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sr_toliver

@srtoliver.bsky.social
3.2K followers 666 following 627 posts

Associate Professor @ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | #Literacies, #EduSky, #AcademicSky, #BlackSky |she/her| Award-winning author (😆) | website: www.ReadingBlackFutures.com 💖💚

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Bookshop.org @bookshop.org · 06/10/2026
Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through midnight on 10/7, enjoy free shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I am all for this one. I loved the books and appreciated the cultural commentary in it. Definitely didn’t know she started in fanfiction!
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I didn’t know about this, but I’m so glad she was responsive!!
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
And I don’t say that with many literary works. But I’m always on board with excerpting Eurocentrified classics rather than asking young people to read them so we can prepare mini English majors. So, with that, I’m gonna use my veto power.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I was trying to figure out why I have the ick for this, and I think it’s because the argument is always to keep Shakespeare in and connect it to contemporary times, and yet, the bard left so many folks out and temporally re-situating it doesn’t help that. I think excerpts of Shakespeare are fine
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Ten years ago, I made a website to house my lists of Black SFFH books. It’s archived now, but today, I’m super excited to share that I have a new professional website up and running!!!! StephanieToliver.com
stephanietoliver.com
Dr. Stephanie Toliver, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction. Her research and teaching ask what becomes possible when we treat the speculative as a way of knowing.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Make Education Great Again" asks us to return to a time when American schools were great. I went looking for it and found boarding schools, Lost Cause textbooks and segregation academies, each echoed in current education policy. thefulcrum.us/education/ma...
Image of Trump and McMahon. Under them is MEGA and Make Education Great Again
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!
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PL Thomas EdD @plthomasedd.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Moats did not win the reading war but certainly scammed a ton of people fo a great deal of $$$ paulthomas701128.substack.com/p/research-c...
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Seth Rockman @sethrockman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is a big one: Brown University is searching for the next director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Please help us identify excellent candidates to lead this signature program into the future. Please write me with ideas; please share in your networks; please apply.
networks.h-net.org
Brown University - Professor and Director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice | H-Net
1. Academic Accomplishment. We seek a scholar with a strong scholarly record, including excellence in both research and teaching, appropriate for appointment at the level of full professor in a social science, humanities, or arts department at Brown.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This is one I can get behind! I forgot we had veto power because I didn’t want to vote yes for JC lol
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
There comes a time when you feel like you've done something extraordinary. This is that time, y'all. My book about New Castle, Black literacies, & home is officially available for preorder! Enjoy this beautiful art from DeAnn Wiley while you wait for more. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Book cover for And Who Will Witness Us? By SR Toliver. Image is of three generations of Black people, a mother, a child, and a small smaller child getting their hair done.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I’ve never read this one, but I’ve added it to the list! I love getting new book recs. I think another thing I love is that people are choosing books without trying to find those that “everyone” has read. It’s amazing
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 26/08/2026
God FUCKING DAMMIT, Tim Curry, too??? Us freaks and weirdos are losing too many patron saints 😔
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Darius Williams went viral about the literacy crisis. Teachers have been living this literacy crisis for years. My latest for @thefulcrum.us on why the real fix won’t go viral. thefulcrum.us/education/li...
thefulcrum.us
A teacher cried on camera about his students' literacy skills and it went viral. A literacy professor says that's exactly the problem.
On his second day of teaching at Wheatley High School in Houston, former food influencer Darius Williams faced a problem that has plagued U.S. classrooms for decades: his students couldn’t read or wri...
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Here’s the article I wrote, too: thefulcrum.us/governance-l...
thefulcrum.us
How comic books can help us understand this political moment
Toliver is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project. Recently, a group of comic book writer...
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Two years ago, I wrote about Stop Project 2025, a comic book project where folks creatively showed the complexity of project 2025. If you haven’t had a chance to do so, please check it out. It’s brilliant. It’s also really necessary. stopproject2025comic.org
stopproject2025comic.org
Stop Project 2025 Comic
Trump's Project 2025 is a detailed plan to shut you up, and shut you out. Don’t let it do either. Read on, then vote.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
You ever scroll through stock photos and find THEE cover of your book just staring back at you? Reimagining ELA is up for preorder on Amazon and B&N now!! Amazon: shorturl.at/77XRz B&N: shorturl.at/H5Vgf Thrift Books: shorturl.at/nCmtr #EnglishTeacher #TeacherEd #ELAchat #BookLaunch
Image of a book cover. 
Top: Equity and Social Justice in Education Series; Reimagining English Language Arts: Fostering Equity, Critical Thinking, and Connection in the Classroom
Middle: image of a sunflower field, a woman in a white hat and yellow dress with a tattoo on the back of her left arm is facing the field, away from the viewer. 
Bottom: SR Toliver & Hadley Lyn Hadley
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Yay!!!
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
I think that’s part of the reason why I chose it. I wanted to pick a good book, and I also wanted that book to move away from some of the books I was assigned in school.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I think what makes this fun is that there will probably be several books that are new for folks. I’ve loved most of Bayron’s books (only one I was so-so on)
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Yes! I’ve been really thinking about adaptations and remixes and how they’re challenging the ground upon which history and legacy stand
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
So, I realize I have way too many favorites, but my pick is going to be Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron bc it fits several categories: (1) it’s a standalone, (2) it’s fantasy, (3) its representation of Black and queer folks, (4) it’s an adaptation of a fairy tale, and I’ve been really into those
Book cover for Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron. Image is of a Black girl in a bluish purple fluffy dress facing toward the back but looking over her right shoulder surrounded by dense, purple trees.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
It’s out!! The free link is here and can be used up to 50 times. After that, just email or text me, and I’ll send!! www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7PG9D...
ABSTRACT
Academia teaches us to hate our bodies, to acknowledge the fleshy organ encased behind bone and swimming in blood, while demonizing the skin that protects. We apologize for its existence: designing studies that minimize the presence of being, generating data but hiding the body that collects, writing research in a way that attempts to atone for using hands to create. Thus, the focus of this article is a consideration of how we might reject body shame in academia, and instead, embrace a stance that demands the acknowledgement and upliftment of bodies. To do so, I consider Sonya Renee Taylor's The Body Is Not an Apology as an ontoepistemological frame for understanding how embodied research practices generate new forms of academic storytelling that refuse the traditional narrative of disembodied objectivity.

Introduction

This is my body unfolding. Arms and legs moving to the rhythm of a band that plays in the backyard of my mother's house. It's her birthday, and the dance floor is full of her friends, my aunties, my cousins, all of us somewhere on the long road of learning to inhabit our flesh without apology. And today, for once, I am on the floor with them. I'm not watching from the sidelines, present in body but absent in mind.
I'm not editing every movement before I make it, shrinking before anyone asks me to. Today I move to the center and stop watching myself from the inside. My hips find the rhythm before my mind can second-guess them, and I laugh, not at myself, but with myself, with this body that knows how to do this, that has always known. And I think: isn't it something, to move a body, to be in a body and know it as a place of joy?

I write from this place; the music is pumping through my veins as I make alphabetic symbols on this page. And I am still, honestly, a little amazed that I let myself dance, that I chose to let this body move on freely rather than wiggling in my seat on the margins.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Curious how others have navigated the shift after promotion. What did “what comes next” look like for you?
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I’m used to writing all the time. But right now, writing more feels like overkill, and I’m sitting with the fact that I don’t actually know how to not be in that mode. How do you train yourself out of a fear of failure that’s been driving the pace for years?
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
So, I was officially promoted (got the BoT letter and everything!!) and now I’m trying to figure out what comes next. I did a lot of writing and publishing pre-tenure. Because of that, I’ve got 3 books on the horizon, all probably out next year plus 3 articles accepted and likely out this year.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
New Article loading soon!!!
Academia teaches us to hate our bodies, to acknowledge the fleshy organ encased behind bone and swimming in blood, while demonizing the skin that protects. We apologize for its existence: designing studies that minimize the presence of being, generating data but hiding the body that collects, writing research in a way that attempts to atone for using hands to create. Thus, the focus of this article is a consideration of how we might reject body shame in academia, and instead, embrace a stance that demands the acknowledgement and upliftment of bodies. To do so, I consider Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body Is Not an Apology as an ontoepistemological frame for understanding how embodied research practices generate new forms of academic storytelling that refuse the traditional narrative of disembodied objectivity.
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Ben Railton @americanstudier.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
August is here, & with it my 287th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ + blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...
blackwhiteandread.com
#ScholarSunday Thread 287 (8/2/26) – Black and White and Read All Over
August is here, & with it my 287th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely ...
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I can get behind this! I am not a big fan of regular nonfiction, but narrative NF is amazing. No veto from me!
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Yikes
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Wrote about stories for The Fulcrum this month My fav line: “The same logic that scrubs people of color from ancient epics is the logic that scrubs us from American history because in both cases, the sanitized version requires our absence.” thefulcrum.us/inclusion-di...
thefulcrum.us
The Odyssey Isn’t Real, But American Diversity Is
After Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was released in theaters, Elon Musk declared he would use Grok to create a more “historically accurate” version of the ancient epic poem. The uproar over the film...
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 17/07/2026
My takeaway from that speech is that we are headed down the road of Trump trying to outright rig elections. It probably won't work, but he's going for it.
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Marly Marie @marlymarieport.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Just a reminder—don’t give this speech attention or ratings. Follow @atrupar.com to know what happened. Save yourself while he does the tireless work of documenting everything for us. Subscribe to his work!!
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I’m in! I’ll try my best to keep up with all the turns and such!
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
My latest in the Fulcrum, written after Vance’s terrible interview on The View. thefulcrum.us/inclusion-di...
thefulcrum.us
The Feigned Confusion of JD Vance: Erasure by Design
"What did Black people do to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color?" Whoopi Goldberg asked Vice President JD Vance last week, when he joined The View to discuss h...
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
This is going to be a thing higher ed will have to grapple with in the coming years. Professors know a lot (usually in a very specific area). That’s valuable. But pontificating about your smartness for 3 hours ain’t gonna cut it anymore. Pedagogy will save us.
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
- The Corruption of Hollis Brown - K. Ancrum - Till the Last Beat of my Heart - Louangie Bou-Montes - Infinity Som - Adam Silvera - Elatsoe - Darcie Little Badger - Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao - Blood Debts - Terry J. Benton-Walker
The Corruption of Hollis Brown cover: Red background with a streak of what looks like fire down the middle, two hands reaching for each other through the fireThe Last Beat of My Heart cover: background is light purple mixed with white cloud-like swirls. There’s a golden pocket watch in the background in the middle. Two brown boys facing each other with one hand on each other’s face is in the middle indeed the watch. Infinity Son cover: black and gold background with a golden bird-like infinity symbol in the middle.Iron Widow cover: Red and yellow background with Asian woman looking over her right shoulder toward the front
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
It’s Pride Eve, & I have an early present for ya. Books w/ queer protags by authors of color! #Pride Year of the Mer - LD Lewis - Ander & Santi Were Here - jonny garza villa - The Lovers, the Liars and Me - DeAndra Davis - The Dark We Know - Wen-Yi Lee - The Corruption of Hollis Brown - K. Ancrum
Year of the Mer - LD Lewis book cover: dark green background with gold and the tale of a mermaid Ander & Santi Were Here - jonny garza villa: image of two boys, one on the left in a green and one on the right in yellow jacket, holding each otherthe Lovers the liars and me cover: 3 Black kids (1 boy and 2 girls) facing forward in bright summer clothing. Background is full of trees with one house in the back to the right.The Dark We Know cover: green background with red butterflies and a dark silhouette of a girl.
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
They do! But as a former public school teacher and current teacher educator at a public university, I was focusing on teachers in public schools for this op-ed.
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The Lincoln Project @lincolnproject.us · 27/05/2026
The Republican Party quietly deleted their own ad attacking Ken Paxton's record on crime... because Paxton is now the Republican Party's nominee to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. Figured if the ad is important enough to delete, it's important enough to see...
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
My article in defense of the teachers out here working everyday. I see you even if this administration (and other administrations, too, tbh) refuse to do so. thefulcrum.us/education/te...
thefulcrum.us
Appreciated in Name, Dishonored in Practice: How the Department of Education is actively undermining our nation's teachers and championing charter schools.
Earlier this month, the United States celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week, the one week during the year when a Starbucks discount is supposed to stand in for respect. This week is often filled with c...
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
I feel that. I don’t go on IG much, but I keep it because my cousin sends me stuff through there. Threads reminds me a lot of Twitter, though I’m still learning it. We’ll see how it goes
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sr_toliver @srtoliver.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
I decided to get back on Threads after avoiding it for a while. We can connect here! www.threads.com/@sr.toliver?...
threads.com
SR_Toliver (@sr.toliver) • Threads, Say more
328 Followers • 25 Threads • Asst. Prof. at UIUC who loves speculative fiction. Author and blerd writing about Black literacies and storytelling. Books coming 2027. See the latest conversations with.....
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Rev. Benjamin Cremer @brcremer.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Evangelical Christian leaders literally gathering around a gold statue of the president and celebrating it, all while raging against any accusation of idolatry. This is what idol worship looks like.
Evangelical Christian leaders literally gathering around a gold statue of the president and celebrating it, all while raging against any accusation of idolatry.

This is what idol worship looks like.
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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 09/05/2026
So are they gonna rename it Project Freedom Go, then Project Freedom Max, then just Freedom, then back to Project Freedom, then—
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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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Raul Pacheco-Vega @raulpachecovega.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
I am well aware that across multiple academic communities I have a reputation as someone who works really hard, perhaps bordering on workaholic. My suggestion to anybody entering academia (or already in): don't become a workaholic if you can help it. It's a job, a lovely job, but a job nonetheless
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ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 08/05/2026
It’s straightforwardly the case that “AI” is an excuse to turn every US citizen into a walking networked ring door cam to feed into a privatized national surveillance security state partnered with eugenicist fascists
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