Gerry Canavan's Blog, page 3

Thanksgiving Links!

* It’s been a time: Health experts monitor ‘tri-demic’ as respiratory viruses spread around US. Colorado River conditions are worsening quicker than expected. Competition between respiratory viruses may hold off a ‘tripledemic’ this winter. Children’s hospitals call on Biden to declare emergency in response to ‘unprecedented’ RSV surge. How long COVID ruined my life, from crushing fatigue to brain fog. About 37% of small businesses, which between them employ almost half of all Americans working in the private sector, were unable to pay their rent in full in October. Parents are buying fewer baby clothes, a sign of deep financial distress. The world’s baby shortfall is so bad that the labor shortage will last for years, major employment firms predict. Chris Hemsworth ‘Taking Time Off,’ Discovered Genetic Predisposition for Alzheimer’s Disease: ‘I’m Going to Just Simplify.’ Et tu, Coca-Cola? Massive flock of sheep has been walking in a circle for 12 days straight in China. The Problem With Letting Therapy-Speak Invade Everything. Inside the violent, misogynistic world of TikTok’s new star, Andrew Tate. A Quarter of Americans at Risk of Winter Power Blackouts, Grid Emergencies. Stock up on bottled water and canned food, official tells Germans. What if We Cancel the Apocalypse? this comic is almost 14 years old and could have been made yesterday

* I’m giving the last “Tolkien Tuesdays” talk at the Haggerty on next Tuesday, November 28, on Tolkien and pop culture.

* A truly obscene trend in higher ed: How Colleges and Sports-Betting Companies ‘Caesarized’ Campus Life.

* ‘A Culture of Disposability’: New School Part-Time Faculty Go On Strike. Never Cross a Picket Line: A Primer for Solidarity in the Academic Workplace. The Academic Wheel of Privilege. The Cruelty of Faculty Churn. The Deadline Dilemma. The gutting of the liberal arts continues.

* Vulture had a nice Octavia Butler cluster this week: The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler. Misreading Octavia Butler. How to Write Like Octavia E. Butler. The Butler Journal Entry I Always Return To. This one at the Times was beautiful, too, in more ways than one: The Visions of Octavia Butler. And just a few weeks away: ‘Kindred’ Trailer: Octavia Butler’s Time Travel Novel Comes to Terrifying Life.

* The new Science Fiction Film and Television is out, with articles on steampunk, cryonics, domestic violence in Tau and Upstream Color, and Marvel’s Agent Carter. I can’t tell for sure, but from where I am access to all issues of SFFTV is free right now. And so is the fall issue of SFRA Review! And Uneven Futures is almost here!

UNEVEN FUTURES coming in just about a month! https://t.co/tLJAceecmY pic.twitter.com/YnXvO87kRS

— Gerry Canavan (parody) (@gerrycanavan) November 18, 2022

* Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide.

* One of last year’s student papers is already out in Games and Culture: “Go. Just take him.”: PTSD and the Player-Character Relationship in The Last of Us Part II.

* Marvel got trolled into losing one of its best assets to DC permanently. You hate to see it.

* I Don’t Worry About My Oeuvre: A Conversation with John Carpenter.

* I want Picardo back as the Doctor and I don’t really care how they do it. Just don’t let the Picard showrunners anywhere near it and we’re good to go.

* Online Speed Chess as Self-Soothing, Tetris, or Collaborative Troll Art.

* Middle schoolers tackle climate change in a new alternate reality game.

* The Dirt on Pig-Pen.

* The Incredibly Stupid Catastrophe Caused by Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. Tumblr Blog Linked to Ex-Alameda CEO Explored Race Science, ‘Imperial Chinese Harem’ Polyamory. Queen Caroline. Every Shady Thing Sam Bankman-Fried Has Confessed or Pseudo-Confessed to Since FTX Collapsed. Effective altruism gave rise to Sam Bankman-Fried. Now it’s facing a moral reckoning. Crypto Bro Sam Bankman-Fried Was the Perfect Liberal Hero. Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself.

* Larry David, Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Other Celebs Sued Over FTX Crypto Exchange Collapse. Larry David was telling you not to buy, you just didn’t listen…

* Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take ‘control of human evolution.’ Jeff Bezos pledges to donate majority of his $124 billion fortune to fight climate change and unify humanity.

* In the end, Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, just couldn’t run fast enough.

* Are Trees Talking Underground? For Scientists, It’s in Dispute.

* If you’re keeping score, a guy made a homemade shotgun out of plumbing parts and iced a former PM with it in broad daylight and the Japanese govt is giving him everything he demanded because they realize he had a point. Utterly wild story.

* Federal judge strikes down Biden student debt relief program. What Went Wrong With Biden’s Student Loan Cancellation Plan— And How He Can Make It Right. Joe Biden Is Finally Moving Toward Allowing Bankruptcy to Eliminate Student Debt. Biden Administration Caves To Pressure On Student Debt Bankruptcy.

* ‘A World Cup Built on Modern Slavery’: Stadium Workers Blow the Whistle on Qatar’s ‘Coverup’ of Migrant Deaths and Suffering.

* Thousands were released from prison during covid. The results are shocking.

* The Bike Thieves of Burlington, Vermont.

* Abortion, Every Day.

* New Rules for a New Game.

* Welcome to the Infinite Conversation: an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek.

* ‘I was ecstatic to be given the opportunity to be there’: Milwaukee student’s poetry takes her to the White House.

* Elsewhere on the Milwaukee beat: The Landlord & the Tenant.

* The Race to Save Fanfiction History Before It’s Lost Forever.

* what is the crime for which the turkey was sentenced to death & the sentence nullified by the US President? & what guarantee do we have that the turkey won’t be executed anyway, as soon as the cameras are gone.

* It’s that time of year. How to avoid gender bias when writing recommendation letters.

* How ‘Andor’ Drew from… Joseph Stalin? I Can’t Fucking Believe How Good ‘Andor’ Is.

* Multiculturalism in Middle-earth: On Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”

* Yes, but: the comic.

* ‘Doing Nothing’ course helps students build skills to unplug, think deeply.

* Indy’s going to the Moon folks.

* ‘How Did This Man Think He Had the Right to Adopt This Baby?’

* Words Added to the Scrabble Dictionary.

* Might not make my traditional Thanksgiving post this year, so here it is a few days early.

* From the archives: “Utopia, LOL?”

* And in honor of the end of Twitter: one last Twitter roundup.

Elon Musk destroying Twitter for all of us who weren’t strong enough to delete our accounts on our own is basically a shot-for-shot remake of Gollum stealing the Ring from Frodo and falling into Mt. Doom

— Gerry Canavan (parody) (@gerrycanavan) November 5, 2022

not my white ass walking into Wakanda Forever two minutes into the movie with arms full of snacks

— Gerry Canavan (parody) (@gerrycanavan) November 14, 2022

English departments ruining the lives and earning potential of even the most successful among us https://t.co/eHEzTlmXVY

— Gerry Canavan (parody) (@gerrycanavan) October 29, 2022

me planning my games class syllabus pic.twitter.com/PP2JRhP2Hl

— Gerry Canavan (parody) (@gerrycanavan) October 27, 2022

it’s-a me pic.twitter.com/SLEYdQizpd

— Gerry Canavan (parody) (@gerrycanavan) October 29, 2022

If they decanonize Old Indy I'm going to lose ithttps://t.co/kYui0lwNvp pic.twitter.com/JWSjwb5pM0

— Gerry Canavan (parody) (@gerrycanavan) November 18, 2022

Fall Break Links? In This Economy?

I’ve been very busy! It might not get better anytime soon! But at least I’ve closed all my tabs...

A few of the academic publications I’m associated with have had new issues come out since March: Science Fiction Film and Television 15.1 and 15.2, a special issue on sf and disability; Extrapolation 63.1 and 63.2; SFRA Review 52.3. I’ve written a couple short things online too: “Octavia E. Butler: The Next 75 Years”; “Disney Will Not Save You”; “Morally Depraved Fantasy: House of the Dragon and Rings of Power“; “Essential Worker, Expendable Worker: On Edward Ashton’s Mickey7.” I was on the Left Hand of Le Guin podcast. My contributions to the Routledge Handbook of Star Trek are out now, too. And Uneven Futures drops this December!I got a teaching award! I got elected chair of my department effective November 1!A fun project at Marquette I’m marginally associated with: “J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript.”Marquette University support program for students with autism celebrates first graduate. 10 Things Faculty Need to Understand About Autism.CFPs: Tolkien Society Seminar 2023 – The Mighty and Frail Númenor. The Routledge Companion to Superhero Studies. Indigenous peoples in/and videogames. “Speculative Fiction and Futurism in the Middle East and North Africa.” Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Mid-Twentieth Century, 1920-1970. Journal of Posthumanism. Found Footage Horror.The CoFutures Prizes.Building a New Framework of Values for the University.

Baldwin: The defunding of public education has accelerated all the public universities’ forays into the realm of what they call “becoming entrepreneurial,” which I described above—land grabs, leveraging tax-free real estate, public-private partnerships, capturing intellectual property, and more. This story has to begin with the Higher Education Act of 1965. That legislation failed to directly fund higher education and instead offered indirect funding in the form of “student assistance” for tuition—a few grants but mostly loans, most of them private. Only through tuition, paid by most students through loans and debt, could institutions receive federal funds. This prompted a drive toward skyrocketing tuitions, the competition for higher-paying out-of-state and international students, and the debt financing of amenities to draw those students, which has created the massive national student-debt crisis. But even more, this strategy of raising tuition, funded through debt, wasn’t enough to offset decreases in public spending. So, at the same time, colleges and universities ramped up their participation in revenue-generating, community-destroying practices.

Organizing Against Precarity in Higher Education.Marquette had the bones of Father Marquette until last June. Who knew?How did Marquette end up playing the Soviets after midnight in 1975? A look back at the weirdest exhibition ever.Milwaukee Has Elected Two Socialists, Reviving the City’s Pro-Worker Political Tradition. Milwaukee socialists mark a return to prominence in Wisconsin politics.From the archives: How to Improve Your Teaching Evaluations without Improving Your Teaching.Punishment and Reward in the Corporate University. Who Can Live on a Ph.D. Stipend?Will Your College Survive the Demographic Cliff?Is There a Future for Literary Studies?Why Pursue a Career in the Humanities?The humanities’ scholarly infrastructure isn’t in disarray — it’s disappearing.Love’s Labor, Lost and Found: Academia, “Quit Lit,” and the Great Resignation.Bankers in the Ivory Tower.Columbia Loses Its No. 2 Spot in the U.S. News Rankings.The origins of student debt. The aging student debtors of America. The Single Most Important Thing to Know About Financial Aid: It’s a Sham.

That judgment: the move to funding education thru debt rather than direct state support is a manifestly failed experiment, the remedy for which is (1) student loan forgiveness of the cohorts that were impacted by the policy failure (2) resumption of state support at prior levels.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) December 14, 2021

Great interview with Wendy Brown. The real threat to academia isn't wokeness but "adjunctification, corporatization and then the rankings-and-rating systems of programs and faculties and individual academics." https://t.co/Lt8JagrhBY

— Talia Schaffer (@taliaschaffer1) May 2, 2022

another problem with this new "shrinking humanities" report is that it counts majors, not enrollments. A study I did at UCSB showed a 15% decline in hum majors but no decline at all in enrollments. So underhiring hurts workload and humanities students https://t.co/yudcEXZkuI

— Christopher Newfield (@cnewf) April 29, 2022

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, in space: The Tie That Binds: Announcing The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar.To Boycott or Not? Academic Conferences Face Pressure to Avoid Abortion-Hostile States.‘I didn’t really learn anything’: COVID grads face college.

I think people who don't have a lot of conversations with young people really have no idea just how impossibly, irreparably disruptive it has been to be in high school and college during COVID.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) September 30, 2022

What an English degree did for me, by Tulip Siddiq, Sarah Waters and more.U.S. Patent Office Lets Ohio State Trademark the Word ‘The’.

I had an expense report rejected for being 5 cents off yesterday, but someone with the right position can steal $40M with no one noticing for ten years https://t.co/0iN6QjdNbr

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 30, 2022

look I don’t think this is something we should be talking about https://t.co/lzqDW4JLrQ

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 13, 2022

All Eight Episodes of Kindred Adaptation to Premiere December 13th.Evaluating Unfinished Novels: Octavia E. Butler and the Improbability of Justice.Read an Excerpt from Star Child, Ibi Zoboi’s Portrait of Octavia Butler.

Octavia E. Butler never drove. She was a life-long bus rider & urban hiker. But in her long transits, she paid close attention to details, crafted stories in her head. My piece for @LAParentMag points to some of Butler’s old routes, the places that held meaning & inspiration. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/Wc71Uttwel

— Lynell George (@lynellgeorge) May 6, 2022

Animated Nihilism: Rick and Morty, Bojack Horseman, and the Strange Fate of the Adult Cartoon.The Grand Return of Comics Legend Alan Moore. Alan Moore’s Incredibly Underrated Writing Guide. Teaching Comics: A Syllabus.Legally defining Peter Parker.Marvel adjective chart.

this is fascinating https://t.co/DYacKZL9v0

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) September 2, 2022

The spatial layout of Disney World — zones of “fantasy,” “adventure,” “frontier,” and “tomorrow,” with democracy and monarchy orbiting and overlapping each other in the center — is as good a grounding in the fundamentals of American ideology as you’ll find anywhere.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) April 15, 2022

science fiction is LSD, fantasy is Ambien, horror is auto-erotic asphyxiation

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) September 20, 2022

Art Is Not Therapy.The Short Stories and Too-Short Life of Diane Oliver.Sickness, Systems, Solidarity: A Pandemics and Games Essay Jam.The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure.A Vast, Pointless Gyration of Radioactive Rocks and Gas in Which You Happen to Occur.Asimov’s Empire. Asimov’s Wall. Between Legacy and History: On Peele’s Nope. Everything Everywhere All at Once Is the Most Insane Movie of the Year. The nightmare of working for Marvel. Gonna Leave You All Severed: Initial Reflections on Severance. The Real Reason Matrix Resurrections Bombed. Adrian Tchaikovsky Continues His Epic Series With Children of Memory. The nightmare of having optimism about Picard season three. Star Trek after Socialism. And a glimpse into a better world: This 1970s-Style Star Trek: The Next Generation Animated Series Is Beyond Perfect.Violent Acts of Alien Intelligences: On Cixin Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem” and Mark Bould’s Climate Criticism.

What happened to The Movies? I looked at the top 2100 domestic box office films of the last 42 years to find out. Here are some findings.

For one: more sequels & comic book movies.

In 1981, just 16% of Top-25 movies were sequels, spinoffs, or remakes. In 2019, 80% were. pic.twitter.com/ffiYMNnmIu

— eric (@ercjhnkrbs) August 21, 2022

Chaucer the Rapist? Newly Discovered Documents Suggest Not.At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?This Danish Political Party Is Led by an AI.Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them.Retroactive Abortion: Time Travel and the Unborn Baby.If Wes Anderson Directed the Sopranos.Hobbits and the Hard Right: How Fantasy Inspires Italy’s Potential New Leader. Andrew Tate shows how fascists recruit online: Men fall victim to the insecurity-to-fascism pipeline. Embracer acquires rights to Tolkien-related IP, teases new LOTR films. Take-Two reveals new Lord of the Rings game, promising a ‘different’ time in Middle-earth.Fantasy Has Always Been About Race. Of black elves and dwarves: an African take on ‘Rings of Power.’ I actually had a mini-take on this on Twitter.The Game: A continually-run D&D campaign, since 1982.The Board Games That Ask You to Reenact Colonialism.Colony Collapse: Games like Civilization and The Sims make us into gods and ants simultaneously.Video games can help boost children’s intelligence. My plan all along…

good morning
here is Potato, a one page RPG about being a halfling and trying to quietly enjoy your potatoes in a world that refuses to leave you alone pic.twitter.com/PeLZiScT5F

— Oliver Darkshire (@deathbybadger) September 7, 2022

oh shit oh shit pic.twitter.com/7TTEDuPS9F

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) April 27, 2022

“Car Hitler, Car Stalin, and the Secret History of Pixars Cars Universe.”Remember August when it looked like Trump was finally going down? We were such kids!Conspiracy-promoting sheriffs claim vast election authority. Antiabortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines. Political Violence Is The New American Normal. Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History. Back to Class.Honoring the Dishonorable Part 1: The Dishonorable Dead. Honoring The Dishonorable, Part 2: The Dishonorable Living.Equal population mapper.The end of democracy in Wisconsin.Congress Found An Easy Way To Fix Child Poverty. Then It Walked Away.Baby boomers facing spike in homelessness: “As much as we try, we might be stuck.”

This is the single bluntest assessment of the Democratic Party I've ever seen a liberal make in a major paper. A true must-read from @perrybaconjr. https://t.co/rI0lW4Sta5 pic.twitter.com/te9uJKW8pv

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) June 29, 2022

The part of the Star Wars mythos where the incompetent elites who failed to stop the system from sliding into fascism simply go into hiding and do nothing waiting for a bunch of kids to grow up and fix the problem themselves hits pretty hard right now.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 28, 2022

the next five years of US politics summarized pic.twitter.com/hdjIyNm4iD

— Spooky Musgrave (@profmusgrave) April 11, 2022

A neuroscience image sleuth finds signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles, threatening a reigning theory of the disease. Two decades of Alzheimer’s research may be based on deliberate fraud that has cost millions of lives.The mystifying ride of child suicide. Why American Teens Are So Sad.War in the womb: A ferocious biological struggle between mother and baby belies any sentimental ideas we might have about pregnancy.When Chess Gets Weird.Here is The Batman (2022) but starring Adam West from the 1960s TV series.America’s slow but very real decline into a fascist state as told by the post-sitcom careers of its lovable goofballs.From the archives: Yellowstone has a 50 square mile “Zone of Death” where you can get away with murder.The United States of Abandoned Places.A Bored Chinese Housewife Spent Years Falsifying Russian History on Wikipedia.An astronomer thinks alien tech could be on the ocean floor. Not everyone agrees. I don’t suppose they would, no.An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal.The UFO sightings that swept the US. Wisconsin UFOs.Why does time go forwards, not backwards?Time might not exist, according to physicists and philosophers – but that’s okay.New Hubble Space Telescope data suggests ‘something weird’ is going with our universe, Nasa says. I’ve been saying this!The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It.In a Parallel Universe, Another You.

I consider myself an atheist, but I've always really liked the Catholic version of God. There is an all power, all loving entity. Then he created weird little horny apes, and tortures them eternally if they act too weird and horny.

It's a beautiful idea. I just wish it was true.

— Existential Comics (@existentialcoms) June 15, 2022

pic.twitter.com/V0tmZsNfrA

— Mark Bould (@MarkBould3) April 17, 2022

We're a modest company with modest goals:
1: sell a quality product at a fair price
2: drain the world's oceans so we can find and kill god

— Stev D (@Stev_D) October 21, 2014

How Eco-Fiction Became Realer Than Realism.Do you want water or not? Make up your minds!We built a fake metropolis to show how extreme heat could wreck cities.By 2080, climate change will make US cities shift to climates seen today hundreds of miles to the south.Not a headline you love to see: Wildfires Are Setting Off 100-Year-Old Bombs on WWI Battlefields.Americans keep moving to where the water isn’t. Phoenix could soon be uninhabitable — and the poor will be the last to leave.Jackson water system is failing, city will be with no or little drinking water indefinitely.The water wars hit the suburbs. Tensions Grow in Colorado River Negotiations.Decade-long drought turns Chilean lake to desert as global warming changes weather patterns.An ‘extreme heat belt’ will impact over 100 million Americans in the next 30 years, study finds.As the Planet Cooks, Climate Stalls as a Political Issue. Remaking the Anthropocene. Animal Futurity. “If you don’t feel despair, you’re not opening your eyes.” A Strategy for Ruination.As Climate Fears Mount, Some Are Relocating Within the US.Proximity to fracking sites associated with risk of childhood cancer.Animal populations worldwide have declined nearly 70% in just 50 years, new report says.Crafting with Ursula : Kim Stanley Robinson on Ambiguous Utopias. Kim Stanley Robinson on Solving the Climate Crisis, Buddhism, and the Power of Science Fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Guide to Keeping the Doomsday Glacier Hanging On. Growing Up Fast On Planet Earth, With Kim Stanley Robinson. Kim Stanley Robinson interview at Farsighted magazine: “Mars Is Irrelevant to Us Now.” Science Over Capitalism: Kim Stanley Robinson and the Imperative of Hope. A Weird, Wonderful Conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson.Tomorrow Isn’t Over: A Reading List About Brighter Futures.The climate is changing. Science fiction is too.‘A new way of life’: the Marxist, post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan.The Dawn of the Pandemic Age.More than half of Americans alive today were exposed to dangerous levels of lead as kids.Hooray! The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Has Become a Thriving Ecosystem, Scientists Say.Understanding longtermism. Against longtermism.Anthropocene Gothic.Olúfémi O. Táíwò’s theory of everything.Nuclear war between US, Russia would leave 5 billion dead from hunger, study says. Well, if that’s true, I’m against it.Amazon activists mourn death of ‘man of the hole’, last of his tribe.It can always get worse.They say time is the fire in which we burn.How to Be an Anticapitalist Today.And the arc of history is long, but Rotterdam bridge won’t be dismantled for Jeff Bezos’ superyacht to sail through. We did it, folks.

if you don’t oppose nuclear war when you’re 25, you have no heart. if you’re not in favor of nuclear war by the time you’re 35, you have no head

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 12, 2022

This was too accurate pic.twitter.com/0jWjDmbH5D

— Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman) September 6, 2022

The massive power of trains yet confinement to a single path makes them comparable to angels

— ᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟ (@blindlettr) March 25, 2022

from a student, this is my new favorite meme pic.twitter.com/XEZqKD26xJ

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 11, 2022

Fall 2022 Syllabi! “J.R.R. Tolkien” and “Histories of Anti-Capitalism”!

My syllabi are up for Fall 2022: a slightly revised version of my J.R.R. Tolkien class that utilizes this semester’s Haggery Museum of Art exhibit, and a brand new grad course titled “Histories of Anti-Capitalism.” Here’s the general plan for the anti-capitalism course, which is going to get finalized in consultation with the students who will be leading discussion each week:

WEEK THEMES AND ASSIGNMENTSWEEK 1 What Is Capitalism? What Is Anti-Capitalism?
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto” [marxists.org]
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism (excerpt) [D2L]
Existential Comics, “Explaining Capitalism to Aliens”Sep. 5 LABOR DAYWEEK 2 Four Futures
Peter Frase, Four FuturesWEEK 3 The Luddites and after
Gavin Mueller, Breaking Things at WorkWEEK 4 Critique
Barbara Foley, Marxist Literary Criticism TodayWEEK 5 Utopia
Fredric Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” “Utopia as Replication,” and An American Utopia [D2L and YouTube]WEEK 6 Postcolonalism
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the EarthWEEK 7 Black Marxism
C.L.R. James, Cedric Robinson, bell hooks, and Angela Davis [D2L]WEEK 8 Gender
Silvia Federici (wages for housework), Kathi Weeks (abolition of the family) [D2L]WEEK 9 20th century text we will choose togetherWEEK 10 Queer Marxism
José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising UtopiaWEEK 11 Disability
disability rights movements, the ADA, Marta Russell and Ravi Malhorta, Sami Schalk, “Neoliberalism and the Commodification of Mental Health” [D2L]WEEK 12 Ecology
John Bellamy Foster (ecology against capitalism), André Gorz (“The Social Ideology of the Motorcar”), Kathryn Yusoff (the Anthropocene), Greta Thunberg [D2L and Web]WEEK 13 The University
How the University Works; student movements; precarious labor and unionization; student debt abolition; state funding [D2L and Web]  THANKSGIVING BREAK: NO CLASSWEEK 14 21st century text we will choose togetherWEEK 15 PRESENTATIONS   Dec. 16 FINAL PAPERS DUE

SFFTV Open Call for Submissions and Special Issue Proposals, as Well as Books for Review

Science Fiction Film and Television invites article submissions on any topics related to sf and visual media; we especially invite articles related to the production economy of the culture industry and to non-US sf, as well as articles that related to possible upcoming special issues on (1) indigenous sf filmmaking and (2) the career of Taika Waititi. We also invite proposals from potential guest editors for special issues; please write gerry.canavan@marquette.edu for more information on this process.

SFFTV is currently edited by Anindita Banerjee (Cornell University), Gerry Canavan (Marquette University), Dan Hassler-Forest (Utrecht University), and its newest editor, Ida Yoshinaga (George Institute of Technology). Preferred length for articles is approximately 7000-9000 words; all topics related to science fiction film, television, gaming, other visual media will be considered. Typical response time is within three months. Check the journal website at Liverpool University Press for full guidelines for contributors; please direct any individualized queries to gerry.canavan@marquette.edu.

The journal is also seeking reviewers of recent works of sf and sf-adjacent critical theory as well as recent SF visual media. While we accept pitches, we also have the following books available for reviewers:

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO AMERICAN HORROR (edited by Stephen Shapiro and Mark Storey)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-american-horror/6112D13AE5342761D59714310C5E54CD

CITIZEN SCIENCE FICTION (Jerome Winter)

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793621481/Citizen-Science-Fiction

CONSTELLATIONS: THE OA (David Sweeney)

https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/series/series-15365/?sort=vol_desc

THE OUTER LIMITS (Joanne Morreale)

https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/outer-limits

THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO STAR TREK (edited By Leimar Garcia-Siino, Sabrina Mittermeier, Stefan Rabitsch)

https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Star-Trek/Garcia-Siino-Mittermeier-Rabitsch/p/book/9780367366674

STAR WARRIORS OF THE MODERN RAJ: MATERIALITY, MYTHOLOGY, AND TECHNOLOGY OF INDIAN SCIENCE FICTION

Sami Ahmad Khan

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo125520594.html

THE WORLD IS BORN FROM ZERO (Cameron Kunzelman)

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110719451/html?lang=en

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 recent SF media is still available for reviewing. 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!

Summer Online Course: Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism!

I don’t think I’ve ever put up the syllabus for my asynchronous online course on Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, which was filmed and designed before COVID and is just really well put-together (if I do say so myself). In the first half we study US Afrofuturist texts like Get Out, “Dirty Computer,” Bloodchild and Other Stories, and Black Panther (film and comics); in the second half we study Africanfuturist texts like District 9, “Pumzi,” Lagoon, and In the United States of Africa. Check out the syllabus! I’m really excited to get back to this one when it starts next month.

new fall course: “Histories of Anti-Capitalism”!

I’ve got a great schedule lined up for Fall: a special version of my Tolkien course partnering with UWM and linking up with the Haggerty’s “Art of the Manuscript” exhibit, and a grad special topics course called “Histories of Anti-Capitalism.” Here’s a course description — suggestions very welcome!

Other English Fall course descriptions are trickling in here…

Course Title: Histories of Anti-Capitalism

Coure Description: “We live in capitalism,” Ursula K. Le Guin once said. “Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” This course will take a long view of anti-capitalist thought, from the Luddite revolt of the early nineteenth century to the ongoing climate strikes of Greta Thunberg—investigating where resistance to capitalism has flourished and where it has failed, as well as where it has intersected with important trends in feminist, antiracist, anticolonial, LGBTQ+, ecological, and disability activism. We will also explore the speculative literary genre of utopia, and explore how its utopian, quasi-utopian, heterotopian, dystopian, and downright anti-utopian figurations have reflected, inspired, and critiqued the left’s centuries-long struggle against capitalist realism.

Readings: We will consider a wide mix of literary, historical, and critical-theoretical documents of anti-capitalist and counter-hegemonic thought from the last two-hundred-plus years. A final reading list is still being constructed (and very open to suggestions!), but major literary authors could include such figures as Edward Bellamy, Samuel Butler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Chinua Achebe, Gene Roddenberry, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, and Kim Stanley Robinson, and major theorists could include Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Fredric Jameson, Mark Fisher, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Vandana Shiva, Enrique Dussel, Donna Haraway, David Graeber, and José Esteban Muñoz, among many others.

Assignments: Final critical paper or creative project; symposium presentation; weekly sandbox posts on D2L; enthusiastic and informed class participation

Carefully Curated Spring Break Links! Definitely Not Too Many!

SFFTV 15.1! SFRA Review 52.1! And some upcoming projects: a special issue of SFFTV on disability! Uneven Futures!Syllabus for Film Theory: Disability & Technology.CFP: Anticolonialism as Theory Symposium. CFP: Popular Fiction. The FIYAH Literary Magazine Grant Series is intended to assist Black writers of speculative fiction in defraying costs associated with honing their craft. A great piece from Adam Kotsko on having to come to terms with the unfortunate late work of a great thinker who helped shape his career.“Lena” is a true story. You knew it was when you read it.40 useful concepts you should know.Drawing blood: notes on Maus. The real reason some people are so afraid of ‘Maus.’ Why Maus Opened the Door to Comics as Literature in Schools.

In light of a Tennessee district banning MAUS, I'm sharing the greatest two pages ever written and drawn about the importance of children's literature and protecting children's access to books, starring Art Spiegelman and Maurice Sendak. From the New Yorker, September 27, 1997. pic.twitter.com/hC2jyHicPN

— andrewkarre (@andrewkarre) January 27, 2022

Grant Morrison’s annotations for Superman and the Authority have been fascinating.

Why, I say, oh why, is it so hard to simply serve the concept and write the adventures of a smart, creative and kind-hearted teenage girl with superpowers? What purpose earthly or unearthly is served by making this character an embittered space tyrant?

… I questioned the desire to attribute the worst aspects of human behaviour to characters whose only useful function, as I see it, aside from simply entertaining young people and anyone else who fancies an uplifting holiday in a storybook world far from the grinding monotony of pessimism and disillusion, is to provide a primary-coloured cartoon taste of how we all might be if we had the wit and the will and the self-sacrifice it takes to privilege our best selves and loftiest aspirations over our base instincts. While that great day is unlikely to happen any time soon in any halfway familiar real world, why not let comic book universes be playgrounds for the kind of utopian impulses that have in the past brought out the best in us?

Batman Swallowing His Own Cape: The Modern Caped Crusader’s Narrative Autocannibalism.Comixology was basically perfect for what it wanted to be, so of course Amazon trashed it.Head of security at FSU’s Strozier Library charged with theft of thousands of rare comics.Mysteries of free speech: ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill: Florida Senate passes controversial LGBTQ school measure. Florida school district cancels professor’s civil rights lecture over critical race theory concerns. Wisconsin Republicans advance bills that would let 18-year-olds carry concealed weapons at school. Wisconsin GOP votes to limit race theory at UW schools. Republican lawmakers plan legislation to break up MPS, expand vouchers to all students in a proposal to overhaul K-12 education. North Carolina superintendent abruptly removes MLK-themed novel from 10th grade class. Idaho librarians could face jail time for lending “harmful” books. This Is the End of Affirmative Action.What Happens to Middle School Kids When You Teach Them About Slavery? Here’s a Vivid Example.The University Crisis: Does the pandemic mark a breaking point? College Endowments Saw Stellar Returns as the Market Soared. Academic Freedom and Tenure: University System of Georgia. What the heck is going on in Georgia higher ed? Tenure Without Teeth. Grotesque Inequity. Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions.The Overbuilt Campus.

I’ve been in college continually since 1998 (now in 36th grade) and I think it’s hard for anyone who hasn’t been similarly present to comprehend just how much worse the student experience has gotten since the 90s https://t.co/ZkXX5XXnRf

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) February 22, 2022

https://t.co/sXic17MUTM

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 4, 2022

Mold, radon in FSU building tied to eight cancer cases in faculty report.Cripping the Neoliberal University – We need a Politics of Care.The Academic Conference Will Never Be the Same.The Power of Recognizing Higher Ed Faculty as Working-Class.U.S. Has Far Higher Covid Death Rate Than Other Wealthy Countries. What Do Masks Do to Kids? It’s ‘Alarming’: Children Are Severely Behind in Reading.New MAGA Emails Reveal Plot to Hand Arizona to Trump. ‘The Dark, Forgotten Carnival.’ Jan. 6 committee says Trump violated multiple laws in effort to overturn election. Criminal Charges Against Trump Just Became Way More Real. Trump considered blanket pardons for Jan. 6 rioters before he left office.Detroit overtaxed homeowners $600M. Years later, advocates still seeking reparations. Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal ‘black hole.’‘Shadow pandemic’: Advocates worry lockdowns have fuelled surge in partner violence.The school shooting generation grows up.How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood.Can giving parents cash help with babies’ brain development?I’ve always wondered about this: Texas trampoline parks aren’t regulated or inspected. We found 494 injuries in DFW region.Can Science Fiction Wake Us Up to Climate Reality? In a First, Alaska’s Arctic Waters Appear Poised for Dangerous Algal Blooms. US military faces crisis in Hawaii after leak poisons water. This 1882 surveying error saved a patch of forest from logging. IPCC issues ‘bleakest warning yet’ on impacts of climate breakdown. Carbon dioxide will have to be removed from air to achieve 1.5C, says report. How to Repair the Planet. Life in a ‘degrowth’ economy, and why you might actually enjoy it.

the problem in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/B3zDH15jI3

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 28, 2022

I have been exploring the work of Nukina Shunichi, a 19th century Samurai turned scifi writer recommended to me by one of my undergrads.

Why don't we have this writer on more syllabuses? He's completely overturned my view of the development of SFF.https://t.co/eAVuFrlQyk

— Sunny Singh (@ProfSunnySingh) February 3, 2022

From ‘Dune’ to climate change, UChicago scholar draws from unique experiences in new course.The Death of Philip K. Dick Brought to Life.The Octavia Butler Novel for Our Times. Not that one. Not that one either.Ada Palmer and the Weird Hand of Progress.I should teach this again: The Sci-Fi Crime Novel That’s a Parable of American Society.Defamiliarising Capitalism Through Speculative Fiction.Disney Censors Same-Sex Affection in Pixar Films, According to Letter From Employees.Enough people purchased a chemical on Amazon to attempt suicide that the company’s algorithm began suggesting other products that customers frequently bought along with it to aid in such efforts. Amazon has continued to sell the product.Bionic Eye Patients Are Going Blind Again After Manufacturer Decides They’re Obsolete.PSA: Renting From Hertz May Get You Arrested. For real: If you’ve rented a car from Hertz, there could be a warrant out for your arrest.He Donated His Kidney and Received a $13,064 Bill in Return.And on the pedestal these words appear: After Burning for Days, a Ship Carrying Thousands of Luxury Cars Sinks.Against the Contemporary American Essay.What is Love in African Fiction?

I think it’s bad for knowledge production that once a term reaches a certain level of obvious importance (like “Anthropocene”) it suddenly becomes “boring.”

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 31, 2022

Adrift, Broke, and Disillusioned: How a struggling bartender became the face of a resurgent left.Biden’s signature legislation expired. Recipients are wondering: WTF happened? The devastating effects of losing the child tax credit.Household debt jumped by $1 trillion in 2021, the most since 2007. Inflation rose 7.9% in February, as food and energy costs push prices to highest in more than 40 years. Rents reach ‘insane’ levels across US with no end in sight. Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee Is Helping Workers During COVID. As inflation heats up, 64% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.

I think Democrats were more or less certain to get slammed in the midterms no matter what they did — the real problem is that this window was their only opportunity to get anything done for the next decade and (just like in 2009) they blew it

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) February 18, 2022

One US Senator “heard stories” about people allegedly using the Child Tax Credit “for drugs” without any evidence or data to back it up.

He then used that as justification to nuke the entire national program, causing millions of kids to fall into poverty in weeks. Horrifying https://t.co/kOyuFp6ig4

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 18, 2022

A Rhodes scholar barista and the fight to unionize Starbucks.Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: An Explainer. ‘This is a fossil fuel war’: Ukraine’s top climate scientist speaks out. How Ukraine could become a nuclear crisis. Russian bombs. Why It’s Important To Debate Foreign Policy Even In Times Of Conflict.You don’t exist. I’ve been saying it for years!

I’ve said it before but I think it’s at least plausible that contemporary history seems so bizarre because there’s only a handful of universes where humanity didn’t go extinct during the Cold War https://t.co/CMjcSFlbEE

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) February 28, 2022

If you’d told me then that the late 90s were just about as good as things were going to get, man, I’d have had a lot of questions

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 28, 2022

No human has beaten a computer in a chess tournament in 15 years.Star Wars: You know, for kids. ‘The history of fantasy is racialized’: Lord of the Rings series sparks debate over race.Villeneuve’s “Dune”: Blending Spectacle and Cultural Erasure.Star Trek 2023 Movie To Reunite Kelvin Crew, Production Set To Start By End Of Year. What Happened to Tarantino’s ‘Star Trek’ Film? Every Detail About His Canceled Pitch. Star Trek: Picard’s narrow tightrope.Futurama is back, again, again.Five years on, Breath of the Wild’s open world is still unmatched.“It Was Horrible”: Inside Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy’s Mad Max Feud.Back to the Future: The Musical.Cult Classic ‘Fight Club’ Gets a Very Different Ending in China. ‘Fight Club’ Author Chuck Palahniuk Says China’s Censored Ending Is Actually Truer to His Vision.The US has plans to patrol the space around the moon. The Moon should be privatised to help wipe out poverty on Earth, economists say. We’re Not Prepared for Contamination Between Worlds. The quest to avert an asteroid apocalypse is going surprisingly well.

privatizing the Earth didn’t wipe out poverty did it https://t.co/xyWhdvxp1H

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) February 15, 2022

Garbage Hunters: Deciphering North Korea Through Its Trash.‘I just feel like Rhode Island has failed’: The family of a 12-year-old girl with autism is among those in limbo because of the lack of services for those in crisis. Dividing Up the Autism Spectrum Will Not End the Way You Think.The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Enough Truck Drivers.As intended: The 2020 census had big undercounts of Black people, Latinos and Native Americans.Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Whale. Cryptocurrency is a giant Ponzi scheme. NFTs Are, Quite Simply, Bullshit. Snowpiercer Asks Us to Imagine the End of the World — And the End of Capitalism. The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Marriage Are Wrong.

I have a crypto curious person in my life who explained that it’s because no one knows what happens with crypto when the power goes out for a long time, which is a pretty big problem for something that is supposed to be prepper currency https://t.co/U3fe0kl4KK

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) February 24, 2022

We need to talk about this Scarlet Witch action figure.Mapping the celebrity NFT complex. Web3 is the future, or a scam, or both.New Data Shows 61% Rise in U.S. Prison Deaths in 2020. Only One (1) Media Outlet Reported On It. The U.S. is limiting compassionate release in plea deals. Many say that’s cruel.Suicide hotline shares data with for-profit spinoff, raising ethical questions. Babies Are Dying of Syphilis. It’s 100% Preventable.Law enforcement agencies in Minnesota have been carrying out a secretive, long-running surveillance program targeting civil rights activists and journalists in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.Marquette has changed its university seal. Indigenous Education at Marquette.The Dawn of Everything.Against longtermism.A Henry Darger Dispute: Who Inherits the Rights to a Loner’s Genius?In my 35 years as a reporter, I have never seen anything of Afghanistan’s magnitude.Rich people, y’all.Types of dissertations.Red poets’ society: the secret history of the Stasi’s book club for spies.Giant spiders expected to drop from sky across the East Coast this spring.Vegetarians have 14% lower cancer risk than meat-eaters, study finds.What I Learned From Recording My Thoughts for an Immortal A.I. I mean…And the arc of history is long, but…

which in turns suggests he grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series on TV https://t.co/qo7GK6pvdy

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 5, 2022

pic.twitter.com/1iZmNEOIWM

— This Desiring-Machine Kills Fascists (@unflicuneballe) January 22, 2022

most of the cast is simply too old https://t.co/qkcc9bTYKW

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) February 7, 2022

Somehow, Spring Semester Returned

After a week’s reprieve, today is the start of spring semester at Marquette! I have two classes this term and one overload, a one-credit research seminar for the Honors in the Humanities program. Behold!

ENGLISH 4762/5762: Disability and Narrative

ENGLISH 4717/5717: Comics as Literature

HONORS 3954H: Research Seminar

Thanks as always to everyone whose work I draw on to do mine, this time especially Michael Bérubé and Sami Schalk (and also especially Melissa Ganz and Jenn Finn for their incredibly rich models for the Honors seminar!).

Sunday Reading!

* CFP: Folk Horror. CFP: Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2022.
* Four Tiny Essays on SF/F.
* The Future Is Black, Not Bleak: On Afrofuturist Poetry.

most of SF is https://t.co/uK9A4ZatBD

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 19, 2022

* Notes on Contemporary University Struggles: A Dossier.
* The Great Faculty Disengagement: Faculty members aren’t leaving in droves, but they are increasingly pulling away.
* Hustling to get by: side jobs in grad school. Great Books, Graduate Students, and the Value of Fun in Higher Education.
* Microsyllabus: The History of Campus Policing.
* They fought critical race theory. Now they’re focusing on ‘curriculum transparency.’

nice to just lay it all out like that https://t.co/alaaxYSedE pic.twitter.com/eT6tc4BxPj

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 21, 2022

* Two years since Covid was first confirmed in U.S., the pandemic is worse than anyone imagined. America’s second pandemic winter: More virus, less death. Parents and caregivers of young children say they’ve hit pandemic rock bottom. Students are protesting covid policies — and the adults who won’t listen to them. America’s youth turn left.
* Families are in distress after the first month without the expanded child tax credit.
* ‘If I Die, I Die’: Meat Loaf Spurned COVID Rules Before Death. Inside Meat Loaf’s Health Troubles, Including Vocal Strain, Alcoholism and Onstage Collapses. Meat Loaf Was My Softball Coach.

only in the work of meat loaf do we see the dialectical co-constitution of what is “cool” and what is “uncool,” precisely how what is cool is always deeply uncool and what is uncool is always, in its way, cool https://t.co/KyAElUgrXn

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 21, 2022

Huck Finn’s “All right then, I'll go to hell” is for my money one of the absolute greatest sentences ever written and it’s sort of funny how many of Meat Loaf’s songs are elaborations on that theme but exclusively about getting laid.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 21, 2022

submitted for peer review pic.twitter.com/SrrfFWKWlK

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 21, 2022

rock legend, actor, covid denialist — two out of three ain’t bad

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 21, 2022

* America’s shift to the right in 2021 is worse news for Democrats than it seems. The long slide: Inside Biden’s declining popularity as he struggles with multiple crises. ‘The Lowest Point in My Lifetime’: How 14 Independent Voters Feel About America. Joe Biden Promised Change. He Hasn’t Delivered.

hard to believe there’s just 367 days until Kamala Harris becomes president of the United States

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 20, 2022

* What Does It Mean If Republicans Won’t Debate?
* Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines. Georgia Has a Very Strong Case Against Trump. Would Trump Throw His Own Kids Under the Bus to Save Himself? We May Soon Find Out.
* Florida Advances Bill That Would Ban Making White People Feel Bad about Racism, and No, That’s Not a Joke.
* Scientists Warn that Sixth Mass Extinction Has ‘Probably Started’. How to Prepare for Climate Change’s Most Immediate Impacts. Don’t Look Up Is Missing What We Really Need From Climate Change Movies.
* Scientists Are Racing to Understand the Fury of Tonga’s Volcano. Tonga volcano: islands covered in ash as three deaths confirmed.
* “When my last movie UHF came out in 1989, I made a solemn vow to my fans that I would release a major motion picture every 33 years, like clockwork. I’m very happy to say we’re on schedule,” said Yankovic in a statement. “And I am absolutely thrilled that Daniel Radcliffe will be portraying me in the film. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is the role future generations will remember him for.”
* The Moon Knight moment.
* The Star Trek century.
* Do you know what’s cooler than One Ring?

we’re gonna see Gandalf breeding Hobbits as a Ring-containment device in an illegal laboratory in the valley of Anduin

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 19, 2022

GIMLI: ORIGINS

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 19, 2022

Sexy Sauron, what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
Sexy Sauron, what have you done?

Sexy Sauron, you broke the rules…

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 19, 2022

* Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Looks Absolutely Incredible, But… Crunch and TT Games.
* Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them.
* Smedley Butler Helped Build American Empire. Then He Turned Against It.
* The Fall of NC Mutual.
* Mother sues Meta and Snap over daughter’s suicide.
* Where’s the snow? Milwaukee is nearly 15 inches below its average this season.
* At-will employment in Wisconsin apparently means that you can be fired at any time for any reason but you need your boss’s permission to take a new job.
* Acting Mayor Johnson announces public safety plan to tackle gun violence, car thefts and reckless driving in Milwaukee.
* Discrimination has cost Black home owners of billions of dollars of generational wealth. What can change that?
* Huge, if true: Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme.
* Shakespeare Noir. The Tragedy of Macbeth Is a Cinematic Feast for Starving Film Lovers.
* 6 Dysfunctional Family Roles and Their Characteristics.
* New Bad Art Friend / West End Caleb mashup just dropped.
* Alcohol consumption can directly cause cancer, new genetic study finds.
* The Medieval Vegetarian.
* The Battle over Howard the Duck.
* This is your only friend in the world right now. It’s gonna be a long night.
* tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life
* They stan.
* We stan.
* What are the most compelling and readable “plotless” novels you’ve ever read? My answer.
* And it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be better with the pizza in hand.

Lost in January Links

* Out now: Extrapolation Volume 62.3 explores the representation of cyborgs in Pat Cadigan’s Synners, care in Gen Urobuchi’s science-fiction, and the critique of Western technoscience in Welcome to Night Vale.
* CFP: Medical Humanities and the Fantastic: Neurodiversity and Disability. CFP: Push: Childbirth in Global Screen Culture.
* Is there a dominant mode of current science fiction? Notes on Squeecore. Portrait of the Author As a Component of a “Punk-Or-Core” Formulation. Science Fiction Is Never Evenly Distributed. The sci-fi genre offering radical hope for living better.

tired: hopepunk
wired: popehunk

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 17, 2022

* Science Fiction is a Luddite Literature.
* Notes on the Forum of the Simulacra.

The SF/F studies variant of this (along with pop culture studies, cultural studies, contemporary literature, often film and tv, etc etc) is the way that these adjunct-staffed get-them-hooked courses so rarely translate into permanent lines for specialists in those fields. https://t.co/dU6iw9Qgo5

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 10, 2022

* How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness.
* How climate catastrophe has consumed popular culture. Ride or Die? Mark Bould and the Fast-and-Furiocene.
* Is Geoengineering the Only Solution?: Exploring Climate Crisis in Neal Stephenson’s “Termination Shock.” Neal Stephenson Thinks Greed Might Be the Thing That Saves Us. Coming back from a time of illness: how finance can learn from climate change fiction. Melancholy Utopianism: The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. We Can’t Just Grow Our Way Out of This Climate Mess.
* Climate Realism, Capitalist and Otherwise.
* Pop culture can no longer ignore our climate reality.
* Marvel Movies Made 30% Of The Total Box Office.
* Nnedi Okorafor on SF through an African Lens.
* The Matrix Resurrections and trans life (and death). Unpacking the Hidden Meanings in The Matrix Resurrections. A Muddle instead of a Movie.

Zizek commenting on Resurrections is like an Exile from a previous instance of the Matrix coming back to fight Neo https://t.co/pck0vcZ5T4

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 10, 2022

* Games Studies Studies Buddies is such a good podcast and this is an exemplary episode. Like and subscribe!
* Joss Whedon fully burns down what’s left of his career. The Joss Whedon Era: A Look Back.
* Why so much Obama-era pop culture feels so cringe now.
* Have We Forgotten How to Read Critically?
* From lynchings to the Capitol: Racism and the violence of revelry.
* California’s Forever Fire.
* California, Arizona and Nevada agree to take less water from ailing Colorado River.
* The heat stays on: Earth hits 6th warmest year on record. The Oceans Are Now Hotter Than At Any Point in Human History, Scientists Warn. Here’s how hot Earth has been since you were born. The Supreme Court Case That Could Upend Efforts to Protect the Environment. US hit by 20 separate billion-dollar climate disasters in 2021, Noaa report says.
* As Tax Credit Expires, “Huge Increase” in Child Poverty Feared Amid Omicron Wave. How Did We Go From Stimulus Checks to “Go to Work With COVID”?

it’s really fascinating how Trump’s near-total lack of ideological commitment made possible all sorts of things that are just completely foreclosed now https://t.co/Anc4hI9aVj

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 4, 2022

* The Ticking Bomb of Crypto Fascism. Tech Startup Wants To Gamify Suing People Using Crypto Tokens.
* Family Capitalism and the Small Business Insurrection: The growing militancy of the Republican right is less about an alliance of small business against big business than it is an insurrection of one form of capitalism against another: the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned.
* Ultras.
* Democrats will have to do more to save democracy from Trump. The January Sixers Have Their Own Unit at the DC Jail. Here’s What Life Is Like Inside. The January 6th Republicans (from Jonah Goldberg no less). Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes charged with seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Isn’t it pretty to think so?
* The Rise and Fall of Latinx.
* Don’t Look Up Is a Terrible Movie. Really bad. I ranted.
* The Jewish Roots of ‘Star Trek’. Why ‘Star Trek’ made San Francisco the center of the universe.
* A Grieving Family Wonders: What if They Had Known the Medical History of Sperm Donor 1558?
* Percentage that would visit the Moon as a tourist, if money were not a factor.
* On the Legacy of Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo Journalism.
* The end of the pandemic? Study: Omicron associated with 91% reduction in risk of death compared to Delta. Hospitals Are in Serious Trouble. America’s COVID Rules Are a Dumpster Fire. We are the 3.2%.

In terms of lived, everyday experience, I think the pandemic will be over by:

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 13, 2022

* School Closures Led to More Sleep and Better Quality of Life for Adolescents. After last year’s learning loss, we need a plan for students with disabilities. Ideology and school closings. Who is this gentleman, Dude?

The vision of schools as businesses is currently ascendant. That is: schools should respond to what their customers want.

I have a few major concerns about this.

1/

— Jack Schneider (@Edu_Historian) January 12, 2022

* The Mangle of Federalism.
* Book bans in schools are catching fire. Black authors say uproar isn’t about students.
* Becoming Martian.
* Last Year’s Longest Strike Just Ended in Victory.
* Yale, Georgetown, Other Top Schools Illegally Collude to Limit Student Financial Aid, Lawsuit Alleges.

liking every single tweet about Columbia grad student workers’ big win. I got chills when I heard. it is nothing short of epic to bring a union-busting behemoth of a hedge-fund to the table and WIN. solidarity now, solidarity forever. so proud of and excited for @SW_Columbia.

— lil uzi veritas (@nadirahdixit) January 7, 2022

* Dismissive Incomprehension: A Use of Purported Ignorance to Undermine Others.
* This Is the Way the Humanities End.
* A professor welcomed students to class by calling them ‘vectors of disease to me.’ He has been suspended.
* These Tenured Professors Were Laid Off. Here’s How They Got Their Jobs Back.
* So you want to work in academic publishing.
* As Afghanistan’s harsh winter sets in, many are forced to choose between food and warmth.
* US inflation reached 7% in December as prices rise at rates unseen in decades.
* Bernie Sanders says Democrats are failing: ‘The party has turned its back on the working class.’
* A simple plan to solve all of America’s problem.
* Sea Power, ‘Disco Elysium’, and the importance of being miserable.
* HBO’s Station Eleven Surpasses the Novel.
* Oh boy, they’re finally rebooting Quantum Leap.
* I’d never known this: Schrödinger, the Father of Quantum Physics, Was a Pedophile.
* Wes Anderson’s next sounds like another mistake.
* Haruki Murakami’s Monopoly.
* ‘Invincible’ Animated Series Sparks Profits Suit Against Robert Kirkman.
* What Elmo’s Viral Moment Tells Us About How Parents Watch Kids’ TV.
* A people’s history of the Beatles logo.
* If you want a vision of the future.
* Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park Is a Terrible Masterpiece.
* The Wire as copraganda.
* BEHOLD! MEGA-MANHATTAN!

ok but only if it is a maximum-security, open-air prison https://t.co/g6e1DcsAxm

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 14, 2022

* The Strange Literary Puzzle Only Four People Have Ever Solved. And welcome to the Wordle century.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t think the human brain can truly comprehend that there’s no such thing as “cold,” only different directions of heat transfer https://t.co/kbafi5i5hC

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 3, 2022

Stand by Me: Still Standin’ (2023)
Porky’s Legacy (2024)
Return to Return to Oz (2024)
57 Candles (2025)
sex, lies & nonfungible tokens (2025)
Christ Origins: First Temptation (2026)
Turner & Hooch: Afterlife (2027)

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 15, 2022

Star Wars in chronological order pic.twitter.com/WmD8j20wQm

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 15, 2022