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Megan E. O’Donnell

@meganeodonnell.bsky.social
229 followers 266 following 48 posts

Communications for the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale. English PhD. Drawn to speculative ecologies and Victorian fairies. Writing, crafting, and composing at the tempo of molasses.

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Reposted by Megan E. O’Donnell
Whitney Humanities Center at Yale @yalewhc.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
We’re hiring! 📣 The Whitney Humanities Center at Yale seeks a recent humanities PhD with experience in program-building, innovative humanities work, and higher ed service for a Postdoctoral Associate in Humanities Leadership. $70K + $3K stipend | Deadline: June 12, 2026 🔗 apply.interfolio.com/185526
A promotional graphic for a job posting at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. A Yale campus aerial photo serves as the background, overlaid with a blue-to-white gradient. Text reads: "Postdoctoral Associate in Humanities Leadership. Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. 80% program-building | 20% research. $70,000 + $3,000 research stipend. Deadline: June 12, 2026. apply.interfolio.com/185526."
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Spent the weekend cleaning my home office, and after a lot of hemming and hawing I decided not to throw out my grad school notes yet. Not ready to let go, though I don’t have much time/energy/desire(?) to work on my own scholarship. Teaching was way more my thing, and the early stages of research!
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
No cheating, reskeet with the most recent photo of your pet
Khaleesi, a fawn colored husky-shepherd mix, sleepily snuggling a Lambchop stuffy
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
I’m sorry but you just wrote my New Year’s resolution for me: positive orgy of idly curious decadence for the whole of 2026
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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Even as someone with a Ph.D. in English and experience as a writing instructor, I worry that these exposures will chip away at my voice and style. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be just developing one’s writerly voice in this environment!
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Even without the tools baked into their word processors and email, a lot of what they might read on a day-to-day basis is AI-generated, from emails they receive to social media posts to the AI summaries and huge swaths of AI-generated articles that turn up with every Google search.
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
“The reorganization strips away the specialized, tailored advising that our students rely on. It burdens research scientists with reams of paperwork previously handled by experts. It will degrade the quality of our graduate programs, many of which are ranked at the top of their fields.”
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Reposted by Megan E. O’Donnell
NPR @npr.org · 10/12/2025
The bluegrass virtuoso brings back the spirit of Tiny Desk's early days: fewer microphones to capture "the way these instruments are meant to sound." n.pr/3KD1SiI
n.pr
Billy Strings: Tiny Desk Concert
The bluegrass virtuoso brings back the spirit of Tiny Desk's early days: fewer microphones to capture "the way these instruments are meant to sound."
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Congrats, Alex!!! Fine taste indeed
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
I think about the consistently misunderstood case of the Luddites. They were extremely advanced machine users (go try to use a spinning Jenny!), but they recognized a technological regime that displaced expertise (and payment) from the artisan to the tool.
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Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
In a stroke of good timing, my article excoriating the metaverse (and taking shots at spatial computing) was just accepted at Games & Culture. How do these companies make implausible and undesirable futures seem inevitable? abstract posted here!
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Happily plunged back into Area X, with its ever-shifting always-porous often-creepy species and spaces, and oops now I’m rereading the whole Southern Reach series. In other words, if you haven’t already, go read Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution!
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
Editing this zine was an immense privilege. I work with the most incredible graduate students—John Mollet, Emily Theus, and Dorothy Wu—whose creativity and breadth of knowledge never ceases to amaze me!! We can’t wait to share this special ephemeral object with y’all 💗
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Reposted by Megan E. O’Donnell
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
posters, stickers, know your rights flyers, lithographs, broadsides, zines, slogans, these little shards of art are our tools too
I am stealing from you poster
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Elaine Ayers @eayers0.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Don't forget to register for the Yale Gilder Lehman Center's conference next week on Universities + the Histories of Race, Science + Medicine. I'm speaking, along with @ayahnerd.bsky.social, @jowiph.bsky.social, Carolyn Roberts, David Blight + more! macmillan.yale.edu/glc/2025-ann...
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
SAME. But maybe all the recently fired military leaders and officers will be on our side defending democracy during the next Jan 6?? As always, I teeter between brutal despair and rageful (+ naive?) optimism
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
This sounds as incredible as it does horrifying…I wish I were in your class!
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Meghan O'Rourke @meghanor.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
🎉 As the editor of @yalereview.bsky.social, I'm so proud of our team and our brilliant contributors: This year, we received *two* nominations to the National Magazine Awards, for criticism & fiction. Congrats to @brandyjensen.bsky.social, @dsparis.bsky.social, Ayşegül Savaş, & Anna DeForest! 🎉
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
this letter in the LRB on Karl Polanyi is a useful quick explainer of the present moment—helpful framing for talking to relatives etc @londonreview.bsky.social
LRB letter: 

But Polanyi's importance lies elsewhere, in the pattern that he diagnosed. He saw that, repeatedly throughout history, the rise of liberalism had torn society apart as markets caused vast inequalities and proved incapable of creating the conditions necessary for decent lives. In Pol-anyi's view, there were two possible paths to take in response: fascism or socialism.
Fascism puts society back together by at-tacking foreigners and minorities. Social-ism puts it back together by attacking inequality. Because their critiques origin-ate in the same source - the failure of lib-eralism - fascism often borrows social-ism's critique of the economy, but blames the problem on outsiders rather than the market system itself. Polanyi thereby helps us understand why, for example, we see the critique of 'techno-feudalism' from both Yanis Varoufakis and Steve Bannon, but only Bannon talks about mass deport-ation as part of the solution.
Avram Alpert
Princeton, New Jersey
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
We are very much on the same page! General strike is my favorite option, though
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Whitney Humanities Center at Yale @yalewhc.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Today at Yale: Rachel Cusk will deliver the 2025 Finzi-Contini Lecture. Don’t miss your chance to hear this brand new, never-before-presented work! A revised version of the talk will later grace the pages of @yalereview.bsky.social 🖋️📚 whc.yale.edu/light-woman-...
whc.yale.edu
Into the Light: A Woman Artist Uncovered
Using the life and work of the neglected Norwegian painter Anna Eva Bergman, the lecture examines the problem of justice in the context of female creativity and asks whether biographical and
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
Same! You might also be interested in this call: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
us06web.zoom.us
Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Fund Don't Freeze: National Higher Education Strategy Call. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
Join higher education workers from around the country on 2/13 at 8 PM Eastern / 7 PM Central / 6 PM Mountain / 5 PM Pacific for a national strategy call on the federal attack on higher education and h...
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Not *so* naive but also foolishly optimistic enough to hope is the only way I can function anymore
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Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Endowment tax + slashing overhead on federal grants is designed to cripple the university. This weakened university is going to be even more susceptible to the efficiency claims of genAI. All of these moves further concentrate wealth and power in the private sector. Don't capitulate in advance.
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Best of luck!!!! I hope it’s also in a location you love 💗
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
It may not be activism but access to information, resources, names of people who *are* organizing around issues that are new to you, and lists of actions that anyone (including people who’ve never done any activist work) can take is a pretty big deal!
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Joe Katz @joekatz45.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
SECOND: FREEZE THE SENATE. Call on your Dem senators to engage in political hardball. Blanket opposition and using procedural tools like rejecting unanimous consent and quorum calls to gum up the works.
indivisible.org
How Senate Democrats Can Shut Down Trump's Agenda with Procedural Hardball
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
100% but I bet your teaching and advising is bringing a glimmer of hope/joy to your students—your presentation on Monday was a very welcome (if temporary) antidote to despair for me and the WHC environmental humanities grad fellows
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Ok this made me CACKLE
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
It’s giving Beetlejuice! Could be sold as a pair with the upper right green one 🤍🖤💚
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Libraries and public universities! 📚
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Can’t wait! I honestly want to be more like moss
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Elaine Ayers @eayers0.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Looking forward to talking about Thinking With Moss (+ navigating experimental projects with academic work) with Yale's Whitney Humanities Center Grad Fellows in Environmental Humanities today over a happy hour! Moss + drinks - what's better? Thanks to @meganeodonnell.bsky.social for the invite!
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Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Stop letting unfunny men tell you there’s something wrong with you for not getting their “jokes”. Stop fake laughing. Let their reality reflect the truth of how fundamentally they misunderstand humor. Neuter their ability to use “it was a joke” for emotional cover. Make them see nobody laugh.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
One thing about me is that I will fight Nazis until I’m six feet in the ground.
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
media.tenor.com
a cartoon character is standing in front of a sign that says donations 4 carnations .
ALT: a cartoon character is standing in front of a sign that says donations 4 carnations .
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
“We protest the university’s exploitation of contingent instructors (its creation of the ‘reserve army of labor’ that Marx said was crucial to keeping workers in subjection), but we grossly increase graduate-student labor, *unpaid* labor, which they undertake in the faint hope of a job.”
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Alliteration does take it to the next level ✨ 🐎
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Allegra has been the best for my allergies for years now. (If you’re lactose intolerant, buy the actual Allegra not a generic option as most have lactose in them!) Midol Complete—I only recently realized how much better it is than regular painkillers for all things menstrual
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
I love this for you. Grades are the least important part! You were busy giving them feedback that made them better writers & better people instead 😍
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Exactly this. I’m sick and tired of critical questions without critical actions. Also, can universities stop boasting about mitigating climate change in one breath and shoveling more than $100 million toward AI engagement in the next?
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
A problem indeed! Look at these beauties. You need one (or 2 or 3, if you’re like me)!
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Down with discoursed to death! I love this, but I’m curious if 32 is masking of the respiratory or neurodivergent flavor.
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Missed my Khaleesi girl so much when we were away. Just look at those paws on the wall, at that perfect face!!!
A Siberian husky/Belgian shepherd/Alaskan malamute mix laying on her side, with all paws on the wall looking adorable
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
This wonderful, magical city filled me with so much love over the past few days, I thought my heart would burst. But then it broke instead. Grateful that we weren’t on Bourbon Street last night, but my soul is shattered and aching for the victims and their families.
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
I’m into this version! One from my childhood was “make ends-meat”—thought it meant making food out of the “end” bits of an animal (hooves, ears, skin, eyeballs)
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Megan E. O’Donnell @meganeodonnell.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
Eating, drinking, and dancing my way through New Orleans 💜💚💛 I only lived here for a few years as a little girl, but being back, it’s clear how much this city influenced who I grew up to be. #NOLA #BMFS
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