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Jim McGrath

@jimmcgrath.bsky.social
776 followers 248 following 597 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 · 08/10/2026
Anne Carson rules. I love everything she does but if you are curious Autobiography of Red is a great starting point.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Anyway, it's always fun when our major newspaper publishes a piece that is like "hey, maybe you don't know what you're doing and you shouldn't have your job." Who needs imposter syndrome in times like these?
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
"The state’s biotech, health care, education, and government sectors need good employees who want to stay in Massachusetts, so they have a vested interest in the success of the state’s public campuses." I don't think many educators see their priority as creating "good employers," thankfully.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
the desire for "advisory boards composed of local industry leaders who have a direct line to university leadership, who can shape curriculum based on how companies’ needs are changing as they implement artificial intelligence" makes me glad my particular university has staff and faculty unions
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
As someone employed at one of the state universities described in this Boston Globe op-ed, I find the vague gesturing towards a "visionary" unconvincing and the generalizations about the MA state system, its campuses, students, and programs to be pretty uninformed www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/29/n...
bostonglobe.com
Massachusetts’ overlooked public universities need a visionary - The Boston Globe
A system losing students deserves a reboot.
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 02/10/2026
📻 To celebrate College Radio Day, tune in to more than a century of college radio history. In 1906, Harvard students formed what was described as the first college radio club. By the 1920s, students were building stations and broadcasting campus events. 📚 More: blog.archive.org/2026/10/02/1... 🧵
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Thanks for everyone who shared readings and links. I also wanted to shout out @sarahesilverman.bsky.social's recent post on a low-tech teaching and accessibility: "access frictions" and "pull the plug" mindsets are definitely on our minds here too! beyondthescope.substack.com/p/workshop-s...
beyondthescope.substack.com
Workshop summary: Low-tech teaching and accessibility
An overview with commentary
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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
thanks so much!
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Thank you! Yes, the "Cognitive Costs" section in the "Teachable Readings" section seems to have some relevant stuff here for starters.
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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
a few more recent collages
collage featuring various images from comic books and magazines collage featuring black and white images and a sparsely colored background collage featuring various images from comic books and magazines collage featuring various images from comic books and magazines
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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
I taught a grad course in English for a different school this summer and students are encouraged to do creative writing. It was very cool and freeing to encourage students to include creative work in relevant submissions; definitely thinking about how to expand that approach for future courses!
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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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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
congrats! excited to check this out
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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
a few more recent collages
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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
For years (decades?) the "humanities are in crisis" moments are often greeted online with eye-rolling or with well-intended efforts to claim the relevance of "the humanities" in light of current events, trends, and news topics. We could use fewer op-eds and more attention to higher ed methodologies.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I think my two initial reactions to this are: -Colleges, departments, and programs could use help articulating the value of their degrees w/ dedicated staff doing marketing, recruitment, communication, data -Assessment of priorities and methods in course, degree, and instructional design is needed
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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
anyway, The Corrections came out when I was an undergrad and I still remember seeing Franzen give an unprepared talk at Vassar around that time and the students there essentially heckling him
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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 a lot of these "returns to rigor" frequently satisfy the desires of instructors, their investments in control and the power of surveillance-powered critique, and some deluded tendencies regarding how they "earned" their careers. Academics will grow further apart from students on these paths.
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Jim McGrath @jimmcgrath.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I went to a graduate program where rigor materialized in the forms of comprehensive reading expectations, seemingly-incessant requests for revision with imprecise direction, and critique that skewed negative. It took me years to disentangle the joys of reading, writing, and research from rigor.
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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
new record is also very sick
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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
also can not believe that this quote was said on the record by someone doing CTL work: “My guess is that what a lot of students will do is they’ll take a lot of assignments, put it into ChatGPT, and go drink.” good heavens
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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
social media does seem to have turned large portions of its users into perpetual grad student caricatures but there are better ways to live tbh
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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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