Dan DiPiero

Close Reading Is For Everyone Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant Call for Pitches Based on our previous Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, we are at work on a new version that’s shorter, slimmer, and aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for a new set of contributors who would write excellent, brief, model close readings of texts that high schoolers might know and care about. Think: “The Gettysburg Address,” Macbeth, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but also song lyrics, idioms, or even a visual image. What is your best, most instructive, most exciting, most welcoming example of how a close reading builds a real argument out from a tiny, perhaps overlooked detail? If you’re interested in pitching us, please send us your 250-word close reading of the text you propose. Your close reading should be mappable using our vocabulary of close reading: the five steps of scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation, and global theorizing. (Our close reading of “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the early pages of our introduction is the sort of thing we’re seeking.) If we think we can use yours, we’ll ask you to expand it to a 1,200 word essay in which you explain how your close reading works step by step. We seek close readings both of texts that are canonical and also ones that aren’t. And so we invite contributors both from the discipline of literary studies, and other disciplines across the university, and the public humanities beyond it. Send your pitches—please include your name and contact info—to daniel.sinykin@emory.edu and jwinant@reed.edu by March 15.

CALL FOR PITCHES

@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.

We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.

Details below!

swoooon

A screenshot of the Polymarket website showing a prediction market titled "Nuclear weapon detonation by...?" under the Geopolitics and Ukraine categories. The market displays three betting options with their current probabilities and "Buy Yes" or "Buy No" prices: "March 31" at 5%, "June 30" at 12%, and "Before 2027" at 22%. The total trading volume shown is over $843,000.

Polymarket has created a betting market on the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone involved in this should be put in prison for life.

Hero YouTube video by quickly, quickly - Topic

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKIV...

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

fucking genocidal

The Jealous Sound - The Jealous Sound [EP] (2000) YouTube video by Nakagawa No Music

same year as this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=orjo...

Supreme Beings Of Leisure: Supreme Beings Of Leisure [Full Album] YouTube video by PALM

anybody remember this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cBS...

Blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol dies in Buffalo. A nearly blind refugee abandoned by Border Patrol miles from his home dies in Buffalo after having been missing for nearly a week.

Our federal government killed a disabled genocide survivor and is covering up for a child rapist. And that is just today’s news. It is just unconscionable to be treating this as normal or acceptable in any way.
www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/25/b...

9 Thoughts on Trade Writing When you're an academic, what's normal always seems weird

dandipiero.substack.com/p/9-thoughts...

Women and Queer Folks in Indie Rock (with Dr. Dan DiPiero)

I have once again been lucky enough for the opportunity to discuss my work with Lydia. If you haven't heard me yap enough about Big Feelings, this is substantive. But we also talk teaching, writing, and crying.

open.spotify.com/episode/60cR...

9 | Cuban Reparto with Dr. Mike Levine On technological affordances and the Reggaeton phenomenon

cry baby pod is back to wrap up its first season. Three or four interviews are on the way, starting with this great chat. On all the podcast platforms. dandipiero.substack.com/p/9-cuban-re...

Jazz from Detroit Jazz from Detroit explores the city’s pivotal role in shaping the course of modern and contemporary jazz. With more than two dozen in-depth profiles of remarkable Detroit-bred musicians, complemented ...

Publication Day!

Now in paperback for the first time, the newly revised edition of The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit is officially available from the University of Michigan Press. For a 30% discount, follow the link and enter UMWEB30 on the shopping cart page. press.umich.edu/Books/J/Jazz...

Let’s recap just the past day at Ohio State University:
1) The head of their ObGyn department was found to be getting quarterly payments from international child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein
2) OSU’s top donor was confirmed to be a co-conspirator of Epstein’s
3) Now this. 👇

Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’

Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’

Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/u...

fucking retire

AMS Lecture Series: Indie Rock After Riot Grrrl | Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Join the AMS Lecture Series with Dan Dipiero as he explores the 1980s UK indie scene, where gendered dynamics often overshadowed indie-pop contributions.

Speaking at the Rock Hall in April, would love to see ya. rockhall.com/event/ams-in...

Epstein’s economic power among academics was made possible by a capitalist system that makes higher education dependent on the charity economy rather than a public good supported by taxing the rich

Thanks for sharing :)

wow! 🤩

4 Black journalists have been kidnapped by the federal government

The Democrats ought to be blowing whistles up in the chamber, chanting f*** ice, and getting themselves arrested right in the middle of Congress. It's like they don't have the slightest clue as to how bad it is with a few very few exceptions. Be as brave as a poet or a nurse in Minneapolis

AMS folks, do we have any idea what the status of our petition is at this moment? The letter listed demands at 90 day and 6–12 month timelines—do we know if any steps have been taken towards any of those goals?

If you have concerns about the production of your book manuscript or how a publisher is engaging with AI, *please* ask your dealbreaker questions well before you are holding a contract in hand. You will lose months if not years if you wait until after peer review (and likely won’t get what you want)

2026 Junior Scholar Symposium – Call for Applications 2026 Junior Scholar Symposium – Call for Applications 2026 Junior Scholar SymposiumCase Western Reserve UniversityJune 16-18, 2026Application Deadline: February 16, 2026 The Popular Music Stu…

Junior scholars and late-stage graduate students in popular music studies! The AMS Popular Music Study Group is now accepting applications for our biannual Junior Scholar Symposium in Cleveland this summer! Read our full call here and please share widely.

amspop.wordpress.com/2026/01/19/2...

Kirin McElwain: Harsh Tones and 'Youth' | The Tonearm Cellist Kirin McElwain's exploratory album 'Youth' turns toward crystalline feedback, chaotic oscillators, and intentionally harsh tones to express the feelings of desire and shame occupying the same ...

"@kirinmcelwain.bsky.social's exploratory album 'Youth' turns toward crystalline feedback, chaotic oscillators, and intentionally harsh tones to express the feelings of desire and shame occupying the same cognitive space." - @thetonearm.com

www.thetonearm.com/kirin-mcelwa...

An email from Martin Peterson to university administrators.

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

Distraught woman says ICE killed her wife in video after deadly Minneapolis shooting "They killed my wife," the distraught woman says, adding, "They shot her in the head." An ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman who was driving an SUV in Minneapolis on Wednesday. / Screenshot/@Breaking911

"They killed my wife. I don't know what to do," the woman says through sobs in the footage, with a damaged SUV visible in the distance behind her. "We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head," the woman cries. "We have a six-year-old at school," she says, almost unable to breathe, as a chaotic scene in which federal officers prevented at least one doctor who was on the scene from assisting the shot victim unfolds. "We're new here," the distraught woman says in despair.

You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today.

This could be you.

"what do you expect dems, who have NO POWER, to do???" and then they do this 8 times a month

Hermeto Pascoal e Aline Morena YouTube video by ozmusicshop

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwRP...