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Jim McGrath

@jimmcgrath.bsky.social
775 followers 248 following 592 posts

Instructional Designer and college teacher in Greater Boston. yes i am a doctor. Hope everyone’s having a good day. linktr.ee/jimmc_grath

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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I really enjoyed seeing how much Fitz (@jonathanfitzgerald.bsky.social) clearly cares about his students here at Salem State and how he supports their varied reasons for becoming English majors.
bostonglobe.com
The myth of the useless English major - The Boston Globe
My students are supposedly in college to get the most practical education possible. Yet they have good reasons for choosing a major that is caricatured as anything but.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This week I'm talking with faculty here about "low-tech" teaching methods in college courses. Does anyone have any article recs with data or evidence-based arguments for certain low-tech teaching practices? I have some but I'm curious how other folks have made this case in SoTL or SoTL-adjacent ways
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
the former fracking executive who is speaking at our what now
screenshot of NYT headline featuring a fracking ghoul named Chris Wright who is the US Energy Secretary and is speaking at the New York Times Climate Forward event
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Dr Heidy Khlaaf (هايدي خلاف) @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New from me in Nature. I discuss the need to look to regulated industries on how to govern AI, and not give into AI companies' self-regulation. Those actually serious about safety and security would start by applying safety critical techniques and legislation first. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Why AI companies can’t be trusted to self-regulate
From aviation to banking, high-risk industries are subject to independent oversight and meaningful penalties. AI companies should be no exception.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
i was wondering why this article was making class disparity in grad school seem like a new topic of inquiry and then I got to the end. as someone who regularly encounters class disparities in higher ed, I would remind NYT reporters that intersectionality is a thing. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/b...
nytimes.com
The Working Class Face a ‘Class Ceiling’ in Elite Occupations
Being female or a person of color has long been seen as a disadvantage in hiring and promotion. A new study of college professors shows that class may loom as large.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
i was feeling pretty good about my new collage hobby until I rewatched Batman tonight and remembered that The Joker also likes to collage
photo of Jack Nicholson’s Joker cutting up a photo
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Interesting to learn via that Bloomberg article that Wiki Ed is using Pangram in their collaborations with faculty on Wikipedia work. Looks like Wiki Ed wrote about this topic in early 2026 (which makes sense as they are a pretty transparent crew!): wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01...
wikiedu.org
Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025
Like many organizations, Wiki Education has grappled with generative AI, its impacts, opportunities, and threats, for several years. As an organization that runs large-scale programs to bring new e…
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Vauhini Vara @vauhinivara.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I profiled the startup behind Pangram, the AI detector everyone’s talking about. It works really, really well. I wanted to understand how they did it. and also: why people still don’t trust them. (also, news: Penguin Random House is using it.) gift link! ✨
bloomberg.com
The World’s Most Reliable AI Detector Has a Human Problem
Armed with a near-perfect detection tool, Pangram is fighting to convince the public AI cheating can be caught.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
When I first went to grad school for English (2003), my school was phasing out creative writing courses for grad students due to external review recs (I think in part to distinguish themselves from MFA programs). Very short-sighted and in stark contrast to my creative-infused undergrad courses.
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Brandon Walsh @walshbr.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Embedded Pedagogies is out! Available freely online through @openbookpublish.bsky.social and for purchase in a variety of different formats. It's a tough time to teach, and it's easy to feel helpless. In this book I argue for an expansive view of teaching and the work it can do in the world.
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Marc Fischer @marc-fischer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Librarians! Zine-Makers! This new Temporary Services zine (made with @doormouse12.bsky.social) is for you! We interviewed 4 public librarians that maintain zine collections and the result is a beautiful 44 page booklet. See and learn how they do it! $10.00 (or $3.00 PDF) from www.halfletterpress.com
From the front and back cover of the booklet:

Public Librarians Discuss Zine  Collections

We asked librarians at four public libraries to talk about their library’s zine collection. What advice can they share with zine makers that want to get their work into a public library, or librarians that want to start a collection at their library? Was it hard to convince others that zines are a resource that the library should collect? What collecting models did they follow? How did they build the collection?  

Interviewees:

Tim Devin / Somerville Public Library 
 (Somerville, MA)
Angi Brzycki & Ziba Pérez / 
Los Angeles Public Library 
(Los Angeles, CA)
Alicia Tate / Multnomah County Library 
(Portland, OR)
Alina Josan / The Free Library of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA)
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
really enjoying the new @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social collection of Bunny Lang poems. Great introduction and editing by @rosacampbell.bsky.social. nice book to spend a rainy Sunday with
cover to NYRB collection of Bunny Lang poemsphoto of “[when I came back up out of the dark]” by Bunny Langphoto of “[You didn’t mail the letters]” by Bunny Langphoto of “[Well this is another city]” by Bunny Lang
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
"colleges and universities in the United States awarded 164,847 bachelor’s degrees in the humanities in 2025—the lowest number since 1991. That total represents a 30.4 percent decline since 2012, when humanities degrees were at the height of their popularity." www.insidehighered.com/news/student...
insidehighered.com
Report: Humanities Majors Disappearing
Anxiety about job prospects and heavy reading loads have led to dramatic declines in humanities majors since 2012, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Aarthi Vadde @aarthivadde.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I was lucky enough to sit down for an extended interview about We the Platform with the endlessly creative @tomcomitta.bsky.social. We talked about experimental writing, the early days of the Web, mail art, and escaping the doom loop around literary study. lareviewofbooks.org/article/we-t...
lareviewofbooks.org
Literary Web 2.0 | Los Angeles Review of Books
Is it the end of reading or a brand-new era?
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
tonight’s movie selection may be motivated by a busy opening to the fall semester. three day weekend is almost here, Snake!
Escape From LA physical copy
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
the A.O. Scottification of the New York Times literature coverage drives me a little bonkers tbh. in lieu of modeling close reading the digital scrollytelling more often feels like a parlor trick barely concealing the usual sententiousness and hyperbolic hand-waving of boring criticism
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I find these kinds of caricatures to be a bit strange. There is an investment in a kind of idealized form of "serious scholarship" (often tied to rigor) that can never be precisely traced to a moment in higher ed's past or to a future where the non-wealthy reside: www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/02/o...
bostonglobe.com
Higher ed’s suckers are getting hustled - The Boston Globe
AI and other factors are diminishing the incentives for good-faith scholarship. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Mike D / in the place to be (Boston)
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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Even if it were true that postdocs benefit from a bespoke mentor-mentee relationship, it wouldn't negate their rights to labor protections. But guess what! It's not. We wrote about this in the Postdoctoral Laborers Bill of Rights (2019): halperta.com/white%20pape...
halperta.com
Postdoctoral Laborers Bill of Rights
Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Heather Froehlich, Amanda Henrichs, Jim McGrath, Kim Martin. “Postdoctoral Laborers Bill of Rights.” 2019.
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Stanford University Press @stanfordpress.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
In New World Calculation, Molly Farrell (she/her) tells the story of colonial America as a testing ground for new ways of conceptualizing numbers, uncovering overlooked forms of numerical thinking. ow.ly/ZptB50ZEXVb #ReadUP
Book cover of New World Calculation: The Making of Numbers in Colonial America by Molly Farrell
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I am waiting for the personal technology bans we are increasingly seeing in classrooms to start hitting more workplaces and I wonder how that will go over with all of the people at work who are on social media right now tbh
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Haus of Decline @hausofdecline.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
A man is caught between closing spike walls. He says "oh boy, this is bad." He thinks hard and says "I'll have to use all my media literacy skills to get out of this one." He intensely ponders as the walls close in. The walls close in to the point where the spikes are poking him. He ponders still.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
a few recent collages
collage called “Highway To Nowhere” featuring a woman, a car, and a man with a little man for a headcollage called “Highway To Nowhere” featuring a woman and a man with a little man for a headcollage with an image of a woman and a wolf and text that says “that its differences exist harmoniously”
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"People are quite mad about Anthropic’s watermarking system, and understandably so." This approach would be funnier (it is definitely still funny) if so many people hadn't already decided that Anthropic is the "good" AI chatbot company. www.404media.co/anthropics-t...
404media.co
Anthropic’s Text Watermarking Proves AI Companies Do Not Care at All About Writing
AI companies see words as interchangeable and have zero clue how to judge the “quality” of writing.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
“The fax machine did not ask permission before changing how work moved.” I bet the person or chatbot who came up with that terrible line I just read in an AI marketing email really thought they were cooking
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Really like the use of the volta here as a way to have conversations with friends and students about how we read and engage with art and what can happen over time to our relationship with those stories and works. feel like the volta framework works well with movies in the second screen era too
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I love the emphasis on the "missing middle" in this critique of AI-generated literature reviews and the limitations of chatbots in research methodologies. Nice perspective here by Mya Poe and Dylan Dryer: www.chronicle.com/article/ai-i...
chronicle.com
AI Is Ruining Scholarship
When we outsource literature review to algorithms, we lose entire sectors of knowledge.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I did not know that MIT has done something similar for decades! Interesting response to DFW concerns and student success investments. Feels like something that could be done very well with the right classroom approaches, coordination, and self-assessment measures to fine-tune things.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
it seems like there is a certain kind of pundit who interacts with culture like they are preparing for a quiz or a lecture and I find that view of art to be so depressing and corny
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I do wish the left-leaning educators and pundits talking about online learning after AI connected the dots between their proposed surveillance / in-person teaching solutions and the pandemic talking points offered by bosses and managers on why remote work was a bad thing. Reread yr Foucault bbs!
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
In the wake of that NYT article on online learning, re-amplifying my reflections on my recent positive experiences with an online asynchronous course for grad students interested in English and Digital Studies.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Did not love seeing this fearmongering article on "cheating students" in online courses, even if we know it is part of our post-AI reality in education. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/u...
nytimes.com
A.I. Agents Are Taking Entire Online Courses for Cheating Students (Gift Article)
As colleges and students embrace virtual classes, the ease of A.I. cheating is raising questions about the value of an online degree.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
first time opening up a comic to cut up for collages and discovering that a previous owner beat me to the punch lol
photo of a comic book advertisement page with a picture of a gorilla that had its head cut out with scissors
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
I am wrapping up an asynchronous online grad course in Digital Studies this summer and I am having the best time. I’ve gotten some really cool stuff from these students! Quick thread on a few things I have done differently for this course in case people are prepping and looking for ideas.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Learning about Quincy Jaws, a shot-by-shot recreation of Jaws set in Quincy, MA: www.quincyjaws.com
quincyjaws.com
Quincy Jaws: Official Page | Quincy Jaws
Quincy Jaws: Lifelong friends made a shot-for-shot remake of their favorite film.
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a ton of crates @tonofcrates.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
how your email finds me
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
when will we as a society be brave enough to throw Scott Galloway down a well
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
this is almost a caricature of imagined administrative responses to AI in higher ed, where words are spoken and actions are gestured towards but nothing is really happening: www.chronicle.com/article/ai-i...
chronicle.com
Opinion | The University Was Made for the Age of AI
Colleges have never been coherent. Their strength lies in managing disagreement and uncertainty.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
new collage
photo of collage featuring cloaked figures, glossary text, Egyptian iconography, and the words “Nothing Sacred”photo of collage featuring cloaked figures, glossary text, Egyptian iconography, and the words “Nothing Sacred”closeup of collage featuring Egyptian iconography and the word “Sacred”closeup of collage featuring cloaked figure
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Charlie passed away peacefully today. He was my best bud but it was time to say goodbye. He was 16 1/2 and I was lucky to know him for ten of those years. ❤️
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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
I curated some readings for class on "data tensions" and the list felt worth sharing. Come on a tour of datasets, books, the web, and AI with me... We'll start with this piece on the Google Books project: the hopes, dreams, disasters, and aftermath of building a public library on the internet. 1/n
theatlantic.com
Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria
“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
"the anti-AI movement isn’t about rejecting technology altogether so much as it is about advocating for more control, agency, and freedom in how people use technology"
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Terry Belanger would begin his Rare Book School classes by physically destroying/dismantling a (well-chosen) old book. This is NOT the same as what Anthropic is doing! But there is a popular culture of preciousness around books that is belied by the material realities of their circumstances. +
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
mourning alongside all the other Northeastern grad students I know who lived off Huntington Ave Boloco sustenance for years
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Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
This is the remarkable thinker & teacher whose Harvard role was just terminated--profiled in Harvard Magazine only 18 months ago. What is happening at the College this summer is awful (as with last summer, when the Women's Center was closed out of the blue). 🤯 www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/01/harv...
harvardmagazine.com
Harvard Writing Center’s Jane Rosenzweig on AI and Writing | Harvard Magazine
Harvard Writing Center’s Jane Rosenzweig on AI and writing
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Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · 28/07/2026
If you get there quickly, you can get a free PDF of this new book, on an important subject: Berens, Kathi Inman, and Rachel Noorda, How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books, Elements in Publishing and Book Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2026), doi.org/10.1017/9781...
doi.org
How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books
Cambridge Core - Printing and Publishing History - How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books
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Dr. Amanda Licastro @amandalicastro.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Ok, I have been MIA on this platform because life has been busy, but I want to remind you Digital Humanities Quarterly invites abstracts for a special issue on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) in relation to digital humanities pedagogy due August 1 dhq.digitalhumanities.org/submissions/...
dhq.digitalhumanities.org
DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly: Calls for Proposals
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Stella Sacco @antlervel.vet · 27/07/2026
PIZZA HISTORIAN WATCHING “MYSTIC PIZZA”: I don’t even know where to begin. I would be ashamed to serve these pizzas.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
last night I didn’t sleep very well and then this morning I read Emily Wilson’s description of Odysseus rolling around restlessly like a hot dog cooking in a 7-11
section from Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation where Odysseus is compared to a hot dog
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
this news about CCCC (and the manner in which these plans were made) is unbelievable. My first experience at an academic conference was at C's (as an undergrad attendee in 2003!) and this network has been an invaluable resource for myself and many friends and colleagues over the years.
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