Blog Archive

August 29, 2026 — kludgetastic

Site updates

June 25, 2026 — site

You’ll pry my overcomplicated slide-generation hacks from my cold dead hands

March 3, 2026 — kludgetastic

This February 12 @ NYU: Yank Mags, Mushrooms, and Failed Isomorphisms

February 7, 2026 — events · research · sociological bandwagon

My courses for Spring 2026

December 18, 2025 — teaching

My courses for Fall 2025

August 28, 2025 — teaching

What isn’t next: against the “3.5% principle”

June 16, 2025 — totally not trolling

Maybe it’s about undermining the organized fractions of the middle class

March 18, 2025 — work

My courses for Spring 2025

October 28, 2024 — teaching

Fall 2024 Courses

September 2, 2024 — teaching

SHARP 2024

June 28, 2024 — events · research

Sociology-of-Literature-a-Palooza, April 2024

April 14, 2024 — events · sociological bandwagon

Spring 2024 Courses

January 17, 2024 — teaching

English PhD job statistics, or, The worst is not / So long as we can say…

November 20, 2023 — work

“Genre Fiction without Shame” in American Literary History

November 17, 2023 — research · genre · sociological bandwagon

Data Is a Sandwich

September 22, 2023 — research · teaching · dh

Fall 2023 Courses: Which Way to Meatspace?

September 3, 2023 — teaching

Some cultural datasets for teaching use

July 7, 2023 — teaching · dh · kludgetastic

Spring 2023 teaching materials

May 23, 2023 — teaching

Some Annotations for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood

May 23, 2023 — teaching

“Origins of the US Genre-Fiction System” in Book History

May 16, 2023 — research · genre · sociological bandwagon

Some Annotations for Agha Shahid Ali’s Call Me Ishmael Tonight

February 26, 2023 — teaching

Spring 2023 Courses: The Curious Adventure of the Big Sleep of Petals in a Blue Dress of Blood. Also, Poetry

January 4, 2023 — teaching

I’m on TV! Talking about money and tenure!

October 14, 2022 — work

Fall 2022 Courses: Hidden Agenda Revealed!

September 9, 2022 — teaching · dh

Self-deprecation, or, old software staggers on

July 11, 2022 — dh · kludgetastic

Twilight for tenure: even more data exploration

May 31, 2022 — work

Who knows what genres lurk in the heart of man?

April 27, 2022 — research · genre

“What counts is, above all, to understand”

April 17, 2022 — microblog · dh

“He said he had been radicalized by the experience of being chair of the math department”

March 18, 2022 — microblog · work

For Aijaz Ahmad

March 11, 2022 — work · theory

Microblog 7: Not tweeting this

March 3, 2022 — microblog · work

A Review of Thompson’s Book Wars

February 3, 2022 — research · sociological bandwagon · DH

Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the thing

February 2, 2022 — work

RCM budgeting, a failure hiding in plain sight

December 15, 2021 — work

How To Reach Me

December 14, 2021 — work · kludgetastic

Twilight for tenure

November 9, 2021 — work

Microblog 6: Water is life

November 2, 2021 — microblog

For Pascale Casanova, belatedly

October 4, 2021 — work · theory · sociological bandwagon

Rutgers’s Big Spenders

September 10, 2021 — work

Author, Reader, Field: 2021 edition

August 13, 2021 — teaching · sociological bandwagon

OUP: Recognize the OUP USA Guild

June 20, 2021 — work

Some Annotations for Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets

March 18, 2021 — teaching

Spring 2021 courses

January 19, 2021 — teaching

No layoffs, no cuts. Remarks to the Special Meeting of the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, October 15, 2020

October 15, 2020 — work

A Science-Fiction Syllabus

September 3, 2020 — teaching

Silence of a rat come out to see

March 23, 2020 — research · modernism

JIL Omens

August 7, 2019 — work

New features for dfr-browser/dfrtopics

August 7, 2019 — kludgetastic · dh

Next week at Rutgers: Data, Classification, and Everyday Life

January 23, 2019 — events · research

Modernist Studies Without Modernism: Preprint

January 17, 2019 — research · modernism · sociological bandwagon · DH · theory

Microblog 5: neoliberalism, a primer

December 19, 2018 — microblog

Microblog 4

December 17, 2018 — microblog

Microblog 3

December 12, 2018 — microblog

Microblog 2

September 5, 2018 — microblog

Microblog 1

August 22, 2018 — microblog

The Uncounted: Jobs and Graduates

November 25, 2017 — work

Casualization Sensation

September 29, 2017 — work

Mounting Network Volumes via osascript in Sierra

August 28, 2017 — kludgetastic

Syllabuses for Fall 2017

August 28, 2017 — teaching

A debt

July 1, 2017 — work

Statilisticles

June 21, 2017 — kludgetastic

Course descriptions for Fall 2017

February 28, 2017 — teaching

From Reproducible to Productive

February 27, 2017 — research · DH

Teaching Literary Data: What Makes It Hard

January 3, 2017 — DH · teaching · research

Course descriptions for Spring 2017

October 19, 2016 — teaching

Notes on Using Digital Media for First-Year Graduate Students

September 21, 2016 — DH · teaching

Kurt Wallander and the Case of the Text-Encoding Gremlins

July 6, 2016 — genre · world literature · DH · arcade

At SNS 2016

May 12, 2016 — events · world literature

Title production numbers: an initial gesture

March 26, 2016 — research

Course descriptions for Fall 2016

March 1, 2016 — teaching

A site update

February 23, 2016 — site

Of Literary Standards and Logistic Regression: A Reproduction

January 4, 2016 — DH · theory · sociological bandwagon · kludgetastic

Autonomy in the Journal of Dutch Literature

December 23, 2015 — Fictions of Autonomy · modernism · world literature · research

At MSA This Week

November 18, 2015 — events · modernism

At NYU this Thursday

October 13, 2015 — events · DH · sociological bandwagon · theory

What Might Have Been

September 28, 2015 — sociological bandwagon · DH · proof too large to fit in margin

dfrtopics, hold the dfr

September 23, 2015 — DH · kludgetastic

Topic modeling: a software update

September 17, 2015 — DH · kludgetastic

Sign Up for Our MSA Seminar!

August 31, 2015 — or else · events

Doing without Texts: Sapiro on Translation

August 23, 2015 — sociological bandwagon · DH · arcade

Distant Reading: More Work to be Done

August 8, 2015 — DH · theory · sociological bandwagon

Programmatic Lecture Slides Made Even More Difficult with R Markdown

May 27, 2015 — DH · kludgetastic · TeX

At Temple This Week

April 7, 2015 — events · DH

Terry Pratchett: “Not having battles, and doing without kings”

March 15, 2015 — genre · arcade

At Harvard This Week

March 2, 2015 — events · theory

rJava, Yosemite, R, RStudio

February 3, 2015 — kludgetastic · DH

For Daniel Albright

January 19, 2015 — research · modernism · Fictions of Autonomy

Easy Lecture Slides Made Difficult with Pandoc and Beamer

December 24, 2014 — TeX · DH · kludgetastic

Signs@40 Celebration and Panel Discussion

November 16, 2014 — events · DH

Hatterr Abroad in Contemporary Literature

November 9, 2014 — research · modernism · world literature

At the Modernist Studies Association This Week

November 7, 2014 — events

Signs@40

October 29, 2014 — research · DH · thank a feminist

At Penn This Week

October 13, 2014 — DH · events · theory

At Carnegie Mellon This Week

September 29, 2014 — events · DH · theory · totally not trolling

Spring 2015 Courses

September 21, 2014 — teaching · DH

Fun with Dates

August 8, 2014 — DH · kludgetastic

Social Science and Profanity at DH 2014

July 26, 2014 — DH · events · theory · arcade · sociological bandwagon

At DH 2014

July 2, 2014 — DH · events

The Quiet Transformations of Literary Studies

May 29, 2014 — DH · theory · publications

Fall 2014 Courses

March 9, 2014 — teaching

In Utrecht This Week: The Ethics of Literary Autonomy

February 3, 2014 — events · Fictions of Autonomy

The DH@RU Showcase

January 28, 2014 — DH · events

Omnivorousness, Elite Taste, Literary Scholarship

January 15, 2014 — arcade · DH

At MLA 2014

January 9, 2014 — events · DH

Workshop notes: Digital text

November 23, 2013 — DH · events

DH Workshop Tomorrow: Empowerment Part II

November 19, 2013 — DH · events

Do Not Despair, Do Not Presume

A Cautionary Tale about JSTOR Data

November 8, 2013 — DH

A journal-topic-model browser

October 20, 2013 — DH

Upcoming DH events in October

October 11, 2013 — DH · events

More Histories, Different Histories

October 1, 2013 — events · theory

Indian Literature As Comparative Literature

September 26, 2013 — events

Vannevar Bush, Eat Your Heart Out

August 12, 2013 — DH

My book in digital form

June 28, 2013 — Fictions of Autonomy

Markdown and biblatex to HTML: some refinements

April 21, 2013 — TeX · TeX4ht · kludgetastic

Topic Modeling in the JDH

April 21, 2013 — DH · publications

At ACLA 2013

April 5, 2013 — events

Benjamin’s “Work of Art” in the Age of Production

March 29, 2013 — DH · arcade

Two Upcoming Events

March 15, 2013 — events · DH

A (bib)latex to html workflow, for some values of “work”

February 12, 2013 — TeX · TeX4ht · kludgetastic

A “strategic vision”

Why not be idealistic?

February 11, 2013 — arcade

Remarks to the Comparative Modernisms Workshop at Northwestern

January 15, 2013 — Fictions of Autonomy · events

Monday: Discussing My Book at Northwestern

January 12, 2013 — Fictions of Autonomy · events

LaTeX and My Book: Postscript

January 6, 2013 — TeX · Fictions of Autonomy

My Book, Available at MLA

January 3, 2013 — Fictions of Autonomy · events

Book event at Northwestern, January 14

December 29, 2012 — Fictions of Autonomy · events

Topic-Modeling PMLA

December 13, 2012 — DH · joint · arcade · theory

Website update

December 5, 2012 — site

MSA 2012 Roundtable: Beyond Modernist Periodization

October 17, 2012 — events · modernism

THATCamp Theory 2012: Session proposal

October 12, 2012 — DH · events

Modernism & Globalization Seminar Series 2012–2013

September 14, 2012 — events · modernism

A draft of my Spring 2012 graduate seminar syllabus

September 11, 2012 — teaching

Fall 2012 Courses at Rutgers

August 23, 2012 — teaching

The Short Life of Publishing Tradition

What are the eras of publishing history? Are they literary eras?

June 6, 2012 — arcade

Distant Cousins

Literary Studies and Thompson’s Merchants of Culture

May 16, 2012 — arcade

On Wishing Death to Word

April 13, 2012 — TeX

Percent-Ampersand Is Not Shebang

April 10, 2012 — TeX

Fall 2012 Courses at Rutgers

April 3, 2012 — teaching

ACLA Seminar in Providence: Bad Reception

March 10, 2012 — events

Funny old thing (LaTeX class for Yale PhD thesis)

March 10, 2012 — TeX · kludgetastic

Next year’s classes: forthcoming soon

March 10, 2012 — site · teaching

How to Begin

January 22, 2012 — TeX

Site update

January 14, 2012 — site

My Forthcoming Book

December 14, 2011 — publications · Fictions of Autonomy

ACLA 2012

December 10, 2011 — events

Literary Foundations II website

December 9, 2011 — teaching

biber first aid for “data source not found”

November 29, 2011 — TeX · kludgetastic

LaTeX to Word: the basic issue

November 11, 2011 — TeX · TeX4ht

ODT/XML first aid

October 15, 2011 — TeX · kludgetastic · TeX4ht

TeX Updates and Side Blog

October 15, 2011 — TeX · site

Chicago Manual-style footnote numbers

October 4, 2011 — TeX

hyperref makes PDFs with awesome features

October 4, 2011 — TeX

Life with tex4ht: a teaser

October 4, 2011 — TeX · TeX4ht

Why LaTeX and Literary Studies?

An Introduction

October 2, 2011 — TeX

A Colloquy on Autonomy

September 1, 2011 — arcade

New URL

August 30, 2011 — site

New review in Studies in the Novel

July 30, 2011 — publications · modernism

Close Reading as Genre

Just what is that infamous thing, a close reading?

July 25, 2011 — arcade

Is literature the least giftworthy of the arts?

June 20, 2011 — arcade

Race, Ethnicity, Brains: Some Marginalia

May 8, 2011 — arcade

Export Duties

A dark fable of global cultural circulation…

April 26, 2011 — arcade

A Bad Time Was Had by All

In which poetry specifically does not provide consolation, and a good thing too

February 21, 2011 — arcade · Fictions of Autonomy

N-gram, Corpus, Field

A quick reaction to “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books.”

December 17, 2010 — arcade · DH

Riding the Escalator

October 19, 2010 — arcade

Twenty Nobel Lectures in Literature (3)

July 24, 2010 — arcade

Twenty Nobel Lectures in Literature (2)

July 22, 2010 — arcade

Twenty Nobel Lectures in Literature (1)

July 20, 2010 — arcade

“Positivist” and Other Terms of Praise

May 4, 2010 — arcade

tvtropes.org, the Future of the Humanities

April 20, 2010 — arcade · DH

Going Negative, or, Why Not Jeeves?

What use could there be for negative evidence in literary scholarship?

April 6, 2010 — arcade · Fictions of Autonomy

Twentieth-Century Studies / Modernist Studies Without Modernism

January 1, 2010 — modernism