Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2026New issue of Mediations mediationsjournal.orgmediationsjournal.orgMediations : Journal of the Marxist Literary GroupThe journal of the Marxist Literary Group. Publishes cultural theory, critical history, philosophy, literary criticism, and reviews. Issued twice yearly. 021
Reposted by Tom LANSUT @ansut.bsky.social · 22/10/2025Behind every inspired student is a dedicated educator. Contract academic staff teach up to 50% of undergrad courses in some faculties, shaping the future despite uncertain working conditions. Let’s value their contributions. #ANSUTstandswithCAS @dalfaculty.bsky.social @cupe3912.bsky.social 146
Reposted by Tom LCAUT/ACPPU @caut.bsky.social · 17/09/2025On August 20, the Dalhousie University administration locked out its nearly 1,000 faculty, librarians, counsellors and instructors. Learn more about academic staff association strikes and lockets over the last decade in the latest Bulletin: www.caut.ca/bulletin/aca... 023
Reposted by Tom LPrinceton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 12/01/2026For @theartnewspaper.bsky.social, @tobiascarroll.bsky.social reviews Thomas Crow’s Murder in the Rue Marat: “In Crow’s hands, David’s painting and its legacy crystallise into something truly revelatory.”theartnewspaper.comNew book tells the tale of David's ‘Death of Marat’ through the eyes of a lifelong admirerArt historian’s dissection of famous work is as much about the painting as his decades-long obsession with it 052
Reposted by Tom LAnna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 12/01/2026happy first day of school to semester colleagues please enjoy this jameson syllabus from January 1996 821646
Reposted by Tom LDuke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 12/01/2026Volume 50 of the journal Eighteenth-Century Life kicks off with "Marine Worlds of the Long Eighteenth-Century," a special issue edited by Killian Quigley, Kate Fullagar, & Kristie Patricia Flannery. buff.ly/9GFoGES 032
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 12/01/2026Although manufactured by the Australian Boot Company, Blundstones are, in fact, the official boot of Toronto 000
Reposted by Tom LOnes and Tooze @onesandtooze.bsky.social · 22/08/2025Episode #205: The Scale of China @adamtooze.bsky.social recently spent a month traveling around China. He and Cameron Abadi discuss the vast scale of the country and how its size bears on China's economic, political, and historical role in the world: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...podcasts.apple.comThe Scale of ChinaPodcast Episode · Ones and Tooze · 08/22/2025 · 56m 011
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 26/08/2025The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto invites applications for a full-time tenure stream position in the area of Philosophy of Science and/or Technology.jobs.utoronto.caAssistant Professor - Philosophy of Science and/or TechnologyAssistant Professor - Philosophy of Science and/or Technology 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025Sedgwick had some thoughts about this, but by and large that essay still remains to be written... 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025Perhaps we should worry more about doing what we do well and innovating in our studies rather than endless polemics, but if we are going to point fingers, I continue to think that the crisis in criticism was not induced by Marxism + psychoanalysis but by the (Foucauldian-inflected) New Historicism. 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025To evoke an old bugbear, this new desire for something pre-critical doesn't seem any less out of synch with postmodernism than did cultural studies and identity politics and so it seems to me that no continuum is actually endangered by what's currently on offer in these new methodological debates 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025To risk a hypothesis, much of what is associated with so-called post-critique and the new disciplinary "conservatism" (is it fair to relate these ?) seems to desire not a "conservative" return to criticism but a movement away from it and the creation instead of a new kind of pre-critical receptivity 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025This last point seems to problematize J. North's association of Williams (and Jameson) with a new kind of historicizing and politicized criticism that interferes with students/readers' experience of works of literature as supple aesthetic objects. 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025As one may notice from the quoted phrases above much that is innovative in R. Williams (i.e., the now celebrated concept of "the structure of feeling") is actually an extension of Leavis's project (albeit married to different political commitments and more rigorously sociological). 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025One advantage in Leavis is that he makes perfectly transparent his criterion of aesthetic judgment, which far from being purely formal (as some of the new disciplinary "conservatives" seem to desire) is actually the attunement of form to new "modes of experience" or "ways of feeling." 110
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025Contemporary criticism had indeed avoided such kinds of aesthetic judgment (but usually hypocritically since invariably the critic makes these kinds of judgment anyway). 110
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025The only thing that seems out of step with Leavis vis-a-vis contemporary criticism is his strong sense that good poetry can and must be distinguished from bad poetry and that this is the job of the critic. 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025This does not actually seem that at odds with what the new disciplinary "conservatives" decry in contemporary criticism (i.e., that it's overly politicized, contextualizing, and moralizing). 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025(c) profoundly moralizing about what poetry does or doesn't represent (so not value neutral) -- the whole argument in New Bearing is a condemnation of poetry that rejects dealing with the modern world and chooses instead the fantasy world Leavis associates with the pre-Raphaelites. 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025(b) sociologizing and contextualizing (modern poetry cannot be understood without reference to changes in the fabric of modern life; Yeats can't be understood without considering the marginalized position of Ireland; etc., etc.) 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025(a) saturated in his personal politics, for which a kind of "Red Toryism" seems the best shorthand (so not at all apolitical); 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025It's much better than expected. But I can't help feeling that the new disciplinary conservatism (identified by During) is harkening after something that isn't actually embodied in this criticism to the degree that it supposes. Leavis's vision of poetry and criticism is: 100
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 13/01/2025Having completed Eagleton's recent book on "Cambridge" Criticism (Eliot, Richards, Empson, Leavis, Williams) and then followed it up with Simon During's latest on the new "conservative" turn in literary studies, I felt inspired to pick up Leavis himself and dive into New Bearings in English Poetry. 110
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 05/01/2025podcasts.apple.comHeterodox Economists, Part 3: Hyman MinskyPodcast Episode · Ones and Tooze · 2025-01-03 · 35m 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 05/01/2025/ 20 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 05/01/2025/ 19 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 04/01/2025/ 18 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 03/01/2025/ 17 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 020
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 02/01/2025/ 16 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 02/01/2025/ 15 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 31/12/2024/ 14 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 30/12/2024/ 13 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 29/12/2024/ 12 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 29/12/2024'The sky is grey, the creature feels the weight of the stone in her hand. A being stirs into life. She is like the giraffe, who does not know she is a monster.' 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 28/12/2024/ 11 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 27/12/2024/ 10 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 000
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 26/12/2024/ 9 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 020
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 25/12/2024/ 8 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 23/12/2024/ 7 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 22/12/2024/ 6 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 22/12/2024/ 5 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Reposted by Tom LTate Collection @tate.bsky.social · 21/12/2024Harold Jones, The Black Door, 1935 botfrens.com/collections/14375/cont… 29410
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 21/12/2024/ 4 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 17/12/2024/ 3 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 010
Tom L @tom-laughlin.bsky.social · 16/12/2024/ 2 Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. 000
