lecturers, no names, no sources, no links or references to outside work. just AI summaries, including built-in errors. this one repeatedly references the "riscus" community as a mistranslation of "riskers"
Governance Alignment: The imperative to establish frameworks and policies that ensure all AI development and deployment reflect human values and priorities, preventing misuse or unintended consequences.
These perspectives set the stage for understanding why AI ethics and responsibility matter—the field emerged precisely because technologists recognized the need to build safeguards into AI systems from the ground up.

🔍 Understanding the Key Idea
The most critical concept to grasp is why the X-Riscus community insists on caution despite AI's tremendous potential. Their argument isn't that AI is inherently evil; rather, they contend that without deliberate alignment with human values during development, powerful systems could produce unintended consequences at scale.

The goal is to make sure that all we do with AI aligns with human values.
This statement encapsulates the ethical foundation of responsible AI development. When AI systems learn from data or operate autonomously, they can amplify biases, make decisions humans didn't anticipate, or optimize for metrics misaligned with broader societal good. The X-Riscus perspective argues that proactive governance—not reactive regulation after problems emerge—is essential.

Progress (in AI context)

The pace of advancement in AI capabilities—how quickly systems become more powerful, autonomous, and capable of handling complex tasks. The debate centers on whether rapid progress is beneficial without accompanying ethical frameworks.

Perspective	Core Belief	Primary Focus
X-Riscus Approach	Cautious acceleration with governance oversight	Alignment with human values, existential risk mitigation
Implied Alternative	Rapid progress with market-driven innovation	Speed to benefit, competitive advantage
Understanding this tension is foundational: ethics in AI isn't about slowing progress but ensuring it happens thoughtfully.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Whatever else doesn’t come of this that should, I very much like that the ASU comms team is currently in a huddle
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
www.404media.co/asu-atomic-a...
404media.co
University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop
ASU Atomic, a new tool in beta at Arizona State University, takes faculty lectures and chops them into extremely short clips, that AI then attempts to turn into learning materials.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
While I realize the landscape is different in Arizona than Pennsylvania, and different now than it was in 2023, I do think there are lessons for ASU faculty to learn from thinking about what happened at Temple a few years back.
lareviewofbooks.org
Jason Wingard’s EdTech Griftopia | Los Angeles Review of Books
Matt Seybold explores the implications of the recent grad student strike at Temple University.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
“The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably-dressed speculators and vulgarians.” WW, 1871
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Bracing, needed counterpoint to the slop most university admin are pushing. www.oakland.edu/cetl/teachin...
oakland.edu
4: Creating AI-Free Learning Spaces - Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning - Oakland University
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Please circulate! The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society is pleased to announce its 2026 award competitions: the Research Award, Outreach Award, Undergraduate Student Essay Prize, and Graduate Student Essay Award. For more details see: emersonsociety.org/2026-rwes-aw...
emersonsociety.org
2026 RWES Awards - Call for Applications - Emerson Society
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society is pleased to announce the following awards:
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Ollie doesn’t know what this C19 bullshit is but he’s glad it’s over.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Let’s do it again soon, C19
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Good morning! And welcome to Day 1 in Cincinnati, C19! @c19americanists.bsky.social
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Airplane reading for C19, courtesy of the Emerson Society—our third issue is live! With content by Christina Zwarg, Rachel Banner, Rachel DeWitt, Max Chapnick, Kristin Lacey, Rachael DeWitt, Susan Dunston, Sonia Di Loreto, & Mollie Barnes. thedialjournal.org @c19americanists.bsky.social
thedialjournal.org
The Dial – A Journal of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society
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The Dial @thedial2024.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
The Dial has stickers. See you in Cincinnati. @c19americanists.bsky.social
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Funny that neither the NYTimes review nor the New Yorker mention that little of the dialogue in “Wuthering Heights” seems actually to come from the novel. Also if this is such an expressionistic rendering would it have killed Fennel to include some puppy-hanging?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Just passed four armored vehicles on Northern Ave at rush-hour.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
www.mobilize.us/mobilize/eve...
mobilize.us
ICE Out For Good TEMPE · Mobilize
Wednesday, January 7th, an American citizen was killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This killing is part of a broader pattern of unchecked violence, impunity...
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Very excited! @c19americanists.bsky.social @asuenglish.bluesky.social asuevents.asu.edu/event/save-y...
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
@johnubacon.bsky.social ‘s book on the Edmund Fitzgerald is pretty engaging but loses the plot @jeffreyinsko.bsky.social catches: the ship was part of a whole infrastructure of crazy, ecocidal, midcentury extraction the likes of which we seem to be returning. open.substack.com/pub/thecurre...
open.substack.com
Disaster on Gichigami
What if the most famous disaster on Lake Superior never really ended?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
My co-editors Andrew Taylor, Sarah Ruffing Robbins, and I are so proud of this latest book in the Interventions series published by @edinburghuniversitypress. The Asian American Renaissance: Literary Encounters Across Time by Mai Wang will change the stories we tell about US literary history.
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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Apropos of nothing: "... we find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Confederate monuments and the history of lynching in the American South: An empirical examination | PNAS
The present work interrogates the history of Confederate memorializations by examining the relationship between these memorializations and lynching...
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
This move toward English Department websites that do not list faculty members, or that place faculty behind labyrinths, is obviously intended to disempower said faculty, but the actual effect is to disrupt the establishment of connections and the flow of opportunities toward the institution.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
I’m listening in this coffee shop to two guys in their 60s wax on about A.I.—they actually believe it is a better source of medical information than their doctors; one believes it when it tells him he can get rich developing NFTs. So many boomers have lost their minds in their phones and its apps.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
actionnetwork.org/petitions/un...
actionnetwork.org
University Administrations: Reject Trump's "Loyalty Oath" Compacts
The Trump administration is trying to blackmail schools to let him and his unqualified bureaucrats run our schools. They want to dictate what schools teach, who they admit and hire, what researchers s...
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
If you’re in Phoenix, call David Schweikert (House R) and blame him for shutting down the government: (480) 946-2411, (202) 225-2190. Call him a radical.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
I can’t wait for the reporting to come informing us of the actual costs of firing all these coders to outsource their work to AI, as if it won’t hallucinate just as often as it does when a student uses it to write an essay on Whitman
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
I can’t wait for the reporting to come informing us of the actual costs of firing all these coders to outsource their work to AI, as if it won’t hallucinate just as often as it does when a student uses it to write an essay on Whitman
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
The staircase Harriet Jacobs was pushed down (producing injuries so extensive that she “was unable to turn myself in bed for days”) is in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem and examined now by @molliebarnes.bsky.net and Susanna Ashton: theconversation.com/a-staircase-...
theconversation.com
A staircase in a small, decorative arts museum tells a harrowing story of terror, abuse and enslavement
The staircase was originally acquired due to its craftsmanship. Only later did scholars realize that it was where Harriet Jacobs suffered abuse at the hands of her enslaver.
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
Guy I know passing me at the line at the coffee shop: “Hi Chris; how are you?” Me: “Reeling, thanks, how about you?” Him: “Good, thanks, see you later.”
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
@jeffreyinsko.bsky.social just this afternoon took home an award the @sierraclub.org named for another Michigan environmentalist, Burton V. Barnes. If you haven’t read Insko’ relentless work on pipelines and especially @enbridge.bsky.social here’s your daily quota: open.substack.com/pub/thecurre...
open.substack.com
Against the Environment
But what if 'the environment' is actually the problem?
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
“A foreigner of any nation, not in open war with us, becomes naturalized by removing to the state to reside, and taking an oath of fidelity: and thereupon acquires every right of a native citizen […]” Thomas Jefferson, Query 14, Notes in the State of Virginia
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Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Eternally grateful for recommendations on texts to include!
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