Gerry Canavan's Blog, page 10

SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND TELEVISION Call for Reviewers – Fall 2020!

The academic journal Science Fiction Film and Television (Liverpool University Press) is seeking reviewers of recent works of SFS and SFS-adjacent critical theory as well as recent SF visual media (still primarily film and television, though we remain interested in expanding into video games).

While we accept pitches, we also have the following books available for reviewers:

Brian E. Crim, Planet Auschwitz: Holocaust Representation in Science Fiction and Horror Film and Television
Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush, and Sara L. Spurgeon, eds., Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre
Two entries from the Contellations: Studies in Science Fiction Film and TV series, Rollerball (Andrew Nette) and Robocop (Omar Ahmed) (could be joint review)

Reviews typically run 1000-2000 words, or 2000-4000 words in our “review essay” format. Samples of both types of review are available upon request.

We are currently in the process of shifting the format of our media review section. We are now primarily interested in:

reviewers who are calling attention to things that have gone overlooked in the larger entertainment-media-complex landscape, especially international film;
reviewers with a specific aesthetic, political, or philosophical “take” on a text, as opposed to a more traditional review that recapitulates the plot at length and advises the potential viewer whether or not they ought to watch it.

This notion of a specific “take” is especially important for blockbuster franchise fare, like the MCU or Star Wars movies; in most cases we would only be interested in a review essay for such a film, discussing it within some larger critical context.

Due to a recent review backlog we have not been actively soliciting reviewers; as a result, much SF media from 2018-2020 is still available for reviewing, including major tentpole works like Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: Episode IX. If there is a film you are interested in reviewing, please contact gerry.canavan@marquette.edu and let him know the name of the film and what you think you’d like to say about it. Deadlines are quite flexible. We look forward to hearing from you!

Monday Morning Links!

* CFP: Living in the End Times: Utopian and Dystopian Representations of Pandemics, Cappadocia University, Thu, Jan 14, 2021 – Fri, Jan 15, 2021. CFP: Science Fictions, Popular Cultures.

* I have made a table of sixteen general classifications into which it seems to me all science fiction stories written to date can be placed.

* New issue of MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, on Environmental SF.

I have a brief foreword in the new MOSF Journal of Science Fiction special issue on Environmental SF, which talks a bit about eco SF and the pandemic, if you’re interested! https://t.co/SawgwRwukd pic.twitter.com/eXrfFrJzRS

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) August 16, 2020

* ExoTerra is an online collaborative research role-playing game (RPG) community, in which students from all disciplines, from physics to literature, pool their expertise to design a new world. Participating students play the crew of a space colony ship traveling from Earth to a newly-terraformed exoplanet, and must work together to design the new world they will create: its ocean biosphere, its capital city, its educational system, its power grid, its laws.  Over the three quarters of the 2020/21 school year, students will explore the new solar system, unlock its mysteries, and debate and decide the foundations of their new civilization.  All students at the university can participate as an extracurricular, but each quarter a selection of courses in many fields (Social Sciences, Humanities, Arts, STEM) will offer ExoTerra as an integrated course component, guiding the class through researching and producing a design for the new world as part of the class itself.

* Students, faculty, staff raise concerns about Marquette’s reopening plan. Milwaukee County Currently Suppressing COVID-19. ‘I can’t afford tuition’: College students face financial strains, health concerns from pandemic ahead of fall semester. Notre Dame sees spike in COVID-19 cases. Entire OSU sorority house in quarantine after 23 sisters test positive for coronavirus. UNC faculty call special meeting as fourth COVID-19 cluster among students reported.

Marquette has ten days to pivot or ten days before this starts happening here https://t.co/dWb1yGdoPQ

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) August 16, 2020

We couldn’t agree more. @MarquetteUnited calls on all tenure-track faculty to stand up for the health and safety of everyone in our campus community. #WeAreMarquette. Sign the petition here: https://t.co/YhTLbceKOY https://t.co/jhftA9gBex

— MarquetteFacultyUnited (@MarquetteUnited) August 16, 2020

this but non-ironically https://t.co/kTfZHH1PRJ

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) August 16, 2020

* People Are Struggling To Cope With The Physical Manifestations Of Their COVID Stress.

* Inside the Prison Where California’s Coronavirus Outbreak Exploded.

* “This is the first Fire Tornado Warning we are aware of in history.” In Derecho’s Wake, More Than 250,000 in Midwest Struggle Without Power. California Braces for More Blackouts as Heat Wave Persists. Greenland’s ice sheet has melted to a point of no return, according to new study. Just thinking about how virtually shutting down the entire world economy wasn’t enough to lower carbon emissions by the amount necessary.

* Biden Dems simply cannot wait to screw over their voters. And everybody else.

Fall Syllabus #2: ENGLISH 3000: Utopia in America!

[image error]And here’s the other course for this fall, “ENGLISH 3000: Utopia in America.” Like the Watchmen class, it will be using a mix of synchronous and asynchronous instruction to muddle through this weird semester…

101 MWF 11:00-11:50 Professor Gerry Canavan

Course Title:  Utopia in America

Course Description: 2020 marks the 505th anniversary of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, which inaugurated a genre of political and social speculation that continues to structure our imagination of what is possible. This course serves as an entry point for advanced study in the English discipline, using depictions of political utopias from antiquity to the present as a way to explore how both literature and literary criticism do their work. We will study utopia in canonical historical literature, in contemporary pop culture, and in the presidential election, as well as utopian critical theory from major thinkers like Fredric Jameson, China Miéville, Derrick Bell, Toni Morrison, Ursula K. Le Guin, and N.K. Jemisin — but the major task before us will be exploring the role utopian, quasi-utopian, dystopian, and downright anti-utopian figurations have played in the work of major authors of the 20th century, among them Gabriel García Márquez, Vladimir Nabokov, and Octavia E. Butler.

Assignments: Class participation, including individual and group presentations; discussion posts. Students will also construct their own utopian manifesto.

W
Aug 26
S
FIRST DAY OF CLASS

Introduction to the Course

What Is Utopia?


F
Aug 28
A
New Criticism

How to Interpret Literature: “New Criticism”

Robert Frost, “Mending Wall” [D2L]








M
Aug 31
S
Sir Thomas More, Utopia, “Concerning” and Book One


W
Sep 2
S
Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Book Two


F
Sep 4
A
China Miéville, Introduction to Utopia (2017): “Close to the

Shore” and “The Limits of Utopia”








M
Sep 7
 
LABOR DAY—NO CLASS


W
Sep 9
S
Structuralism

How to Interpret Literature: “Structuralism”

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” [D2L]


F
Sep 11
A
Intertextuality

N.K. Jemisin, reply to Le Guin [Web]








M
Sep 14
S
Marxism

How to Interpret Literature: “Marxism”

Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto” [Web]

Mark Bould, “The Futures Market: American Utopias” [D2L]


W
Sep 16
S
Utopia

Fredric Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” (first half; second half optional) [D2L]

Black Mirror: “San Junipero” [Netflix]


F
Sep 18
A
Sandbox: Fredric Jameson, “Utopia as Replication” [D2L]








M
Sep 21
S
Postcoloniality and Race Studies

How to Interpret Literature: “Postcolonial and Race Studies”

Derrick Bell, “The Space Traders” [D2L]


W
Sep 23
S
Toni Morrison, “Recitatif” [D2L]

Toni Morrison, excerpt from Playing in the Dark [D2L]


F
Sep 25
A
Sandbox: #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus [Web]








M
Sep 28
S
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapter 1


W
Sep 30
S
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 2-3


F
Oct 2
A
Sandbox: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 4-6








M
Oct 5
S
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 7-9


W
Oct 7
S
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 10-12


F
Oct 9
A
Sandbox: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 13-15








M
Oct 12
S
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 16-18


W
Oct 14
S
One Hundred Years of Solitude, whole book

Gabriel García Márquez, “The Solitude of Latin America” [Web]

Gregory Lawrence, “Marx in Macondo” [D2L]


F
Oct 16
 
FALL BREAK—NO CLASS








M
Oct 19
S
Feminism

How to Interpret Literature: “Feminism”

Karen Joy Fowler, “Game Night at the Fox and Goose” [D2L]


W
Oct 21
S
Sexuality

How to Interpret Literature: “Queer Studies”

Alice Sheldon as James Tiptree, Jr., “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” [D2L]


F
Oct 23
A
Sandbox: Octavia E. Butler, “Bloodchild”








M
Oct 26
S
Environmental Studies

How to Interpret Literature: “Environmental Criticism”

Ramin Bahrani, “Plastic Bag” [YouTube]


W
Oct 28
S
Disability Studies

How to Interpret Literature: “Disability Studies”

Octavia E. Butler, “The Evening and the Morning and the Night”

Octavia E. Butler, “Speech Sounds”


F
Oct 30
A
Sandbox: Octavia E. Butler, “The Book of Martha”








M
Nov 2
S
Historicism and Cultural Studies

How to Interpret Literature: “Historicism and Cultural Studies”

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire, “Foreword” and “Pale Fire”


W
Nov 4
S
Pale Fire, “Foreword and “Pale Fire” continued


F
Nov 6
A
Sandbox








M
Nov 9
S
Pale Fire, Commentary, Canto I


W
Nov 11
S
Pale Fire, Commentary, Canto II


F
Nov 13
A
Sandbox








M
Nov 16
S
Pale Fire, Commentary, Canto III


W
Nov 18
S
Pale Fire, Commentary, Canto IV (including index)


F
Nov 20
A
Reader Response

How to Interpret Literature: “Reader Response”

Pale Fire, whole book and interpretations








M
Nov 23
S
FINAL PROJECT WORKSHOP








F
Dec 4

5:30 PM
 
FINAL PROJECT DUE IN D2L DROPBOX

 

Tuesday Links!

* Something I wrote a few years back about Black Panther has finally popped up at Mayday: “Some Notes on the Nonexistence of Wakanda.”

* And Grad School Vonnegut #10 is up, on “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” and Watchmen with Adam Kotsko. I’m proud of the tweet hyping it.

Tomorrow on Grad School Vonnegut: @adamkotsko, @gerrycanavan, and @zunguzungu discuss “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”! And maybe talk about Watchmen a bit more than we ought. pic.twitter.com/wTGUrRg6ZH

— gradschoolvonnegut (@gradschoolvonn) August 3, 2020

* SFRA is seeking a web director. The Huntington has a new Octavia E. Butler research fellowship. World Science Fiction Studies is still seeking proposals for the 2021 book prize.

* CFP: Us in Flux: Community, Collaboration, and the Collective Imaginations of SF. Call for Papers: Serious Play. CFP: “Post-Utopia in Speculative Fiction: The End of the Future?”

* This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!

* For the second year in a row, George R.R. Martin has managed to make the Hugos all about him.

* The Coronavirus Pandemic, Science Fiction, and the Contingent Nature of Roads. Last and First Men review – eerie sounds and unearthly images from a posthuman world. Apocalypse Then, Now—and Future? “Nostalgia for the Future”: Projecting a Post-Disability Image through Retro-Futuristic Aesthetics in Viktoria Modesta’s “Prototype.”

* CDC predicts up to 11,000 people will die every week this month from coronavirus. CDC Predicts Grim Future. Young people are infecting older family members with coronavirus in multigenerational homes. Survivors of Covid-19 show increased rate of psychiatric disorders, study finds. One-third of COVID-19 patients who aren’t hospitalized have long-term illness. Lasting heart damage could be COVID-19’s legacy for some non-hospitalized survivors. How the Pandemic Defeated America. Vermont, History, and the Coronavirus. After Plummeting, the Virus Soars Back in the Midwest. We Just Have to Assume the Monster Is Everywhere. Every Decision Is A Risk. Every Risk Is A Decision. We Need to Talk about Ventilation. Trump’s New Favorite COVID Doctor Believes in Alien DNA, Demon Sperm, and Hydroxychloroquine.

[image error]

* In late July academia changed its mind about the fall term. Covid Tests and Quarantines: Colleges Brace for an Uncertain Fall. The Risk That Students Could Arrive at School With the Coronavirus. ‘The virus beat us’: Colleges are increasingly going online for fall 2020 semester as COVID-19 cases rise. Email From Columbia Admin Requests That Graduate Students And Faculty Reconsider Teaching Solely Online, Gives Three Days To Decide. UO is reopening dorms at full capacity *and* keeping their on-campus housing requirement. North Carolina colleges and universities reported COVID-19 cases on campus. More Than 6,600 Coronavirus Cases Have Been Linked to U.S. Colleges. The largest school district in Georgia reported Sunday that 260 employees have tested positive for the coronavirus or are in quarantine because of possible exposure as they prepare for the new school year. Staff in a district in Arizona is already 11% positive. Officials say the student attended part of the first day of school Thursday. Outbreak at Fraternity Row. UNC Tenured Faculty Tell Students to Stay Home Amid COVID Concerns: ‘It Is Not Safe for You to Come to Campus.’ Colleges Seek Waivers From Risk-Taking Students. “This is the worst, biggest crisis we have ever gone through UWM.” Let’s Look at the Numbers. Teachers Are Wary of Returning to Class, and Online Instruction Too. Will Kids Follow the New Pandemic Rules at School? ‘This Push to Open Schools Is Guaranteed to Fail.’ 9 ways America is having the wrong conversation about ‘reopening’ schools. How to Stop Magical Thinking in School Reopening Plans. Think school kids won’t be hurt by COVID-19? Experiences from the 1918–19 flu say otherwise. Covid-19 and the market model of higher education: Something has to give, and it won’t be the pandemic.

* And on the homefront: Whitefish Bay school board approves plan to start school year with in-person and virtual learning. Marquette Wire: MU must offer remote learning, teaching options for fall semester.

* Against vocational awe.

* Essential or Expendable? Working in Higher Education during COVID-19.

* Acquiescent no more.

* ‘We are being gaslit’: College football and Covid-19 are imperiling athletes. On a call with SEC leaders, worried football players pushed back: ‘Not good enough.’ Ending the sham of NCAA amateurism will not end Title IX. Colorado universities are increasingly losing money on sports as coaches’ pay, recruitment costs rise.

* Wild @Sciencing_Bi hoax ends in absolutely wild fashion.

[image error]* U.S. Economy Drops 32.9% In Worst GDP Report Ever. At least someone’s getting rich. NYC small businesses now closing for good. The Virus Turns Midtown Into a Ghost Town, Causing an Economic Crisis. These Businesses Lasted Decades. The Virus Closed Them for Good. Beach towns fear they won’t survive a summer of COVID-19. No football in Green Bay would be economic, emotional blow. America needs a bar and restaurant bailout. Self-employed Wisconsinites wait for word on unemployment payments. ‘Coronavirus has stolen our future’: young people’s despair as jobs evaporate. America.jpg. United States May Lose One-third of All Museums, New Survey Shows. Dunkin’s as Bellweather. Activism against evictions in New Orleans. As Pandemic Rages, the United States Slashes an Economic Lifeline. The incompetent criminals ruling the U.S. are about to push millions of Americans off a terrifying financial cliff. How the eviction crisis across the U.S. will look. The Pandemic Makes the Case for Sweeping Reform.

* Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All.

* Americans Aren’t Making Babies, and That’s Bad for the Economy. I guess the “baby boom or divorce boom” folks have their answer…

* How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air.” Kushner’s COVID-19 Team Ended Plan For Nationwide Testing Because They Didn’t Want To Help Blue States.

* Study: Men More Likely Than Women to Back COVID Conspiracies.

* Disgusting effort from the Manhattan DA office to drag the Trump name through the mud. Know Your Enemy. Nearly everyone believes that Trump can be reelected in November but almost no one believes he’ll do so with the support of a majority of the voting public. DHS compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists who published leaked documents. Census Door Knocking Cut A Month Short Amid Pressure To Finish Count. Destroying the Postal Service for Fun and Profit. As Trump leans into attacks on mail voting, GOP officials confront signs of Republican turnout crisis. Pregaming the Coming November Trainwreck. How Trump Could Steal the Election. Warning Statement on the Potential for Mass Atrocities in the United States.

* Because it never stops being relevant: Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism.

* Harper’s v. Kenosha, WI.

* This TikTok thing is just nuts.

* Counterfactual Criticism: Watchmen, Witch Armies, and Asking TV for More.

* The past isn’t over, it isn’t even past.

* Neo-Nazis Infilitrate the Police in Germany.

* Genocide in China.

* The gender-neutral b’nai mitzvah.

* U.S. Missionary With No Medical Training Settles Suit Over Child Deaths At Her Center.

* Pewaukee priest once accused of sexual assault of a minor free to return to church.

that's right pic.twitter.com/oeMOiEUhNp

— Atheist Memes But Unironically (@UnironicAtheism) August 3, 2020

* Miracles and wonders: uniQure Begins First-in-Human Gene Therapy Trials for Huntington’s Disease.

* Zelda recipe appears in serious novel by serious author after rushed Google search. This really hits home — my dissertation had an entire chapter on Zelda Fitzgerald I had to take out at the very last minute.

* As transgender rights debate spills into sports, one runner finds herself at the center of a pivotal case.

* On the local beat: What happened at Comet Cafe?

* What if nuclear power had taken off in the 1970s? The World’s Largest Tropical Wetland Is on Fire. It’s at least double.

* What sort of weird late-period William Gibson bullshit is this?

* Is This the End of Writing in Cafés?

* Did a Goblin King write this?

* Remember when Google was useful?

* Former Deadspin staffers launch Defector, a new worker-owned media company.

* SWAT Mafia.

* The DA’s Office Is Reviewing Hundreds of Cases Linked to (Just) 3 LAPD Officers.

* Michigan Today profiles Saladin Ahmed and his Dearborn-based superhero Starling.

* The headline reads, “Human sperm roll like ‘playful otters’ as they swim, study finds, contradicting centuries-old beliefs.”

* This is Katie Ledecky swimming the length of a pool without spilling a single drop of the chocolate milk balanced on her head.

* The X2 Cast Allegedly Almost Quit the Marvel Film Over Bryan Singer.

* The ‘Star Trek’ Saga: How the Starship Enterprise Almost Landed in Las Vegas.

* When Black People Appear on Seinfeld.

* And Forrest MacNeil reviews living through a pandemic.

Submitted for Your Approval: Syllabus for ENGLISH 4717/5717: WATCHMEN!

[image error] Since a lot of people have been interested in it, and I’m still trying to figure it all out, here’s the preliminary schedule for my Watchmen class this fall. This one will be an all-online class, as that’s the modality I’m in this semester; I’m using an S/S/A schedule where we do MW class sessions synchronously and F class sessions asynchronously. Most of the Friday classes are in the “sandbox” mode described here, some with suggested prompts and some completely open. The class has 30 people in it, so those synchronous sessions may need to break up to 15 and 15; I want to give it a try with the whole group for a week or two before I switch. Final assignment is a long paper or creative/curational project with at least some connection to Watchmen, comics, or American cultural studies, very, very broadly conceived…

Any and all suggestions welcome! I missed the first COVID semester due to my sabbatical so this is all still a bit new to me. I’m excited though: this class started in my mind as a lark and now I think it’s going to be one of the best syllabi I’ve ever planned.

101 MWF 12:00-12:50 Professor Gerry Canavan

Course Title:  Watchmen

Fulfills English Major Requirement:  Post-1900, American Literature

Course Description: This course surveys the history, reception, and artistic form of comics and graphic narrative in the United States, with primary exploration of a single comic miniseries that has had a massive influence on the comics industry and on the way we think about superheroes: Alan Moore and David Gibbons’s Watchmen (1986-1987). This semester ENGLISH 4717 will function almost like a single-novel “Text in Context” course; after grounding ourselves in the pre-1980s history of American superhero comics over the first few weeks of the course, we will focusing almost exclusively on Watchmen and its long afterlife in prequel comics, sequel comics, parody comics, homages, critiques, film adaptations, and, most recently, the critically acclaimed HBO sequel series (2019-2020). What has made Watchmen so beloved, so controversial, and so very influential on the larger superhero-industrial-entertainment complex? Why has DC Comics returned to Watchmen again and again, even as one of its original creators has distanced himself further and further from the work? What have different creators done, or tried to do, with the complex but self-contained narrative framework originally constructed by Moore and Gibbons? With superheroes and superhero media more globally hegemonic than ever before, what might Watchmen still have to say to us today?

Assignments: Class participation, including individual and group presentations; weekly reading journal; discussion posts; several out-of-class film screenings; one long seminar paper or creative/curational project

W
Aug 26
S
FIRST DAY OF CLASS

Introduction to the Course

A Brief Prehistory of Comics


F
Aug 28
A
Sandbox: Jim Henley, “Gaudy Nights” [Web]








M
Aug 31
S
The Golden Age of Comics

Action Comics #1

Selections from Wonder Woman


W
Sep 2
S
The Silver Age

Superboy #1 [D2L]

Umberto Eco, “The Myth of Superman” [D2L]

excerpts from David Hadju’s The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic- Book Scare and How It Changed America and Qiana Q. Whitted, EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest [D2L]


F
Sep 4
A
Sandbox: The Marvel Explosion

Fantastic Four #1, Tales of Suspense #39, X-Men #1, and Hulk #1








M
Sep 7
 
LABOR DAY—NO CLASS


W
Sep 9
S
The Bronze Age

Saul Braun, “Shazam! Here Comes Captain Relevant” [D2L]

Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76, Amazing Spider-Man #121 and Iron Man #128 [D2L]

Spencer Ackerman, “Iron Man vs. the Imperialists” [D2L]

Gail Simone, “Women in Refrigerators” [web]


F
Sep 11
A
Sandbox: Marc Singer, “‘Black Skins’ and White Masks: Comic Books and the Secret of Race” [D2L]








M
Sep 14
S
The Dark Age

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1986-1987), #1-3


W
Sep 16
S
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1986-1987), #4-6


F
Sep 18
A
Sandbox








M
Sep 21
S
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1986-1987), #7-9

Anna C. Marshall, “Not So Revisionary: The Regressive Treatment of Gender in Alan Moore’s Watchmen” [D2L]


W
Sep 23
S
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1986-1987), #10-12

Matthew Wolf-Meyer, “Utopias in the Superhero Comic, Subculture, and the Conservation of Difference” [D2L]


F
Sep 25
A
Sandbox: Watchmen sequel pitch session








M
Sep 28
S
Watchmen (dir. Zack Snyder, 2009)

Graham J. Murphy, “‘On a More Meaningful Scale’: Marketing Utopia in Watchmen” [D2L]

Jacob Brogan, “Stop/Watch: Repressing History, Adapting Watchmen” [D2L]


W
Sep 30
S
Andrew Hoberek, Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics (excerpts) [D2L]

Alan Moore interviews (excerpts) [D2L]


F
Oct 2
A
Sandbox: Watchmen criticism survey








M
Oct 5
S
The Nostalgia Age?

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, All-Star Superman (first half)


W
Oct 7
S
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, All-Star Superman (second half)


F
Oct 9
A
Sandbox: Watchmen vs. the MCU








M
Oct 12
S
Natacha Bustos, Amy Reeder, and Brandon Montclare, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: The Beginning (first half)


W
Oct 14
S
Natacha Bustos, Amy Reeder, and Brandon Montclare, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: The Beginning (second half)


F
Oct 16
 
FALL BREAK—NO CLASS

PROJECT PROPOSAL DUE FRIDAY NIGHT 5 PM








M
Oct 19
S
Before Watchmen (2012-2013): Minutemen and Silk Spectre


W
Oct 21
S
Before Watchmen (2012-2013): Dr. Manhattan


F
Oct 23
A
Sandbox








M
Oct 26
S
Doomsday Clock (2017-2019), Book One


W
Oct 28
S
Doomsday Clock (2017-2019), Book Two


F
Oct 30
A
Sandbox








M
Nov 2
S
Watchmen (HBO 2019-2020), episode 1


W
Nov 4
S
Watchmen (HBO 2019-2020), episodes 2-3

interview with Damon Lindelof [Web]


F
Nov 6
A
Sandbox








M
Nov 9
S
Watchmen (HBO 2019-2020), episodes 4-5

interview with Lila Byock [Web]


W
Nov 11
S
Watchmen (HBO 2019-2020), episode 6

interview with Cord Jefferson [Web]

thinkpieces by Emily Nussbaum, Jamelle Bouie, Jorge Cotte, Jaime Omar Yassin, and others [Web]


F
Nov 13
A
Sandbox








M
Nov 16
S
Watchmen (HBO 2019-2020), episodes 7-8


W
Nov 18
S
Watchmen (HBO 2019-2020), episode 9

Aaron Bady, “Dr. Manhattan Is a Cop: Watchmen and Frantz Fanon” [Web]

Leslie Lee, “Whitewashing Watchmen” [Web]

Alyssa Rosenberg, “If HBO makes a second season of ‘Watchmen…” [Web]


F
Nov 20
A
Sandbox: Watchmen season two pitch session








M
Nov 23
S
Rorschach #1 (2020)

LAST DAY OF CLASS








Th
Dec 3

12:30 PM

FINAL PAPER/PROJECT DUE IN D2L DROPBOX

FINAL REFLECTION DUE IN THE D2L FORUMS

 

Accidentally Closed a Bunch of Tabs and Can’t Get Them Back But Regardless Here Are Links

[image error]* Coming soon! Paradoxa 31: Climate Fictions. There’s a ton in this gigantic issue; my contribution is called “The Legend of Zelda in the Anthropocene,” based off the presentation on Breath of the Wild I gave at ICFA last year…

* For 60 years, Americans poisoned themselves by pumping leaded gasoline into their cars. Then Clair Patterson, a scientist who helped build the atomic bomb and discovered the true age of the Earth, took on a billion-dollar industry. The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of.

* Scenes from the class struggle at Marquette. Colleges Hoped for an In-Person Fall. Now the Dream is Crumbling. Universities that lived by the market model during the boom years face an extinction event as the bubble bursts and their business model pushes them to make perverse decisions about campus opening. ‘Ethically troubling.’ University reopening plans put professors, students on edge. Frat parties, bars could ruin fall 2020 college reopening plans.  The Humanities after COVID-19. Iowa. UNC. Akron. UMass. For First-Generation Students, a Disappearing ‘College Experience’ Could Have Grave Consequences. Colleges Are Getting Ready to Blame Their Students. Last Change for Universities? And the piece that made literally everyone mad last week: Struggle / Perish / Survive / Thrive.

[image error]

“ok what happens when someone dies” really seems to be the armor-piercing question for all these plans to reopen schools

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 21, 2020

The one that gets me is that students have ten minutes between classes regardless of modality or location. Starbucks is closed, library is closed, you’re not allowed to congregate in hallways — where do you go for your 10 AM virtual class between your 9 and 11 in-person classes? https://t.co/vSz7t88uHH

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 21, 2020

There’s also going to be a nonzero number of in-person classes where the instructor is the noncompliant party and I haven’t heard anyone explain what is supposed to happen in that situation https://t.co/MkwlX7GM8d

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 24, 2020

Btw your students know what's up. I've seen so many similar tiktoks over the last month pic.twitter.com/7JZzTl9xGq

— dakoda smith (@feelinggorgias) July 19, 2020

* On a Knife’s Edge.

* Rethinking MLA 2021.

* The time for reform is now. If we want truly public education at a reasonable cost, the state and federal governments need to step up to help with funding and to insist on proper reforms to refocus our institutions on the academic mission. After this pandemic, our institutions need to have backed away from these destructive corporate-style approaches and to have restored focus on the academic mission. Instead of describing and accepting every academic loss as “the new normal,” our colleges and universities need to emphasize that higher education is a public good, not a private commodity. This means a return to investment in students, full-time faculty, research, and all aspects of the academic mission that have been overlooked for far too long.  

* Exploit U: The Secret Underworld of College Athletics. Lost football season would crush Big Ten schools, including Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State. Rutgers professors sue over $100 million shifted to athletics.

* How Afrofuturism Can Help the World Mend. Insurgent histories and the abolitionist imaginary. The Argument of Afropessimism.

* The Man Whose Science Fiction Keeps Turning Into Our Shitty Cyberpunk Reality. How Fantasy Literature Helped Create the 21st Century. How Cyberpunk Saved Sci-Fi. Why We Need Dystopian Fiction Now More Than Ever.

* From Cixin Liu to Octavia E. Butler: An Interview with EN to CN Science Fiction Translator Geng Hui.

* 8 Anti-Capitalist Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels.

* Three Ways of Diversifying a Philosophy Syllabus.

* Top Scientists Just Ruled Out Best-Case Global Warming Scenarios.

* The Last Giraffes on Earth.

* Men who call their colleagues “fucking bitches” in public hallways are making a threat and it should not be tolerated. PS: Don’t read the New York Times.

When men use slurs against us it’s *shoulder shrug* but when we defend ourselves it’s because we’re opportunistic. Fuck this https://t.co/nCyMiZdaNK

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) July 24, 2020

* Vaccine Reality Check. Hygiene Theater. 16 states set single-day coronavirus case records last week. White House document shows 18 states in coronavirus “red zone.” Virus activity remains ‘high’ in 80% of Wisconsin counties. State reports 900 more COVID-19 cases and six Wisconsin children who got rare inflammatory condition that the coronavirus can trigger. New coronavirus cases in Wisconsin top 1,000 for the second time in three days. America’s coronavirus reopening falls apart. We’re Talking About More Than Half a Million People Missing from the U.S. Population. And some good news: Overall COVID-19 intensive care mortality has fallen by a third. Oxford scientists believe they have made a breakthrough in their quest for a Covid-19 vaccine. Can You Get Covid-19 Again? It’s Very Unlikely, Experts Say.

* How Much Should You Worry About Air Conditioning and COVID-19?

* There Are Literally No Good Options for Educating Our Kids This Fall. I Am Definitely Panicking. Teachers unions in largest districts call on Tony Evers to require schools start virtually. Fed up with remote education, parents who can pay have a new plan for fall: import teachers to their homes. Citing Educational Risks, Scientific Panel Urges That Schools Reopen. To Be a Parent Right Now Is To Be a Liar. They Come to Mommy First.

* Once again: against homework.

My lecture on this starts in half an hour lol https://t.co/DmQRYAj95l https://t.co/SlIornNN5q

— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) July 24, 2020

* The Dark Obsessions of QAnon Are Merging With Mainstream Conservatism. Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown. American Death Cult. What Could Happen If Trump Rejects Electoral Defeat? Previewing 2024.

I’m incredibly cynical and believe the Republican Party is full of world-historical monsters but seeing the entire apparatus of the right attach themselves to Q has really shaken me https://t.co/lSKM65lp3q

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 26, 2020

* August is shaping up to be ‘ugly.’ Renters brace for evictions as moratorium ends. Mass Evictions Set To Begin – Communities Of Color To Be Hardest Hit. Here’s how the eviction crisis will impact each state. Millions of Americans Are About to Lose Their Homes. Congress Must Help Them. More Than Half of U.S. Business Closures Permanent, Yelp Says. Almost half of the U.S. population does not have a job. Child care industry ‘approaching a catastrophic situation’ due to COVID. Layoffs are growing again. More state spending cuts coming in Wisconsin. Many families in Wisconsin are ‘close to becoming homeless’ as effects of pandemic continue and help dries up. Home Prices May Be Dropping Soon. Here’s Why. How Remote Work Divides America. U.S. Capitalism Is in Total Meltdown. Gimme that stimmie.

This is really bad. There has been a gigantic, sustained shock in areas of the labor market which are not directly exposed to the virus, but instead exposed to plain old economic conditions. https://t.co/zsNuxCiT5L

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) July 21, 2020

* America ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids — in fact, it’s cold as hell

* Your Predominantly White Academic Organization (Yes, Even Yours) Is Exactly One Live-Tweeted Racist Event Away from Public Disgrace.

* U.S. newspapers have shed half of their newsroom employees since 2008.

I think people prior to the Gen X/Millennial cohort genuinely have trouble processing what has happened to basically everything they were raised to think of as “careers” https://t.co/BVreP3Wk3S

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 22, 2020

You can’t even really get a job as a lawyer anymore. My younger cousins w/ nursing degrees don’t have stable gigs, but travel between multiple hospitals. Obviously being a professor is over. Aside from the medical cartel that is only just now starting to crack, jobs don’t exist.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 22, 2020

* My friend the brilliant Jillian Weise on Metafilter! You love to see it.

* How the Child Care Crisis Will Distort the Economy for a Generation.

* There is just so much corruption in the justice system. I wish it were still shocking. Elsewhere on the justice beat: The 15-year-old Black girl who was incarcerated for not doing her homework has been denied release by a Michigan judge.

* A British Skin Care Brand Pressured Asian Influencers To Promote Its Skin Whiteners. They Fought Back.

* The Racist History of Tipping.

* The Rick and Morty shorts are a whole thing, man.

* The best new Twitter account out there: @accidental_left.

they literally cannot stop threatening us with a good time pic.twitter.com/aryQLXpwvI

— accidentally left-wing (@accidental_left) July 22, 2020

* You’re not allowed to stop. You can never stop. The Existential Horror of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

* Why Children of Men haunts the present moment.

* Anti-Blackness in The Last of Us, Part Two.

* J.K. Rowling and the Limits of Imagination.

* The Inescapable Whiteness of AVATAR: THE LEGEND OF KORRA, and its Uncomfortable Implications.

* Capitalism is the Parasite; Capitalism is the Virus.

* What We Know About the Austin BLM Protest Shooting. Official Garrett Foster Memorial Fund.

* The fight against racism starts at home.

Stares at every white person who keeps asking “how to help” or how they can “do better”

GSV #9: Breakfast of Champions (with Robert T. Tally, Jr.)!

This week Aaron and Gerry talk Breakfast of Champions with Robert T. Tally, Jr., author of Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel: A Postmodern Iconography, which you should read! Whether you should read Breakfast of Champions, though, — that’s a big subject of debate on the show…

Kurt Vonnegut, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1973)

cc: @zunguzungu @gradschoolvonn pic.twitter.com/Jq9r1D7wxx

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 19, 2020

when you’re editing the Breakfast of Champions episode pic.twitter.com/p05LJIdk89

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 20, 2020

if you’re following along on the hero’s journey, this is our visit to the underworld https://t.co/Joen9Kh1xf

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 21, 2020

What? THURSDAY Links? In This Economy?

* Sneak preview: the landmark Paradoxa “climate fictions” issue, edited by the great Ali Sperling!

* The 2020 Hugo Awards: The Political Hugo.

* Hold the Starships — an Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson on Mars Settlement, Socialists in Space, Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Immortality, and the Purpose of Science Fiction.

* A Second Coronavirus Death Surge Is Coming. Almost one-third of Florida children tested are positive for the coronavirus. Most air conditioning systems don’t protect against the coronavirus. In some cases, they can actually facilitate spread. How Arizona blew it. UnitedHealth posts most profitable quarter in its history. Disney World Fully Reopens to Crowds as Florida Surpasses 300K Coronavirus Cases. 51.3 million.

* First Coronavirus Vaccine Tested in Humans Shows Early Promise. The University of Oxford candidate, led by Sarah Gilbert, might be through human trials in September.

* More Than 40 Mayors Outline Their Vision for a Green Coronavirus Recovery.

* It’s the “bring their own chairs” part that makes it art. Budget ‘Bloodbath’ at University of Akron.

what if everything being cake when you cut it open has something to do with how some many things in this moment are being pared away and revealed to made of total shit

— inverted vibe curve: burgertown must be defended (@PatBlanchfield) July 15, 2020

* Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state.

* Giving the NYPD the power to declare journalists enemy combatants at whim seems bad actually. Biden winning by so much that maybe even Biden couldn’t blow it. The media is covering this election all wrong.

* Another Monument to White Supremacy That Should Come Down? The Electoral College.

* Doomsday Clock only ended in December, but DC is already trying to sequelize Watchmen again. And elsewhere on the Watchmen beat: The Simpsons Watchmen Parody Is As Weird As You’d Expect.

I'm all for a new Watchmen comic about Rorschach as long as his mask doesn't have that picture of my parents having sex on it anymore.

— Paranoid Andy Edwards (@eds209) July 15, 2020

* How did they write a graverobbing Gatsby prequel and then make it about Nick Carraway? Obviously the book is Jay Gatz.

* The most interesting thing you can just barely understand: How Gödel’s Proof Works.

* Know your risk.

* Today in tech.

* The important questions.

Mutant puppies and military grade hardware: who funds the Paw Patrol?

— Tade Thompson (@tadethompson) July 15, 2020

* The postal service is such an obviously beneficial and necessary public good they have no choice but to destroy it on principle.

thinking about USPS, tax day, that two-year period of complete Democratic control of government we had a while ago, and how many small and easy things they didn't fix on account of none of them being normal people with normal problems

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) July 16, 2020

there's literally no reaching people who think "repealing an obscure 2006 bill that intentionally bankrupted the post office" was too heavy a lift for a party that had merely 57 Senate votes in 2009

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) July 16, 2020

* What It’s Like to Be Single in Your 60s With $233,921 in Student Debt.

* All the blue checks got hacked and Twitter still wasn’t fun anymore. I did like talking the MCU with you all this morning, though. Backgrounder: Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts.

* America’s child care problem is an economic problem.

* The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

* ‘Jaw-dropping’ global crash in children being born.

* Abolition is not a suburb.

* If you’re sufficiently rich and sufficiently diversified you make your money on the swing, not on the value. Chaos as investment strategy.

* And knives out for Joss Whedon. Just incredible to see his reputation transform like this.

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Wednesday Links!

* SFFTV 13.2 is out! It’s a great issue with some really great essays on wast and District 9, monster theory and Monsters, race and Arrival, and feminism and Ex Machina, but I want to put a special plug in for my co-editor Dan Hassler-Forest’s great essay on the nostalgia industry, Stranger Things, and Twin Peaks: The Return.

* Meanwhile, David Agranoff reads Extrapolation 61.1-2.

* And ICYMI: GSV #8: TBSF! And a little bit of viewer mail: Harrison Bergeron Is Black.

* 2020 Locus Awards Winners.

* Medical Humanities and the Fantastic: A Symposium.

* CFP: American Game Studies (deadline: August 1). How America Understands Poverty (deadline: October 1). Announcing The 11th Annual Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Award: Call for Emerging Writers. Queer Intersectionalities in Folklore Studies.

* Podcast alert: Marquette University’s COVID Conversations. And it’s a bit more flippant but I’ll never say no to Griffin Newman talking Muppets.

* Regarding Marquette’s Decision to Open for Face to Face Instruction for Fall 2020.

* Elsewhere on the Marquette beat: My terrific colleague Cedric Burrows talks about the racist origins of ordinary phrases.

* A 1997 interview with Octavia Butler. Toward a Waking Maturity: Octavia E. Butler Shapes A Liberated African Future in “The Book of Martha.” Behold Octavia Butler’s Motivational Notes to Self.

* Colson Whitehead is the youngest writer to win the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

* El Nuevo Normal: The Coronavirus Crisis and Latin American Apocalyptic Fiction.

* Will Dystopian Times Inspire Utopian Art?

* Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure. Who will ensure the safety of Black, LGBTQ+, People of Color, and Persons with Disabilities when Campuses reopen? Reopening schools safely can’t happen without racial equity. Black Study, Black Struggle. College football’s leaders are answering the wrong questions. Colleges are flimflamming students and parents about reopening. College Leaders Must Explain Why—Not Just How—to Return to Campus. College Leaders Have the Wrong Incentives. What do college students think of their school’s reopening plans? College students fume over having to pay full tuition for dubious online learning. The Summer of Magical Thinking. Lurching Toward Fall, Disaster on the Horizon. A Semester to Die For. CDC documents warned full reopening of schools, colleges would be ‘highest risk’ for spreading coronavirus. The main source of opposition? The faculty. Rush back to campus is sowing distrust at universities. Principles of Academic Governance during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Georgia Tech Professors Revolt Over Reopening, Say Current Plan Threatens Lives Of Students, Staff. Priorities. Boston University Gives PhD Students A Choice: Come Back To Campus Or Lose Your Health Insurance And Salary. Baton Rouge economy faces $50M loss if LSU football season is canceled or fans are excluded.

* The Closure.

* What can the humanities offer in the Covid era?

* ICE Makes International Students Choose Between Risk of Coronavirus and Risk of Deportation. Long thread reading Harvard’s lawsuit. White House Rescinds Rules on Foreign Students Studying Online.

* “Does tenure matter anymore?” University Paid $504,000 to Get Rid of Professor. City University of New York lays off 2,800 adjuncts in wave of austerity.

Happy July, everyone! Unfortunately, I'm convinced that this month will be one of the worst months that American higher education has experienced in a long time. Thread alert. (1/)

— Robert Kelchen (@rkelchen) July 1, 2020

At root, the political economy of colleges and universities in the United States has been rebuilt in a matter of several decades around an understanding of higher education as a service sold to student consumers rather than a public good.

— Aaron Jakes (@aaronjakes) July 3, 2020

Three truths about the upcoming semester:
1. Any F2F class is going to be awkward, weird, and uncomfortable. Stop pretending it won't be.
2. We will all be online at some point whether one wants to admit it or not.
3. There will be illnesses and deaths that were preventable.

— HyFlex Course in Radical Left Indoctrination (@TheTattooedProf) July 14, 2020

I imagine I’d have mixed feelings if it were my workplace knowing that none of us are getting paid and that if the coronavirus that is being inflicted upon us by our millionaire bosses permanently damages our lungs we lose our scholarships https://t.co/taGTpA4ZMk

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) June 27, 2020

* In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both. This Isn’t Sustainable for Working Parents. American Passports Are Worthless Now. The Republican coronavirus meatgrinder. ‘One Of Worst Parties In Power In Entire Democratic World.’ ‘I Can’t Keep Doing This:’ Small Business Owners Are Giving Up. Giant corporations may be the only survivors in the post-pandemic economy. Pay Restaurants to Stay Closed. How Many Have Closed Already? Covid-19 Is Bankrupting American Companies at a Relentless Pace. A Record 5.4 Million Americans Have Lost Health Insurance. 32% of U.S. households missed their July housing payments. Looming evictions may soon make 28 million homeless in U.S., expert says. Out of Work. The Story Has Gotten Away from Us. COVID-19 sent US into ‘depression’ and economy won’t be fully restored until 2023. Americans Are in Denial. There Is No Plan (For You). Trump’s incompetence has wrecked us. Where are the calls for him to resign? We are in the midst of a world-historic failure of governance. Why isn’t anyone in charge acting like they are responsible for it?

Liberals were right about George W Bush and they’re right about Donald Trump. The Republican Party is a political party incapable of governing the nation without ushering in death, devastation, and national humiliation. Just the facts.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 11, 2020

This is a poem about America. pic.twitter.com/QsaCb3GwVS

— Amanda Guinzburg (@Guinz) July 8, 2020

I would say that the coronavirus period in the US has been characterized by the pathological refusal to prioritize anything over anything else, in accordance with the larger neoliberal tendency to pretend all social outcomes are exclusively the product of autonomous market action https://t.co/bvmSPlt67S

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) June 27, 2020

Prince literally said two thousand zero zero party OOP it’s out of time and we didn’t listen

— Wʏɴᴛᴇʀ Mɪᴛᴄʜᴇʟʟ (Rᴏʜʀʙᴀᴜɢʜ) (@wyntermitchell) July 13, 2020

* Coronavirus spread threatens to overrun school reopening plans. Israeli Data Show School Openings Were a Disaster That Wiped Out Lockdown Gains. U.S. Pediatricians Call For In-Person School This Fall, Then Take It Back. DeVos blasts school districts that hesitate at reopening. There Is a Way to Reopen Schools This Fall. Do We Have the Will to Make It Happen? Reopening schools safely is going to take much more federal leadership. One in Four. N.Y.C. Schools, Nation’s Largest District, Will Not Fully Reopen in Fall. Los Angeles and San Diego Schools to Go Online-Only in the Fall. Milwaukee Proposing Reopening with No Students in School Buildings. Evers once again gives up in advance. A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention. The Toll That Isolation Takes on Kids During the Coronavirus Era.

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* Hospitals full in Houston. Hospitals full in Florida. Texas and Arizona. Young Americans Are Partying Hard and Spreading Covid-19 Quickly. Coronavirus is spreading so fast among Wisconsin 20-somethings that the CDC came to investigate. The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus. The Hidden Racism of Vaccine Testing. California’s slide from coronavirus success to danger zone began Memorial Day. It takes a special kind of inattention to human suffering to not notice how unfortunate it is that people have been left to face death alone. Is air conditioning helping spread COVID in the South? I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of dads suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Inside the body, the coronavirus is even more sinister than scientists had realized. July and August must be a period of intense preparation for our reasonable worst-case scenario for health in the winter that we set out in this report, including a resurgence of COVID-19, which might be greater than that seen in the spring. One to two months. Five years. Americans Are Sick of the Pandemic. The Pandemic Is Not Sick of Us. U.S. States Graded on Their Covid-19 Response. Zero COVID Deaths in Vietnam. How Iceland Beat the Coronavirus.

* Are We Facing A Post-COVID-19 Suicide Epidemic?

* Generation Z Is Bearing the Economic Brunt of the Virus.

* The end of New York.

* How has Wisconsin screwed up unemployment so completely? Workers are pushed to the brink as they continue to wait for delayed unemployment payments.

* The Meltdown Crisis. The Myopic Fantasy of Returning to “Normal.” Resilience Is the Goal of Governments and Employers Who Expect People to Endure Crisis.

* gimme that stimmie

* Damn, that is an American airline.

* A version of the election-stealing scenario I’ve been bleating on about for months that doesn’t even require state legislatures to do anything actively.

* The Working Dead: Reviving the Crowd as a Protagonist.

* Fake Nerd Boys of Silicon Valley.

* Eight go mad in Arizona: how a lockdown experiment went horribly wrong.

* Starship Troopers and American decline.

* Setting Fire to Wet Blankets: Radical Politics and Hollywood Franchises.

* Resistance Is Not Futile: On Jeff VanderMeer’s “Dead Astronauts” and Fighting the Good Fight.

* Teaching Shakespeare Under Quarantine.

* Is Unschooling the Way to Decolonize Education?

* Hamilton and Revolution. And Ishmael Reed, from the archives: “Hamilton: the Musical:” Black Actors Dress Up like Slave Traders… and It’s Not Halloween.

* Masking and the Self-Inflicted Wounds of Expertise.

* The blog started “innocently enough” and just “got out of hand.”

* Illiberalism Isn’t to Blame for the Death of Good-Faith Debate. From Thomas Jefferson’s own family, a call to take down his memorial. ‘The Flag is Coming Down’: Lawmakers Vote to Change Mississippi State Flag. Reddit bans r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse as part of a major expansion of its rules. Going too far.

* This was shocking, and I didn’t remember it at all: The Real Mud on Golden Girls.

* The whole point in Wisconsin right now is to make anything but one-party GOP rule essentially illegal.

Wisconsin GOP wins power in 2010, gerrymander the legislature such that they can win a supermajority of seats without a majority of votes, pack the state courts, and raise new barriers and obstacles to voting. When Democrats win nonetheless, they strip power from the offices. https://t.co/yaIC43V7zi

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) July 9, 2020

* Centering Blackness: The Path to Economic Liberation for All. Jacobin’s racial justice reading list. Wisconsin Schools’ Racial Inequality Worst in U.S.

* How North Carolina Transformed Itself Into the Worst State to Be Unemployed.

* According to establishment pundits and politicians, countries have “national interests” they carry out in the international arena. But “national interests” is just another phrase for ruling-class interests. The old socialist argument is true: workers of all countries have more in common with each other than their respective countries’ ruling elites.

* Climate change hasn’t forgotten about you: World could hit 1.5-degree warming threshold by 2024. South Pole warmed three times the global rate in last 30 years. Scientists’ warning on affluence. Climate Realism, Capitalist and Otherwise. Collapse of civilisation is the most likely outcome.

I've skimmed the Democrats' brand new climate plan and it stinks! https://t.co/jbVdecOUEO

— Mike Pearl (@MikeLeePearl) June 30, 2020

* How to grow liveable worlds: Ten (not-so-easy) steps for life in the Planthroposcene.

* Took ’em long enough:

* This ‘Equity’ picture is actually White Supremacy at work.

* Today in hell world.

* What Happens When You’re Disabled but Nobody Can Tell.

* The invention of the police. How Police Abuse the Charge of Resisting Arrest.

A reminder that after he returned from destroying the ring, Frodo temporarily served as Deputy Mayor of the Shire, and his sole act was to defund the police pic.twitter.com/jmEVWzOvmP

— Samuel Miller McDonald (@sjmmcd) June 27, 2020

* She Said Her Husband Hit Her. She Lost Custody of Her Kids.

* Remembering the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit.

* Why Animal Studies Must Be Antiracist: A Conversation with Bénédicte Boisseron.

* ‘You Could Literally See Our Shit From Space’: The Broken Bowels of Beirut.

* Hate to get owned this bad by a tweet.

Learned a very relatable term today: “報復性熬夜” (revenge bedtime procrastination), a phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours.

— Daphne K. Lee (@daphnekylee) June 28, 2020

* A Ranking of Every Movie with “Night of” in the Title.

* Watching The Next Generation in a Time of Pandemic and Uprising. The Talk Doesn’t Exist in Deep Space Nine. The Sexist Legacy in Star Trek’s Progressive Universe.

* Astronomers have discovered a vast assemblage of galaxies hidden behind our own, in the “zone of avoidance.” My sci-fi novel just got a title…

* This Is How Many People You’d Need to Colonize Mars, According to Science.

* How Not to Deal with Murder in Space.

* Harry Potter fan sites decide to stop giving J.K. Rowling attention.

J.K. Rowling, again, is arguably the most successful person of her generation in her field, revered internationally, and a billionaire, and she has nonetheless made herself a miserable pariah through this pathetic, deluded obsession with other people’s genitals. makes you think https://t.co/5eXlQtbyqU

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) June 28, 2020

1. abolish the suburbs
2. attack and dethrone god
3. taco trucks on every corner
4. hamburgers eat people https://t.co/gRhNWXXFcA

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 10, 2020

* A Timeline of Recent Allegations in the Comic Book Industry.

* A Megachurch Reels After Learning Pastor Let His Professed Pedophile Son Work With Kids.

* Gimlet Media Sued for Not Making Podcasts Accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

* Kung Fu Nuns Of Kathmandu.

* Yes please.

* A short story about Serena Williams.

if you know where i can buy this nuclear waste warning message live-laugh-love sign, please get at me because i’ve been thinking about it for a month now and will not rest until it is in my home pic.twitter.com/988H0cID64

— jane c. hu (@jane_c_hu) July 1, 2020

* Ban cars.

* Second tribal leader calls for removal of Mount Rushmore. Want to tear down a monument to racism? Bulldoze LA’s freeways.

* Banning the N-word on campus ain’t the answer — it censors Black professors like me.

* Big Scrabble’s decision to eliminate offensive words has infuriated players like never before.

* Why Is the Public Corruption Unit Prosecuting Ghislaine Maxwell?

* The Life-Threatening “Ride” That Action Park Actually Decided to Abandon.

* Thanks Obama.

* A Long-Hidden His Dark Materials Short Story Is Now Getting Released.

* Love to learn old stuff about Jim Henson.

* Transporter. Words. Znurg. Two. Satire. Tin Man. Allies. Doctors. Mondays. Elon Musk. Pirates.

* Please scream inside your heart.

* And it took the end of the world, but the Far Side is back. Same joke but Clone High.

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if you know where i can buy this nuclear waste warning message live-laugh-love sign, please get at me because i’ve been thinking about it for a month now and will not rest until it is in my home pic.twitter.com/988H0cID64

— jane c. hu (@jane_c_hu) July 1, 2020

 

Grad School Vonnegut #8: “The Big Space Fuck”!

Too hot for Apple Podcasts, it’s “The Big Space Fuck”! This week Gerry and Aaron are talking about Vonnegut’s nihilistically obscene, obscenely nihilistic contribution to Harlan Ellison’s New Wave SF anthology Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). You can read the story here. It’s so short so you can actually follow our conversation this time around…

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